Conditional Party Government in the State Legislature
Walter Forrest
Florida State University
wf02@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
Prepared for the Southern Political Science Association Conference,
New Orleans LA, January 8-10 2004
Abstract: Proponents of the theory of conditional party government contend that the strength of
parties is a function of the level of intra-party preference homogeneity and inter-party preference
conflict. In this paper, I test the theory as it relates to state legislatures. Using measures of intra-
party preference homogeneity and inter-party polarization developed from a survey of state
legislators, I evaluate the effects of these two conditions on the role of political parties. I argue
that if satisfaction of the conditions of conditional party government enables the majority party to
tilt policy outcomes away from the chamber median, evidence of this effect should be observed in
the patterns of legislation authored by different members. First, the more the policy preferences
of a given legislator coincide with the preferences of the majority party median, the more likely
she or he will be to spend time and effort creating legislation. Second, the greater the congruence
between the opinions of the majority party median and other members of the chamber, the more
likely the legislature will pass legislation written or sponsored by those members. Third, in both
cases, these effects should depend on the overall level of intra-party homogeneity and inter-party
polarization. Results indicate limited support for the theory. Proximity to the majority party
median had an impact on the likelihood that legislation drafted by a member was passed into law
and this effect was conditional on the level of intra-party homogeneity, but the conditional nature
of these effects was not consistent with the predictions of conditional party government.
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Introduction
For many years, the prevailing view among legislative scholars in the United States was that
political parties