Conditional party government in the states

We extend theories of congressional parties and committees to the state leg islative setting, using the variation among legislatures to explore the lin ks between elections and parties and between parties and committees. We exa mine elections by comparing the electoral concentration of parties to measu res of conditional party government. We examine informational and partisan theories of committees by looking to the relationship between committee rep resentativeness and conditional party government. With data from eleven sta tes, we find that competitive party systems breed highly polarized legislat ive parties, and these two traits lead to representative committees.