REPR: Representation in California's State Legislature (Updated August 2008)

Description

Representation in California's State Legislature by John L. Korey, Department of Political Science, California State Polytechnic University Pomona and JeDon Emenhiser, Department of Government and Politics, Humboldt State University.

This module offers you ways to learn more about the theory and practice of popular government. It focuses upon political representation and legislative behavior and allows you to compare representative policymaking in the California state legislature with the making of policy through the direct democratic device of the initiative process. It utilizes demographic data from the U.S. census, from election returns for the state legislature, from rollcall votes in the legislature, and from votes for and against popular initiatives. The focus on Analyzing Legislative Behavior includes Party Behavior, Interest Groups, Region or Area, Policy Issues, District Ideology, District Partisanship, Election Outcomes, Member Characteristics, and Member Voting Behavior. There is also an extensive discussion of statistical procedures.

Pedagogical significance of module. Substantively, the REPR module provides students with data that can be used to study the concept of representation in courses on empirical theory, the legislative process, and California politics. Methodologically, it provides students with ratio level data that can be used in univariate analysis, comparisons of means, least squares (regression) analysis, and the creation of various graphic displays of information.

Citation:

Korey, John and Emenhiser, JeDon, 1998, 2008. Representation in California's State Legislature. Unpublished Manuscript.

Table of Contents

Full Version [doc | pdf

Table of Contents -- [doc | pdf

Authors: John L. Korey and JeDon Emenhiser Revised: 2008 Permalink: http://www.ssric.org/trd/modules/repr08 Related File(s):
Full Version [doc | pdf] • Table of Contents [doc | pdf] • Chapter 1 [doc | pdf] • Chapter 2 [doc | pdf] • Chapter 3 [doc | pdf] • Codebook [doc | pdf] • Bibliography [doc | pdf] • assembly.por [por] • senate.por [por]