What are the three principal functions of legislature?
- Legislature engage in three principal functions: policymaking, representation, and oversight.
1. policymaking includes enacting laws and allocation funds. Legislature deals with issues such as budget shortfalls, health care, higher education, and alternative energy sources. They revise old laws, pass new laws and make changes in spending. Legislators do not have sole control of the state policymaking function; governors, courts, and agencies also determine policy, through executive orders, judicial decisions, and administrative regulations, respectively. But legislatures are the dominant policymaking institutions in state government.
2. legislators are expected to represent their constituents - the people who live in their district - in two ways. They are expected to speak for their constituents in the legislative chamber - to do the will of the public in designing policy solutions.
3. the third function, oversight, is different form the policymaking and representation functions. Concerned that the laws they passed and the funds they allocated frequently did not produce the intended effect, lawmakers began to pay more attention to the performance of the state bureaucracy. Legislatures have adopted a number of methods for checking up on agency implementation and spending. Their oversight role take legislatures into the administrative realm of state government.
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