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

Abstract Elected politicians in Texas and Massachusetts tend to claim that both their states are exceptional, their legislatures advanced, and their democracies healthy. Despite having nearly identical governing institutions at the same time, Texas and Massachusetts have different legislative and political cultures that produce dramatically different laws and social outcomes, particularly around the 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 with extant parliamentary studies and studies of legislatures. More transparency and citizen engagement do not necessarily lead to more democratic outcomes. The authors, two anthropologists of legislatures, suggest an approach for using the ethnographic study of local legislatures as a way to inquire into scrutiny, the relative health of democracy and why deep rather than shallow democracy is so hard to achieve.