You will find that across different states, that each state’s legislators usually fit within a spectrum, known as the delegate-trustee spectrum. Where a legislator sits on this spectrum is based on different factors, including how conservative or liberal the nature of the state or the amount of experience a legislator has.
Rosenthal, in his book, The Decline of Representative Democracy, describes a spectrum, when it comes to the nature of a state’s representatives, either in its house of representatives, or its state senate, of being, at one end, a delegate, and at the other end, a trustee.
A delegate would be one that very strongly follows the opinions and desires of his constituency, following their desires and wants, even when he disagrees with them – in this regard, a representative is more like a mannequin, where the public in his realm pull the strings and he/she follows completely.
A trustee would be one that the people choose to work on their behalf, where they don’t need to always give input, but can trust that this person is responsible and competent enough to do their work for them without their constant input, although he would listen to input, if they have any, in his deliberations before making a decision with his vote – in this regard, a representative is more like someone that a store owner would hire to competently manage their store while they are off focusing on some other endeavors, although the manager would still welcome the occasional input from the store owner.
With this in mind, how would I label the political culture of my home state of Indiana? In Elazar’s book, Exploring Federalism, our state is labeled as being primarily individualistic with a little bit of moralistic political culture mixed in, which is an accurate assessment, but within the delegate-trustee spectrum I would describe our legislature as being somewhere between halfway and three-fourths of the way to the trustee side of the spectrum. There are several reasons why I see this as being the case. (There seems to be three different types of political cultures in the states – moralistic, individualistic & traditionalistic.)
In my home state of Indiana, we don’t have term limits for our legislator, and this can be seen by looking at our legislator turnover ratio compared to other states, at least as seen on page 73 in the book authored by Rosenthal, where, between 1987 and 1997, the turnover in the senate was 58%, and the turnover in the house was 64%, making our state have one of the lowest turnover ratios in the country. Rosenthal seems to suggest that when a legislator is novice, he seems to lean more towards the delegate end of the spectrum, worried about what his constituency thinks, and probably as a result of wanting to get on their good side to possibly get reelected; when the legislator gets more experience, and learns the political process better, with the committees, time for deliberation, knowing that public opinion isn’t always guided by thorough knowledge and information, in other words, when he learns the ropes, and most likely has become an incumbent legislator in his second or later term, he gets more confident in his abilities, and becomes more of a trustee type of legislator. Our low turnover ratio compared to other states seems to suggest that we have more experience and incumbency within our legislature, and that they would fit more into the trustee definition.
Secondly, another thing to keep in mind is that people who lean in the conservative direction tend to be more likely to be middle class or wealthy, live in the suburbs or the country, and to have more of a cultural background, either because of their ethnic cultural origins, or because of their religious convictions, to have a strong work ethic with a sense of personal initiative and self-sufficiency, and see government as a necessary evil (Elazar’s label of “Individualistic”) which needs to be limited, as opposed to the liberal/progressive who tends to be poorer, live in the inner-city, have a less religious background, have a cultural background that tends to have a dependency on government and see government as the end-all, be-all solution to all of society’s problems, which is what I usually think of when I think of the moralistic label. The fact that our state is considered to be “very conservative” would suggest that the nature of the constituency is such that they have their own lives to attend to, being quite busy with working and taking care of themselves, so that when they see their legislators, they see them as someone they hired to competently do their work while they can continue to focus on their own lives and work at taking care of themselves, without worrying about politics as much.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if we were to look at the 2-D spectrum of professional legislator vs. citizen legislator, given the conservative makeup of our houses, our legislators are more likely to be either a professional legislator or dual-career legislator instead of a citizen-on-leave legislator or a citizen legislator (Rosenthal, p.63). When it comes to the difference between professional legislator and dual-career legislator, I would suggest that our legislators are more likely to hold a job outside of their political career than to just rely on their political career for income, although the professional legislator might be on the rise.
There are two reasons as to why we are more likely to have dual-career legislators than other states – first, the conservative nature of our politicians would suggest that they have enough desire for personal initiative and self-sufficiency that they have developed for themselves a private outside career; second, the income that the state pays our legislator is not near the top of the scale, nor near the bottom of the scale, but near the middle, somewhere around the same as a teacher would make. If he wants to live at the standard of living allowed for that income level, he can do so, not having an outside career, but becoming a professional legislator, although, more likely than not, the person that is a professional legislator has the ability to do so because they have a spouse who has a private career that contributes to their family’s income. I would argue that this is part of our state’s culture which gives it the individualistic label we get by Elazar.
Another thing to keep in mind about our state’s political culture is that, because we have a more experienced group of legislators, they probably know each other better, having a higher level of camaraderie between themselves, regardless of political bent, and know the political process better, meaning that it is easier for them to get things accomplished – they are more experienced and grounded in the political procedures. They know not to rush into any vote, to make time for deliberation, who to turn to, and towards what committee to steer deliberation for possible bills. It makes for a more efficient group of individuals, and because of that, it possibly means that they have more time for pursuing a private outside career.
Why is it that we are considered individualistic and moralistic at the same time, when I tend to think that the moralistic type of political culture (more socialistic) is quite opposite to the individualistic type of political culture (more libertarian)? I would argue that the moralistic element of our political culture lies within the boundaries of an individualistic framework, and is influenced by traditional morals, leading the state to legislate morality, while not using the government to act as a agent of morality, such as through increased government welfare programs and the like.
