Abstract
The micro-foundations of current legislative theory have not been developed to a level that leads to a consensus among the leading scholars in the field. Therefore, current legislative theory is still a developing field. By discussing the past history of this theory, and by parsing out some of the common un-reconciled issues in the theory, we can look at the areas that need to be addressed in future study. This study is an attempt to explore the impact of the exogenous shocks of the September 11th Attacks and the California Recall Election on the politics of California with regards to legislation allowing undocumented workers to apply for and receive a valid driver’s license. This case provides and interesting and wide-ranging set of issues that seem to be causing different interpretations and explanations by the scholars in the field of legislative theory. Thus, by using this case, we can explore how well these various explanations of legislative theory deal with this case, and conclude that before the field of legislative theory can reach a consensus, the issues of preference generation, posturing, symbolic voting, party effects, and salience need to be further addressed.