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Abstract
This study analyzes the affect of state ethics reform laws on institutional behavior, party structure and individual behavior in the Iowa House of Representatives.
The overall question to be answered in this study is--what is the effect of limiting one of the key actors--interest group lobbyists--in the political process? If reformists are correct in their assumptions, the political process under reform will no longer be dominated by traditional policy actors. Traditional roll-call analysis indexes are employed in addition to interest group support scores and survey research.
This study fails to demonstrate any of the predicted changes in the three broad categories examined--institutional behavior, party structure and individual voting behavior. Ethics reform in Iowa does not appear to have "leveled the playing field" in any observable fashion. Instead, the data suggests that the status quo is at minimum maintained in most of the areas investigated. Where change was noticeable during the post-reform period, the data seems to suggest that traditional policy actors were favored.
