Innovative Legislatures: An Oxymoron or a Tautology?

by Karl Kurtz

Brian Weberg began his post from NCSL's Senior Management Leadership Seminar yesterday with, "Innovative state legislatures.  An oxymoron some might say."  In doing so he was drawing on a common image of legislatures as stodgy institutions bound by inertia to the status quo and likely to make only incremental changes in public policy.  But as I sat through the day-long session with Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink, I had just the opposite thought: Legislatures meet the very definition of innovation and therefore are a tautology, not an oxymoron.  Let me explain.

Lisa and futurethink define innovation as "something new, useful, and valuable for an organization and its constituents."  She defines four elements of a framework for innovation:

1. Ideas: Develop a stream of original ideas tied to real business needs.
2. Strategy: Set a foundation that defines innovation objectives and mobilizes effort.
3. Process: Create a streamlined and flexible approach to shepherd innovative ideas to market.
4. Climate: Build a thriving work environment that drives innovative behavior across the organization.

Let's think about these four elements in the context of the American system of representative democracy.  First, ideas: Legislatures are in the business of public policy ideas far more than any other institution or organization that I can think of.  Ideas take the shape of bills--hundreds (even thousands in some states) of them every year.  Legislators get these ideas by listening to their constituents, trying to help their local communities or the state as a whole solve problems, or hearing from the many legitimate, often conflicting, interests that come before them in the form of lobbyists.

The strategy part of legislative innovation is the responsibility of legislative party leaders and the chief executive, whether president or governor.  Both the last election campaign in which parties and candidates made promises and the next political campaign to come play a role in shaping the strategies.  Some of the leaders who have the responsibility for strategy do it better than others, and their efforts are not always coherent.  But the strategy element is always there.

The process of shaping these ideas--winnowing the good from the bad, improving them as they move through the process, and negotiating differences of opinion--is where legislatures spend the bulk of their time.  It's what committee deliberations, floor debate and compromises between political parties, two different chambers and the executive and legislature are all about.  The process may not be pretty (it's certainly not "streamlined"); in fact, it's downright messy.  But that's because our representative institutions are confronted with a huge amount of disagreement in our society--far more than what a private corporation experiences.  And in a highly public, democratic process legislatures have an obligation to listen to all sides of the story, deliberate on the merits of an issue and negotiate legitimate conflicting interests.

As for the climate portion of the framework, the legislature's work environment is built on the idea that every member is competing to get his or her new ideas heard and brought to the marketplace.  From this standpoint innovation is the pervasive climate of a legislature.

Where legislatures have problems with this innovation framework is in some of the details: Are the ideas sufficiently tied to "real business needs?"  Are strategies built on "a foundation [of]...innovation objectives?"  Is the process "streamlined and flexible?"  Does the climate truly reward "innovative behavior across the organization?" 

But I would argue that we tend to sell legislatures far too short as engines of innovation in society.  They are far closer to the futurethink model of innovation than we give them credit for.  It's not by accident that NCSL uses the tagline "the forum for America's ideas."  Ideas are what legislatures are all about, and our representative institutions provide the strategies, process and climate in which the public's differing points of view are negotiated and resolved.

"Legislative innovation" an oxymoron?  No, a tautology.

Comments

[lbodell]

Couldn't agree more with your excellent assessment!

[Tim Rice]

OK, I've read through this twice now, and I think I can agree with you. It takes some getting used to, thinking of legislatures as innovative. They seem to be such plodding beasts and are indeed designed as such. But they are a place where ideas are brought together and processed and some ushered to fruition. No doubt my well-developed skepticism and cynicism have colored my vision. And there's still the old adage about no one wanting to actually know how sausage is made....