Legislative professionalism and perceptions of white-collar government

The professionalization of American state legislatures is among the most consequential modern institutional reforms in legislative politics. Yet a core tension persists: citizens disapprove of professionalized legislatures even though these chambers possess capacity-enhancing resources – such as staff support, higher salaries and longer sessions – that may improve representation and policymaking. We offer one explanation for this disapproval: citizens perceive professional legislatures as dominated by legislators from white-collar backgrounds. Consequently, the authors argue that opposition to professionalism stems, in part, from a belief that white-collar legislators may not represent society’s interests broadly. Evidence from a preregistered conjoint experiment and observational analyses using the Cooperative Election Study supports this claim. Respondents associate professionalism with a legislature primarily composed of white-collar lawmakers, whom they do not believe govern to benefit the general public. These findings suggest that opposition to legislative professionalism likely reflects a rejection of white-collar government rather than repudiation of the institutional gains from professionalization.