Drivers of Successful Energy Bill Enactment in State Legislatures

• In Event: Poster Session: State Politics & Conflict Processes: Violence and Contention by States and Non-State Actors
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: State Politics

Abstract

What drives the successful enactment of energy bills in the United States (US) state legislatures? Out of potential drivers, which one seems most influential? This study evaluates the influence of both bill-level and state-level variables for the passage of a bill to be a law with the focus on the influence of topical differences of each bill. We examined state bills in regard to energy suggested from 2010 to 2020 across all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. We first find, using logistic regression, that bill-level variables, including some topical differences, matters in explaining the probability of enactment of energy bills. Through random forest techniques, next, we could figure out that bill-level drivers are more influential than state-level drivers in general. While the bill regarding the topic ‘renewable energy’ seems most important factor to predict the probability of enactment than others topical variables, the overall difference in importance among them is rather negligible.

Authors

• Hyodong Sohn, University of Colorado Boulder

• Jihoon Yun