5th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey

Volume 5 of the Idaho Policy Survey contains four sections. As in the four previous survey reports, the first section examines citizens\u27 opinions on the quality of life in Idaho, and what problems facing the state are seen as the most important. The next section focuses on attitudes toward the federal, state, and local levels of government, as well as on the perceived fairness of different types of taxes and the degree of support for state spending increases in eleven broad service areas. The third section this year is a new one: we explore the public\u27s awareness of and attitudes toward a variety of initiative and referenda questions which may be on the 1994 statewide ballot. Finally, the last section explores how residents of the Gem State feel about a variety of specific policy issues. The report concludes with a methodological appendix that summarizes the procedure used to draw the sample and conduct the interviews

The State Legislative Process in Idaho

https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1257/thumbnail.jp

Floterial Districts, Reapportionment, and the Puzzle of Representation

Because of recent Supreme Court decisions involving a more permissive stance toward a rational state policy (Brown v. Thompson) and the challenge of partisan gerrymandering (Davis v. Bandemer), state legislatures and reapportionment commissions are left with nebulous guidelines for the next round of reapportionment plans. This article reviews some of these issues of representation in light of a specific electoral technique known as the floterial district. Floterials are not widely understood, but they reemerged in several states in the reapportionment plans of the 1980s, and there is some speculation that floterials will be considered by more states in the 1990s. With this in mind, I discuss the specific nature of floterials and pose some problems (framed as puzzles) in the use of floterials

Professionalization and Careerism in Canadian Provincial Assemblies: Comparison to U. S. State Legislatures

The development of legislative professionalization is well documented in U.S. state legislatures, where it is closely associated with the advent of careerism. This association is partly responsible for the term limit movement. In this paper we show that Canadian provincial legislative assemblies have undergone a similar trend toward professionalization but that careerism has been less evident. Turnover rates are higher than under similar conditions in U.S. state legislatures because the electoral advantage of incumbency is substantially smaller in Canadian provincial elections. We identify five reasons why incumbents are less advantaged in the Canadian system

Dimensions of the Concept of Professionalism in State Legislatures: A Research Note

Over the last quarter century, American state legislatures have experienced great pressures to professionalize. Recently, political scientists have redeveloped an interest in studying the causes and the consequences of state legislative professionalism. In this note we demonstrate that the concept of professionalism has several different components. While these components are related, they are different enough that they may not be tapping the same dimension. It is possible for a state legislature to be professional in one dimension and amateur in another. Moreover, different components of professionalism seem to be associated with different socio-economic factors in the state

Reapportionment and Redistricting in the West

In Reapportionment and Redistricting in the West, Gary F. Moncrief brings together some of the best-known scholars in American state and electoral politics to explore the unique processes and problems of redistricting in the western United States. These political scientists examine the specific challenges facing western states in ensuring fair and balanced political representation. Western states tend to be geographically large and experiencing rapid population growth and the chapters in this enlightening volume discuss the changing demographics in western states, paying special attention to the rise in the Latino population and the effect this has had on reapportionment and redistricting. They describe the ways in which some of these states achieve redistricting through independent redistricting commissions—a process rarely found in other regions—and they provide policy prescriptions for the future.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1279/thumbnail.jp

Campaign Finance in State Legislative Elections

https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1254/thumbnail.jp

The Recruitment of Women Cabinet Ministers in the Canadian Provinces

Although there have been several studies of women in legislatures in Canada, a cabinet position is a much stronger position from which to wield power in an executive-centered and party-disciplined parliamentary system. In the past decade, the increase of women\u27s share of legislative seats, for majority parties as well as others, has led to more women being appointed to cabinet portfolios. This article utilizes data from the ten Canadian provinces over an 18-year period, from 1976 to 1994, to assess patterns of such appointments by province, party, percentage of women in the governing party, and percentage of women in the legislature. The proportion of women in the governing party far outweighs other variables in its impact on the percentage of women in the cabinet, in contrast to a previous study of West European cabinets which found that more women in the legislature was of greater importance. Although a high level of multicollinearity indicates caution in attempting to distinguish between the impact of these two variables, the differences in these studies may be due to Canadian provinces having single-party majority governments while West European cabinets are often coalitions