I've been studying them for 30 years, and my major conclusion is that I don't understand them. So I don't expect the public to understand legislatures. I don't have any easy fixes. The public has got to move off its hostility and at least be neutral. I'm talking about civic education in which people get an idea about what representative democracy entails.
Legislatures work amazingly well representing our very pluralistic interests.
And I think that effort should be encouraged and supported. 1998 Phoenix, Arizona Alan Rosenthal is one of America's leading authorities on state legislatures. In addition to penning numerous articles and books about state lawmakers, he teaches political science and public policy at the Eagleton Institute of Public Policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1995, Rosenthal won the America Political Science Association's prestigious Charles E. Merriam Award for making a significant contribution to the art of government. His latest book, The Decline of Representative Democracy, was published by Congressional Quarterly Press in 1998.