document: Another argument is that a citizen Congress with its continuing flow of fresh faces into Washington would result in better government than that provided by representatives with lengthy tenure . The counter-argument is that experience is an important characteristic for legislators . Each viewpoint has some validity . Presumably the best solution is to let the market decide , that is , to allow the electorate to determine the proper balance between freshness and experience . Most of us would not want the government to determine whether a familiar or a new brand of toothpaste is preferable ; why is a political representative different in this respect ? Many commentators bemoan the high tendency for incumbents to be re-elected . But if the electoral control process is working , so that officeholders conform with the interests of the majority of their constituents , then the electorate rewards its representatives with re-election . If the public voted against satisfactory performers just to install a new face , then officeholders would have less incentive to behave and the system would work badly . Thus the main inference from a 95 % re-election rate is that the political process is working and that officeholders are conforming to the wishes of their constituents . If we ever see a 50 % re-election rate , then there really would be reason to worry . The threat not to re-elect works only if the incumbent is interested in another term , whether for his current or for another office . A problem with term limits is that it creates more lame ducks , who are less responsive to the desires of the electorate . Much has been made of Alexander Hamilton 's reflections on this point in Federalist 72 : `` One ill effect of the exclusion -LCB- from re-election -RCB- would be a diminution of the inducements to good behavior . '' -LRB- It is interesting to note , however , that Hamilton was not discussing term limits on the legislature , and was actually arguing against the term limits on the chief executive that are contained now in the 22nd Amendment . -RRB- The only respectable argument in favor of term limits that I know of refers to the legislature and involves the interaction with the seniority system . Representatives accumulate more power as they become more senior , partly because of better committee assignments and more staff and partly because of increased familiarity with government officials and institutions and with outside interest groups . Some aspects of this power , such as greater experience with governmental programs , are desirable ; others , such as the increased ability to extract funds from interest groups , are not . Even if seniority is a net cost in the aggregate , however , each district has an incentive to re-elect its own incumbent -LRB- and would if possible vote against the incumbents from other districts -RRB- because the representative 's relative seniority translates into a large share of governmental largess . The voters would be better off if they could reach a binding agreement that precluded the re-election of incumbents , that is , if term limits were instituted . As an example , the voters of Washington state recently rejected a proposal that would have limited the seniority of their congressional representatives relative to those of other states . Yet the same voters likely would have approved a proposal that limited the terms of all Congressional representatives , not just those from Washington . Changes in the seniority system may therefore be a superior alternative to term limits . If a representative 's power to favor his or her district did not vary with seniority , then voters would not have an excessive incentive to re-elect incumbents . The seniority system could be changed only by getting Congress to alter its own rules -LRB- as it has at times in the past -RRB- or else by constitutional amendment , which would , from a practical standpoint , also have to initiate in Congress . Although the chances of success seem small , one way to proceed would be to call the proposal the Civil Rights Amendment -- recent experience shows that calling something a Civil Rights Act helps to get it passed . It does not seem to matter much -- it may even be detrimental -- if the content of a Civil Rights Act actually has something to do with civil rights . The weakening of the seniority system in Congress would , it must be conceded , sacrifice some genuine benefits . Greater experience may justify positions of more authority , and , the rewards from seniority give Congress an efficient method to motivate good behavior from junior members . These arguments parallel the benefits from worker seniority in firms -LRB- or , indeed , the usefulness of a parole system as a carrot to help control inmates in prisons -RRB- . The formal system of seniority is also only a part of the story ; members ' increasing familiarity with interest groups is a kind of seniority that would not be eliminated by changes in the rules for committee assignments , staffing and so on . It is unrealistic as well as undesirable to try to remove completely the operation of a seniority system in any legislature . The various complexities about legislative term limits and their interaction with seniority do not arise for executive term limits . Voters do not have to worry that rejecting their incumbent puts them at a disadvantage relative to other voters ' incumbents , so the electorate can properly weigh experience , fresh ideas , the value of rewarding satisfactory performance in office , and so on . The only defense for executive term limits is that the electorate needs to be protected against itself , an argument which , if true , would mean that democracy was seriously flawed and would work much less well than it seems to . Of course , since the passage of the 22nd Amendment in 1951 , there is a two-term limit on the presidency , and 29 of the 50 states have some kind of term limit on the governor . -LRB- Seven of these limits have been introduced since 1960 . -RRB- The origins of these limits may have more to do with competition between legislative and executive branches than with a desire to improve public policy . The 22nd Amendment reflected Congress 's desire to shift the balance of power away from the executive , and notably the desire of a Republican-dominated House and Senate to prevent the rise of another powerful Democratic president like Franklin Roosevelt . To some extent , the current pressures for legislative term limits reflect the reverse desire to shift power away from Congress . From the standpoint of balance of power , it would surely be preferable to repeal the 22nd Amendment . Perhaps the best test of executive term limits is to check whether the states with term limits on the governor have performed better or worse than those without such limits . The answer , if one holds constant geographical region and the level of per capita income in 1960 , is that states with term limits experienced slightly below average growth of per-capita income over the last 30 years but were also a little below average in the fraction of state product that went to state and local government expenditures . Not surprisingly , the main message is that executive term limits are not an important determinant of economic growth or state spending . Executive term limits are therefore a bad idea , but one should not expect vastly better performance at the state or national level from the elimination of these restrictions . Legislative term limits are less clear-cut and it is possible to build a respectable case that favors such limits . But it is unrealistic to think that the enactment of these limits would lead to great improvements in the functioning of government and hence , in the performance of the economy . -- Mr. Barro , a professor at Harvard , is a Wall Street Journal contributing editor .
extractive_keyphrases: legislative term limits executive term limits citizen congress officeholders political process constitutional amendment civil rights amendment political representative electoral control process
abstractive_keyphrases: re-election rate