What does the legislative session and the law of thermodynamics have in common? This answer is easy, they begin with some order and move toward disorder. This is called entropy, “content that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.” It’s origin is taken from the Greek word transformation.

Legislative sessions begin with bold declarations and hopefulness expressed in the State of the State, State of the Judiciary and other declarations. Then the peoples work begins in the legislative committees where variables are added and complexity increases. At this point, legislators are asked to choose between friends on opposite ends of the same neighborhood block. The session passes, day by day, some slow, some fast. Order decreases as indecision rises. The ability to find a solution paralyzes and the ability to even work slows, sometimes to a halt. That is when leadership narrows the possibilities to a manageable few, wins a few issues and likely throws up its hands on others, and typically succumbs to the priorities of the executive branch because they have the only remaining potential energy left in the veto pen.

I do think the second law of thermodynamics and the legislative process are similar. If so, it should be measured. But how? Can we measure the disorder of a subsystem or energy unavailable to do work in the legislature as thought about in the second law of physics? One formula for entropy is expressed as: S = k*ln(W). There are many other expressions of this law. I do think legislative entropy has a few debatable variables. Here’s a first stab at it:

Legislative Entropy: LE
# Legislative Committees: lc
# Legislative Bills: lb
# days of session: d
Pressure towards agonistic expression: ae
Remaining hospitality budgets: rhb

LE = (lb/lc) +(17-d) / ae / rhb

This hypothesis seems solid, but more research, experiment, and data will build a better conclusion. This seems like something that should be continued...