State Party Platforms and State Legislative Performance: A Comparative Analysis

This study assesses the extent to which the parties of Illinois and Wisconsin legislatively fulfill their platform commitments. As hypothesized, the parties of issueoriented and moralistic Wisconsin performed more responsibly than those of job-oriented and individualistic Illinois. This was clear, however, only when both the proportion of policy agenda fulfilled and ambitiousness of the policy agenda proposed were taken into consideration. Party legislative strength was strongly correlated with enhanced policy performance in Wisconsin but not in Illinois. The policy consequences of differential partisan control were especially clear with respect to policy commitments on which the parties conflicted. It is argued that the parties model be reconceptualized as a multidimensional ideal type, as various findings of the study indicate it is empirically unlikely that a party or party system could be responsible with respect to all dimensions simultaneously.