Oklahoma Politics, Volume 2 (October 1993)

Adkison, Danny M. “Initiative, Courts, and Democracy”, pp. 1-12.

In 1992 Oklahoma’s Supreme Court prevented the submission of an initiative petition to the votes on the grounds that it unconstitutionally limited elective abortions.  Such pre-submission review is examined in light of constitutional, theoretical, and practical arguments.  Several reasons are given for why the Court should adhere to an earlier precedent denying pre-submission review.

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Rosenthal, Cindy “Organizing for State Economic Development: The Case of Oklahoma Futures”, pp. 13-32.

Oklahoma Futures was created by the Oklahoma Legislature as a public-private partnership in 1987 in an effort to redirect state economic development programs and strategies.  This article retraces the history of and political dynamics revolving around Oklahoma Futures and then uses three models to analyze the organization’s development.  The three models of structural development- top-down, diffusion, and structural choice-each provide necessary and useful explanatory insights, but none is totally sufficient.

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Copeland, Gary W., and John David Rausch, Jr. “Sendin’Em Home Early: Oklahoma Legislative Term Limitations”, pp. 33-50.

The drive to enact legislative term limitations has emerged as an enduring political movement in the early 1990s.  However, the phenomenon has changed much since Oklahoma voters approved State Question 632 on September 19, 1990.  Term limit supporters suffered one setback with a defeat in Washington State in 1991, but were overwhelmingly successful in 1992 with approval of term limit initiatives in 14 states.  Now the focus of term limit supporters is on working to enact a constitutional amendment which would limit the tenure of members of Congress from all fifty states.  In being the first state to enact term limits, the Oklahoma experience tells us much about how the term limit phenomenon began and provides a benchmark to judge how much the movement has been transformed.

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Jewell, Malcolm E. “Sources of Support for Legislative Term Limitations in the States”, pp. 51-76.

In the election of 1990 and 1992 the voters in 15 states approved initiatives imposing term limits on the state legislatures, by margins ranging from 77 to 52 percent.  The purpose of this paper is to explain why the term limit initiatives passed and what factors may have caused variations among the states in the level of support.  Among the factors considered are the characteristics of the legislatures and the strictness of the proposed limitations, as well as several aspects of the campaigns: the sources of support from within or outside the state, sources of opposition, the role of media, and differences in opinion and voting patterns of various groups in the state.  The most important factor appears to have been how extensive an effort was made by opponents of term limitations.

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McCoy, Melanie, and Corie Delashaw “Tribal Elections: An Exploratory Study of the Chickasaw Nation”, pp. 77-90.

This is a preliminary study of the Chickasaw Nation’s tribal elections for the legislature and governor in 1990.  An important historical issue has been the controversy between the legislative branch and the executive branch over power within the nation.  The focus here is whether this controversy had a significant impact on modern tribal elections.

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