Author's Keywords: Campaign Finance, Clean Elections, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maine, public	Convention All Academic Convention is the premier solution for your association's abstract management solutions needs. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: The Midwest Political Science Association URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p138025_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Bath, Michael. and Miller, Michael. "Public Financing, Legislative Professionalism, and Competition in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Maine State Legislative Races" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, Apr 20, 2006 <Not Available>. 2008-12-12 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p138025_index.html>

Bath, M. G. and Miller, M. G. , 2006-04-20 "Public Financing, Legislative Professionalism, and Competition in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Maine State Legislative Races" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois Online <PDF>. 2008-12-12 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p138025_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Abstract: Though a growing number of states have adopted public financing reforms as a means to remedy the lack of competition in state legislative races, recent scholarship has failed to consistently confirm the efficacy of these reforms. This paper addresses the issue by examining the competitiveness of state legislative seats both prior to and after the establishment of public financing in Maine and Arizona. The results for these two states are then compared to what we know of the more established public financing system in Wisconsin. Chosen on the basis of how professionalized their legislatures are (using Squire�s (2000) index of legislative professionalization), these three states exhibit low, medium, and high levels of legislative professionalization, respectively. We hypothesize that resources which accrue to officeholders in professionalized legislatures have the potential to offset any advantages offered to challengers by public funding. Funding systems that fail to fully fund elections at a level that corresponds to actual campaign expenditures are also unlikely to increase levels of competition. Findings suggest that public financing in Maine and Arizona has had an impact on key measures of electoral competitiveness. In both states, incumbent reelection margins decreased in the post-reform period (this was especially evident in Maine), while challenger victories increased (again, dramatically so in Maine, and to a lesser extent in Arizona). These results differ markedly from the reform experience in Wisconsin, and do so in a way that lends support to our hypotheses. Under the right circumstances, public financing makes state legislative races more competitive.

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