Legislative Calendars and Workload Management in Texas
There is a well-developed normative model of how state legislatures ought to use calendars to make the management of their workloads more efficient. State legislatures that follow the normative model identify more and less important bills. Presumably, major and minor bills are treated differently--but are they? This study desegregates the agenda of the Texas Legislature into unimportant, less important, and more important bills as defined by bill placement on calendars. There are systematic differences in the way bills of varying importance are treated. Moreover, the differences are consistent with the contention that calendars can facilitate the more efficient management of legislative workloads.
Legislative Workload Congestion in Texas
There is considerable evidence that the processing of work in American state legislatures is characterized by bottlenecks, congestion, and logjams. Yet past research has examined only part of the legislative workload and part of the legislative calendar. Measurement and evaluation of legislative workload is complicated by the complexity of legislation and the legislative process. However, comprehensive analyses show that, although some important activities are quite congested in parts of the session, consideration of the entire workload shows it to be quite evenly distributed over the entire session. These findings call into question the assumptions of some simplistic normative models of legislative behavior.
Computer Simulation Modeling
Computer simulation as a research methodology is presented as the intersection of modeling, simulation, and computer analysis. Five component parts of simulation models are identified: input variables, output variables, assumptions, algorithms, and parameters. Computer simulation (CSM) has two primary uses for those interested in the study of organizations or who work within them: theory development and policy planning. The advantages and disadvantages of CSM for each of these purposes are examined and recent examples for each are explored.