Chutes and Ladders: How Political Ambition Plays Out in Term-Limited Legislatures

​Legislative term limits were a result of public frustration with long-serving incumbents. Term limits were intended to curb political ambition in the American states. Yet legislators, even in term-limited states, have lengthy political careers. Theories of political ambition, shaped by both institutional opportunity and member goals, need to be updated to include the diverse nature of term limits. This study relies on an original dataset to assess career ambition in term-limited state legislatures to uncover unique ambition patterns exclusive to states with divided/consecutive term limits. While term limits do not directly produce ambition, they do shape ambition leading members to pursue different avenues for elected office that were not present before the implementation of term limits. These findings support the theory that term-limited legislators are more likely to display political ambition than their counterparts in states without term limits. This analysis has important implications for understandings of political careers and how they are shaped by institutions, while shedding light on the debate over term limits. 
Out With the Old, In With the Old?
Term Limits and Legislative Partisanship
(With L. Marvin Overby) 
                 
Legislative term limits garner public support because of their promise to remove entrenched incumbents from office.  There is often a partisan dimension to this appeal since “the swamp” that is to be “drained” has often been controlled by one party or the other for a lengthy period.  However, it remains unclear to what extent term limits realign partisanship within state legislatures.  We fill this gap by evaluating how legislative partisanship shifted after the implementation of term limits in 12 different state legislatures over the period 1996-2016. We find that initial surge effects of term limits did “level the playing field” between parties, but that the partisan effect evaporates over time.  Our finding that long-term partisanship is stronger than the disruptive effect of term limits has important implications for our understanding of legislative term restrictions and provides insight into party strength at the state legislative level. 
Be Careful What You Count: Term Limits and Turnover

​ Term limits have created artificial turnover pushing people out of office as soon as their term is up. Research on turnover, however, has reached a stopping point. In this note, I examine the rate of legislative turnover across state legislatures. I find that turnover appears to increase in term-limited states, but the artificial turnover produced can mask the true effects of term limits on legislative careerism. States with term limits can have deceptively high turnover rates, in reality, states with unified term limits see a decrease in turnover.