Term Limits and Local Governments in California

Abstract

While the enthusiasm for state legislative and congressional term limits is a relatively recent phenomenon, the push for term limits at the local government is not. We now have a couple of decades of experience at the local government level which we can use to shed light upon the possible effects that term limits might have at the state and national levels. The critical intellectual question is whether what we learn about term limits in one setting is wholly or even partly transportable to another.