Ohio History Journal

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JOHN M

JOHN M. WEGNER

Partisanship in the Ohio House of

Representatives, 1900-1911: An Analysis

of Roll-Call Voting

 

 

 

Students of legislative behavior have long had a penchant for examining the

workings of the United States Congress, foreign parliaments, and other na-

tional assemblies.     They have paid less attention      to  state legislatures.

Despite a growing interest in subnational legislative bodies, research on state

legislatures is still in its infancy.1 Lack of attention by historians to this

area of research is particularly surprising when one considers the pivotal posi-

tion occupied by these bodies in the past. Until the 1930s, when the activist

programs of the New Deal tipped government's "center of gravity" to

Washington, state legislatures exercised a disproportionate amount of power

over the lives of citizens.2

Although systematic investigations of legislative behavior at the state level

have taken a "back seat" to national studies, one facet of research-that per-

taining to party voting-has not been so sorely neglected.3 Beginning in the

1950s, numerous studies appeared which assessed the nature and impact of

partisanship on the legislative process in state assemblies.4 Historians, how-

ever, can take little comfort from these studies since their ambit has been al-

 

 

John M. Wegner teaches American history courses at colleges in northwest Ohio and south-

east Michigan. He would like to thank Drs. James Q. Graham and Bernard Sternsher, emeriti

of the Department of History at Bowling Green State University, and James Marshall, Donna

Christian and the staff of the Local History and Genealogy Department of the Toledo-Lucas

County Public Libary for their help and suggestions during the research process.

1. Ballard C. Campbell, Representative Democracy: Public Policy and Midwestern

Legislatures in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 1; Malcolm E. Jewell,

The State Legislature: Politics and Practice, second ed., (New York, 1969), 3.

2. Campbell, 2; Philip R. VanderMeer, The Hoosier Politician: Officeholding and Political

Culture in Indiana 1896-1920 (Urbana, 1985), 3.

3. Jonathan P. Euchner, "Partisanship in the Iowa Legislature: 1945-1989," paper presented

at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 5-

7, 1990, 2.

4. As examples, see Malcolm E. Jewell, "Party Voting in American State Legislatures," The

American Political Science Review, 49 (September, 1955), 773-91; William J. Keefe, "Party

Government and Lawmaking in Illinois General Assembly," Northwestern University Law

Review, 47 (March-April, 1952), 55-71; W. Duane Lockard, "Legislative Politics in

Connecticut," The American Political Science Review, 48 (March, 1954), 166-73; and Charles

W. Wiggins, "Party Politics in Iowa Legislature," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 11

(February, 1967), 86-97.