Title

Pathways to Legislative Success: A Path Analytic Study of the Missouri House of Representatives

Abstract

A causal model depicting personal, environmental, and institutional pathways to legislative success is developed and tested with data drawn from the 1987-88 Missouri House of Representatives. With legislative success conceptualized as a multistep process ending in bill passage, direct paths to success include political party, seniority, formal office, age, race, and educational level. Institutional variables have the strongest impact on legislative success and environmental factors the weakest. Age, urbanism, seniority, and political party affect legislative success indirectly through their effect on formal office, an intervening variable. The results of the path analysis provide strong support for the proposed model, with over 50% of the variance in legislative success explained by antecedent variables.

Department(s)

Political Science

Document Type

Article

Stable URL

https://www.jstor.org/stable/440062

Publication Date

1992

Journal Title

Legislative Studies Quarterly

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