The adoption and implementation of term limits on American state legislators represents one of the most significant institutional reforms to ever have an impact on state legislatures. This change has caused scholars to make a number of conjectures concerning how term limits would ultimately affect the functioning of the legislative process and its public policy outputs. Proponents of term limits argued that they were necessary to bring new blood into the legislative process and take power out of the hands of long-serving chamber and party leaders. Opponents argued that such frequent turnover of members would be detrimental to institutional memory and policymaking and would ultimately shift state policymaking power to special interests and legislative staff. However, more than a decade would have to pass before scholars could systematically and empirically analyze the question of how term limits have affected the composition, operation, and outputs of state legislatures.

Institutional Change in American Politics is the first comprehensive study of the impact of term limits and the editors and their contributors have objectively assessed how term limits have impacted the composition, representation, leadership, committee systems, lobbyists and interest groups, culture, staffing, legislative–executive relations, and policy of state legislatures. The book is the culmination of the work of the Joint Project on Term Limits—a team effort undertaken by political science scholars in connection with the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation.

A unique characteristic of this edited volume is that the contributors used a common source of data for their analyses that includes a 50-state survey of all legislators, demographic and electoral data on legislators in all 50 states, legislative turnover data, interviews and legislative procedure data from six term-limited states and three non-term-limited control states, and a survey of knowledgeable observers in nine term-limited states. The major findings of the analyses are that the effects of term limits vary with the length and severity of the legislative service restriction; that term limits have had a greater impact on those legislative chambers considered to be more professionalized; and that, on balance, the record of term limits is mixed in ways that call into question the most categorical claims made by both proponents and opponents of the term limits movement. The overall conclusion of the book, however, is that, in general, term limits have institutionally weakened state legislatures, though this effect is not as severe as it could have been, since term-limited state legislatures are effectively adapting to their new institutional environment.

This book is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the impact of institutional change or state politics. Further, it is organized and written in a manner that makes it accessible to a wide audience, thus providing insight for scholars, graduate students, undergraduate students, and the general public alike. For scholars, it begins to answer many of the questions concerning term limits that have long been on the agenda of political science. Some of its findings confirm long-standing expectations. For example, turnover of members has increased in most term-limited states. In other respects, it calls into question conventional expectations. There is little evidence, for example, that term limits reduced the power of incumbency. Still other of the volume's findings were not entirely anticipated. There is evidence, for example, that the relationship between upper and lower houses in term-limited states has grown more contentious in the post–term limits era. Because of the range of issues it covers and the care with which it presents and assesses the empirical evidence, the book provides a significant baseline for the future study of the long-term impact of term limits on state legislatures, and is likely to inspire future inquiry into this important topic.

For undergraduate students and the general public, the book furnishes a highly accessible account of the real impact of term limits on state legislatures. In particular, it provides a very objective portrait of how term limits have changed the membership of state legislatures and how this increase in new members has impacted representation, the functioning of state legislatures, and the making of policy in the American states. The objective approach allows readers to draw their own conclusions and pass their own judgments regarding whether term limits have achieved the desired goals or have instead been detrimental to state legislatures and policy formulation. The book is thus an excellent resource for instructors.

In sum, the editors and contributors of Institutional Change in America have provided the discipline with an informative and important starting point in determining the impact of term limits on state legislatures. Most impressively, they accomplished this task in a format that is both accessible and interesting to a wide range of audiences, from scholars to the general public.