Scrutiny in English Local Government and the Role of Councillors

Overview and Scrutiny Committees were introduced in England and Wales in the Local Government Act 2000 that ended the role the full council and its committees as the locus of decision‐making for most local authorities. Overview and scrutiny committees composed of councillors not on small decision‐making executives were tasked with holding these to account. The performance of scrutiny committees is variable. Generally they work best where they concentrate on reviews of policy and practice, with recommendations following from well‐researched reports. The paper reviews the difficulties which arise when scrutiny committees endeavour to hold powerful executives to account, and suggests that to strengthen this new legislation is required, in particular to institutionalise scrutiny committees as agencies of the full council, the representative body for the area, comparable to the way in which the select committees at Westminster are the agencies of the Parliament.     

CHANGING PRACTICES AND CONCEPTIONS OF THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN URBAN GOVERNMENT: THE GREATER BRISBANE EXPERIENCE

Abstract: Since the commencement of the Greater Brisbane scheme in 1925, a number of different ways of organising the executive function have been provided for in the legislation. These have included a mayor elected at large as chief executive officer; an appointed city manager model, which was never activated; a quasi-cabinet model, with the mayor being elected by the council rather than at large; a "weak" collective executive committee, akin to the early 20th century "board of control" arrangements in Canada, the mayor being elected at large and standing committees of council possessing substantial policy formulation powers; a stronger collective executive in theory, alongside which something akin to the American "strong mayor with chief administrative officer" model operated in practice; a strong collective executive, with the mayor once again elected indirectly, and weak standing committees of aldermen retained; a return to something like the original mayor-as-CEO arrangement; and finally, a strengthened version of the initial "mayor-as-CEO with chief administrative officer" model. These changes are traced chronologically and a general assessment is offered in conclusion.     

Beyond committees: parliamentary oversight of coalition government in Britain

Abstract

A legislature’s ability to engage in oversight of the executive is believed to derive largely from its committee system. For example, powerful parliamentary committees are considered a necessary condition for the legislature to help police policy compromises between parties in multiparty government. But can other parliamentary instruments perform this role? This article suggests parliamentary questions as an alternative parliamentary vehicle for coalition parties to monitor their partners. Questions force ministers to reveal information concerning their legislative and extra-legislative activities, providing coalition members unique insights into their partners’ behaviour. In order to test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010?2015 coalition. As expected, government MPs ask more questions as the divisiveness of a policy area increases. Legislatures conventionally considered weak due to the lack of strong committees may nevertheless play an important oversight role through other parliamentary devices, including helping to police the implementation of coalition agreements.     

Before There Was Enron,There Was Orange County: A Study of Local Government Financial‐Oversight Committees

Recent financial scandals in some of America's largest corporations have prompted popular speculation that a similar crisis may occur within the public sector and, therefore, that government and nonprofit organizations should be required to adopt financial oversight practices similar to those that are mandated of publicly‐traded corporations in the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002. One of those mandated practices—the use of financial‐oversight committees—is already a common practice in public organizations, though little is known about its effectiveness. This study uses a national sample of local governments to examine whether financial‐oversight committees improve financial control and strengthen stakeholder confidence in financial reporting. The findings provide preliminary support for the use of financial‐oversight committees as an effective tool to improve financial accountability in local government.     

Committee jurisdiction, congressional behavior and policy outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why (a) senior members, and junior members in safe seats, are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; (b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point for jurisdictional gains; (c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress.     

Committee bias in legislatures with a high degree of party cohesion: Evidence from Danish municipalities

The institution of committees in democratic legislatures has for years been said to bias policy making because the preferences of committee members differ from, and are more alike than, those of other legislators due to self‐selection to the committees. Based on an analysis of United States Senate committees, Hall and Grofman suggested in 1990 that the preferences of committee members primarily diverge from, and are more alike than, those of non‐committee members on policy issues that are salient to constituencies or at least to an easily definable segment of constituencies. This article argues that the logic of Hall and Grofman should in fact be reversed in legislatures characterised by highly cohesive parties. Accordingly, the main hypothesis is that in such legislatures the preferences of committee members are more likely to be alike than those of non‐committee members in the committees that work with policy issues of less salience to constituencies. Using a large‐scale comparative design comprising data collected in 2008 on the spending preferences of 1,348 Danish local politicians, evidence is found supporting this hypothesis. This finding points to the importance of considering the role of parties when assessing committee bias.     

Influencing the Bureaucracy: The Irony of Congressional Oversight

Does the president or Congress have more influence over policymaking by the bureaucracy? Despite a wealth of theoretical guidance, progress on this important question has proven elusive due to competing theoretical predictions and severe difficulties in measuring agency influence and oversight. We use a survey of federal executives to assess political influence, congressional oversight, and the policy preferences of agencies, committees, and the president on a comparable scale. Analyzing variation in political influence across and within agencies reveals that Congress is less influential relative to the White House when more committees are involved. While increasing the number of involved committees may maximize the electoral benefits for members, it may also undercut the ability of Congress as an institution to collectively respond to the actions of the presidency or the bureaucracy.     

Legislative committees as loyalty-generating institutions

The current debate over models of self-selection in Congress — whether Congressmen by-and-large find themselves on committees which most closely correspond to their constituents' interests — has implications for theories of Congressional organization. Building on recent findings which question a categorical self-selection process, in this paper we present a theory of committee function based on loyalty to party leaders. As a rationale for leadership privilege, and to provide context for our argument, we first present a theoretical framework based on a modified model of cooperation. We then focus on certain specifics of our leadership theory; that rank-and-file members vote leadership interests in exchange for leader support in gaining choice committee assignments and aid in passing legislation. This leads to predictions about voting patterns across committees. Static tests of these relations are performed, as well as those incorporating changes in voting patterns with seniority.     

THE POLITICS OF LEGISLATIVE CURTAILMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE RULEMAKING: OBSTACLES TO POLICE-PATROL OVERSIGHT

State Administrative Procedure Acts (APAs), like their federal counterpart, attempt to even the odds that citizens’rights will be protected as administrative agencies exercise quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. North Carolina is one of several states which has recently attempted to constrain agency power in rulemaking and complaint adjudication. This is a case study of policy outcomes attained by the North Carolina General Assembly in its 1985 revision of the state's APA. Why did some state legislators’efforts to assume stricter oversight over administrative rulemaking fall far short of the kind of control and accountability they aimed for? We explore three types of obstacles to APA reform encountered in North Carolina. Each is relevant to other states. First, direct surveillance or “police-patrol” techniques of legislative oversight impose undesirable political costs on legislators. Second, there is an absence of (or categorical precedence is against) the adoption of such techniques. Third, executive-legislative branch conflict and complex separation of powers issues arise when state legislatures attempt to curtail administrative rulemaking in significantly new and restrictive ways.     

The British experience with intelligence accountability

This article assesses the British experience with intelligence accountability through an analysis of the principal mechanism that exists to provide for it – the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. It discusses the context within which oversight proposals emerged, the debate surrounding the nature of the new oversight body, and assesses the performance of the Committee over the first decade of its existence. It concludes that while the Committee has secured some important advances with regard to the accountability of the intelligence and security services, there are nevertheless significant limitations and weaknesses, many of which were evident in the Committee's 2003 investigation and report into pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMD. In this context, the debate as to whether the oversight body should have select committee status, discussed at length in the article, remains highly relevant.     

Public critic or secretive monitor: party objectives and legislative oversight of the military in Canada

Abstract

This paper analyses how democratic legislatures oversee the military, using Canada as a case. The paper argues that the tendency to engage in intrusive oversight versus reactive oversight is shaped by institutional structures and party preferences. Canadian institutional structures discourage parliamentary defence committees from engaging in intrusive oversight of the armed forces to achieve policy influence, and encourage opposition parties to focus on reactive oversight efforts that complement their vote-seeking preferences. Vote-seeking, the paper argues, incentivises opposition parties to be public critics of the government’s handling of military affairs, rather than informed but secretive monitors of the armed forces. The paper then addresses a key case where the opposition was able to use an exceptional constitutional power of the House of Commons to force the executive to disclose classified information regarding the military: detainee transfers by the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan. This case highlights the trade-offs that parliamentarians face when they demand information to perform more intrusive oversight of the armed forces. This suggests that party preferences are a significant, yet understudied, aspect of how legislatures vary in their oversight of the military.     

Committee characteristics and re-election margins: An empirical investigation of the US House

Models of legislative organization frequently begin with the premise that the committee system serves the re-election interests of incumbent legislators. Attempts to substantiate this notion empirically have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the notion lives on, nourished by a stylized characterization of the committee system. In the standard model committees have jurisdictional monopolies over specialized policy areas and legislators gravitate toward those committees that deal most closely with the policy concerns of their constituents. Contrary to this simplifying characterization, the degree of monopoly control and policy specialization varies across standing committees in the us congress. Some committees have wide jurisdictions and attract members with diverse policy preferences. Jurisdictional overlap and resulting turf battles are common aspects of congressional sessions. We suggest here that these realities warrant a re-opening of the empirical investigation into the link between electoral success and committee characteristics. Our findings indicate that assignment to a committee with a relatively high degree of monopoly control increases a member's vote share, and that assignment to a narrowly focused (specialized) committee does not.     

The challenge of accountability in complex regulatory networks: The case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

A puzzle that faces public administrators within regulatory governance networks is how to balance the need for democratic accountability while increasingly facing demands from elected officials to optimize oversight of industry by utilizing the expertise of the private sector in developing risk‐based standards for compliance. The shift from traditional command and control oversight to process oriented regulatory regimes has been most pronounced in highly complex industries, such as aviation and deepwater oil drilling, where the intricate and technical nature of operations necessitates risk‐based regulatory networks based largely on voluntary compliance with mutually agreed upon standards. The question addressed in this paper is how the shift to process oriented regimes affects the trade‐offs between democratic, market, and administrative accountability frames, and what factors determine the dominant accountability frame within the network. Using post‐incident document analysis, this paper provides a case study of regulatory oversight of the deepwater oil drilling industry prior to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, to explore how the shift to a more networked risk‐based regulatory regime affects the trade‐offs and dominant accountability frames within the network. The results of this study indicate that a reliance on market‐based accountability mechanisms, along with the lack of a fully implemented process‐oriented regulatory regime, led to the largest oil spill in US history.     

Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Is the Solution Part of the Problem?

After presenting evidence that the current system of congressional oversight of intelligence is failing, this article analyzes how the system has been undermined by a toxic combination of problems: the intelligence committees' inherent informational disadvantage in relation to the executive branch, the jurisdictional morass in which the committees must operate and their own internecine partisanship. The article discusses a range of specific changes that could be made, but concludes that the critical ingredient in strengthening the oversight system is to emphasize the development of strong, nonpartisan committee leadership.     

The analysis of Scottish Parliament committee influence: Beyond capacity and structure in comparing West European legislatures

Abstract.  The Scottish Parliament was set up in the hope that strong committees would foster consensus, with an emphasis on reducing partisanship and adopting a pragmatic approach to the detailed study of draft legislation. However, few empirical studies exist that assess the value of the committee process. This flaw is common within the West European literature. The comparative literature on legislative influence is lacking in detailed empirical studies (in part because of the dominant assumption within the literature that parliaments are peripheral to the policy process). Most studies provide impressionistic discussions of the capacities of committees and the constraints to their effectiveness. They do not follow this through with an analysis of committee 'outputs'. This study of the amendments process in the Scottish Parliament addresses the gap. It uses data from a four-year study of legislative amendments to develop indicators of parliamentary outputs. While the results confirm that the committee system operates at the heart of the 'new politics' in Scotland, further such individual country studies are necessary to supplement much broader comparative analyses.     

Losing out on substance but winning procedurally? The European Parliament and accountability in crisis legislation

Recent studies have found that the European Parliament (EP) had limited substantive influence on the European Union’s response to the European debt crisis. It has been argued that Parliament compensated this loss by expanding its oversight powers over executive bodies in the implementation of crisis legislation. This article systematically assesses the conditions under which the EP has been successful in increasing its account-holding powers, using new data on the accountability provisions included in economic and financial legislation put forward between 2009 and 2014. It is found that Parliament has indeed been more likely to gain oversight powers in crisis legislation. Levels of accountability are also higher in package deals and more salient legislation. The findings here provide a more nuanced picture of Parliament’s inter-institutional gains and losses in recent years and give more insight into the EP’s account-holding role.     

The Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union Committee System

This article investigates both the operation and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union committee system. This vast but rarely studied system is an important site of European governance, exercising an increasing amount of policy responsibility while also providing the essential arenas necessary for supranational problem solving. Despite their contribution to the success of the “European project,” committees are increasingly coming under attack, notably for their lack of democratic credentials. The article employs original empirical research based on interviews and internal documentary evidence to answer a timely question: does the EU committee system strike an appropriate balance between the values of system effectiveness and democratic legitimacy? Following the application of a set of democratic principles to EU committees, the article finds that a poor balance has been struck between effectiveness and democracy. The article concludes with some operational suggestions for improving this balance in the short‐to‐medium term.     

Maximizing Policy Learning in International Committees: An Analysis of the European Open Method of Coordination (OMC) Committees

In the voluminous literature on the European Union's open method of coordination (OMC), no one has hitherto analysed on the basis of scholarly examination the question of what contributes to the learning processes in the OMC committees. On the basis of a questionnaire sent to all participants, this article demonstrates that valuable lessons can be learned about policy learning, in practice and theoretically, by analysing the cooperation in the OMC committees. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework as the starting point of analysis, 15 hypotheses on policy learning are tested. Among other things, it is concluded that in order to maximize policy learning in international committees, empirical data should be made available to committees and provided by sources close to the participants (i.e. the Commission). In addition, the work in the committees should be made prestigious in order to attract well-qualified and engaged participants, and a neutral presidency should be present in order to act as an authoritative persuader.     

A Framework for Reforming the Independence and Accountability of Statutory Officers of Parliament: A Case Study of Victoria

Considerable attention has been given to the independence of auditors-general in the literature. However, there are other officers of parliament who also have roles that may require protection from the excessive use of power by the executive arm of government. In response to the recent Public Accounts and Estimates Committee Inquiry into a Legislative Framework for Victorian Statutory Officers of Parliament, the study compares the enabling legislation of four Victorian officers of parliament in terms of their powers, independence, funding and mandate as well as the accountability mechanisms available to parliament in terms of their appointment, tenure and oversight. The four officers are: the auditor-general; the ombudsman; the regulator-general; and the director of public prosecutions. A number of notable differences in the enabling legislation are identified and reform options for strengthening such legislation are presented.     

Policy‐Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power

In Gilligan and Krehbiel's models of procedural choice in legislatures, a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world. Subsequent work on expertise, delegation, and lobbying has largely followed this approach. In contrast, we develop a model of information as policy valence. We use our model to analyze a procedural choice game, focusing on the effect of transferability, i.e., the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option. We find that when information is transferable, as in Gilligan and Krehbiel's models, closed rules can induce committee specialization. However, when information is policy‐specific, open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization. The reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high‐valence legislation.