Determinants of legislative staff turnover

"Senator Pearson's remarks leading up to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 make an important point: Congress cannot rely on outside actors, particularly the same branch that it is mandated to oversee, to conduct policy research and draft legislation. Instead, Congress must build its capacity and expertise by investing in its own staff to compete with, and effectively oversee, the executive branch. While Senator Pearson's comments shed light on the importance of investing in legislative staff, his comments fall short of another point: Congress can invest in its capacity by increasing the number of staff for members', but if Congress cannot retain its most qualified and expert staff, congressional capacity is at risk. Broadly, my dissertation seeks to understand staff employment and work environments at both the congressional and state level with an emphasis on staff turnover to understand modern legislative capacity for policy development and constituent service. ... By studying what variables influence staffer intention to leave and by observing turnover intra-institutionally, my dissertation has important implications for the study of Congress and state legislatures. Recent work on Congress suggests the best way to increase institutional capacity is not to increase members' representational allowances for staff or the number of staff, but rather, to retain the most experienced people they have (Crossoen et al. 2018). A key contribution of my research is that it may help legislators identify policies to retain staff, and in turn, aid institutional capacity. I begin by providing a broad overview of the congressional literature to position staff as the missing component. Next, I detail the growing body of work on congressional staff and the more the limited work on staff in state legislatures, before turning my focus to my three empirical analyses of legislative staff turnover."--Introduction.