Replication Data for: Lawmaking in American Legislatures: An Empirical Investigation

Given pervasive gridlock at the national level, state legislatures are increasingly the place where notable policy change occurs. Investigating such change is diffcult because it is often hard to characterize policy change and use observable data to evaluate theoretical predictions; it is subsequently unclear whether lawmaking explanations focusing on the U.S. Congress also apply to state legislatures. We use several measures of state policy outcomes to examine lawmaking in state legislatures across nearly two decades and we argue for using simulation studies to connect theoretical predictions to empirical specifications and help interpret the theoretical relevance of estimated correlations. So doing reveals that the observed lawmaking outcomes we study are most consistent with lawmaking models emphasizing the importance of the chamber median and the powers of the governor rather than those that focus on the preferences of the majority party.