Debate and Legislative Productivity in US State Legislatures

Scholarship holds that procedural rules shape legislative proceedings, but most existing evidence comes from the US Congress' limited procedural variation. This article develops a theoretical framework for how different forms of debate restriction—both limits on member participation and procedural hurdles to closing debate—affect legislative productivity, and how these effects depend on chambers' institutional capacity. Using an original dataset of debate rules and bill progression spanning 2011–2018 from all 99 US state legislative chambers, we show that restrictions on member speaking opportunities and ending debate are associated with higher legislative productivity, with the relationship operating through distinct mechanisms. Procedural hurdles to ending debate are associated with higher productivity in low‐professionalism legislatures, while these associations diminish or reverse in more professionalized chambers. These findings demonstrate the conditional nature of debate rules and institutional capacity, offering new insight into procedural designs and the tradeoff between deliberation and efficiency in lawmaking.