A Lone Star and The City on The Hill: The health of democracy in two US state legislatures

This journal article, authored by anthropologists Emma Crewe and Dan Souleles, contrasts Texas and Massachusetts.

Elected politicians in Texas and Massachusetts tend to claim that both their states are exceptional, their legislatures advanced and that their democracy is healthy. Despite nearly identical governing institutions at the same time, Texas and Massachusetts have different legislative and political cultures which produce dramatically different laws and societies, particularly around issues of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. This article seeks to illustrate how similar institutions can give rise to dramatically different legislative outcomes and thereby push against some biases in extant parliamentary studies and studies of legislatures. The authors, two anthropologists of legislatures, suggest a template for using the ethnographic study of local legislatures as a way to inquire into scrutiny and the relative health of democracy.