Conditional Party Government in the States

We extend theories of congressional parties and committees to the state legislative setting, using the variation among legislatures to explore the links between elections and parties and between parties and committees. We examine elections by comparing the electoral concentration of parties to measures of conditional party government. We examine informational and partisan theories of com? mittees by looking to the relationship between committee representativeness and conditional party govern? ment. With data from eleven states, we find that competitive party sys? tems breed highly polarized legisla? tive parties, and these two traits lead to representative committees.