The dynamics of committee outliers: Evidence from the house of representatives, 1951–90

In this study, we enter the on‐going debate on committee outliers by addressing two important points. First, we dispute the conventional wisdom that committee outliers are best identified and evaluated using traditional tests of statistical significance. Contesting the appropriateness of such tests, we contend that any observed difference between chamber behaviour and floor behaviour may be substantively significant and use raw mean differences between Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores to examine differences between the full House of Representatives and its committees. Second, we attempt to integrate the committee outlier literature into the broader literature on the historical development of the House by using data from 20 Congresses over four decades (1951–90). This longitudinal analysis indicates that there have been interesting dynamic changes in the prevalence of committee outliers across time and committee types in patterns that are consistent with both the principal‐agent framework and the more general literature on congressional change and reform. Many of these important changes are not obvious when relying solely on traditional tests of statistical significance to examine committee outliers.     

Self‐selection or Socialization? A Dynamic Analysis of Committee Member Preferences

Theories on committee power assert that legislators self‐select to committees and therefore have preferences regarding the policy issues under the committees' jurisdictions that differ from the preferences of noncommittee members. I argue that preference outliers may be shaped both by processes of self‐selection and by endogenous processes within committees. Contrary to previous examinations of committee member preferences, the study utilizes a dynamic approach to examine the development of preferences over time in order to separate self‐selection from endogenous processes. Analyzing the development in the spending preferences of 859 Danish local politicians over three different election periods, I find that politicians increasingly prefer spending on their committees' jurisdictions over time, but their preferences do not change to the same extent on policy issues beyond their committees' jurisdictions. The findings point to the importance of endogenous processes in committees. Hence, committees may be outliers for very different reasons than those proposed by mainstream theory.     

Committee autonomy in parliamentary systems – coalition logic or congressional rationales?

Large-n comparative research on committee structures in legislatures is rare. This paper uses newly collected data to analyse committee structures across 30 legislatures of parliamentary systems which possess strong parliamentary party groups. It seeks to explain committee autonomy which reflects the degree to which committees are able to carry out their tasks independently. The variation in autonomy is accounted for by contrasting the ‘keeping tabs on coalition partners’ perspective with the congressional theories of legislative organisation (referred to as distributional, informational, and partisan theories). The results support the informational and the keeping tabs perspective. More autonomous committees tend to be found in legislatures with a relatively high workload and frequent coalition governments. For the ongoing discussion about the applicability of the congressional theories outside the US, this study provides support for the usefulness of the US theories in parliamentary systems of government.     

Due North? Do American Theories of Legislative Committees Apply to Canada?

Several theories of legislative organisation have been proposed to explain committee selection in American legislatures, but do these theories travel outside the United States? This paper tests whether these theories apply to data from the Canadian House of Commons. It was found that the distributive and partisan models of legislative organisation explain committee composition in Canada. In many cases, committees in the House of Commons are made up of preference outliers. As predicted by partisan models, it was also found that the governing party stacks committees with its members, but this is conditional upon the strength of the governing party.     

Circumventing Legislative Committees: The US Senate

Committees have been established to improve legislation and make expert recommendations. However, many bills do not appear in committees, and how they reach the Senate floor varies in style and strategy. We develop and test expectations for when, as well as how, bills bypass Senate committee proceedings. The procedures legislators use to circumvent committees and what makes committee bypassing more probable are explored. The findings clearly demonstrate that bills introduced by ideologically extreme minority-party members are more likely to bypass committees. We also show a clear shift in the procedural choices senators make as the Senate becomes increasingly polarized. This article highlights the procedural choices members make, how these choices produce differing outcomes, and suggests evidence of positive agenda power for individual minority-party senators.     

Balancing Power: Committee System Autonomy and Legislative Organization

The most recent explanations for the existence of committee systems in legislative chambers have posited that committees are the agents of one of three very different principal actors: (1) individual members (distributive theory), (2) the full chamber (informational theory), or (3) the major political party (partisan theory). In addition to defining and operationalizing the concept of institutional committee system autonomy, I put forth and test several hypotheses linking these three explanations to committee system autonomy. In the end, the results show empirical support for the informational theory over the distributive and partisan theories.     

Work activity of persons working as members of advisory committees established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Final rule

We are revising our disability regulations under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act to establish a new, special rule that affects individuals who are receiving payments or providing services as members or consultants of a committee, board, commission, council or similar group established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Under this special rule, we will not count any earnings an individual is receiving from serving as a member or consultant of a FACA advisory committee when we determine if the individual is engaging in substantial gainful activity under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act). In addition, we will not evaluate any of the services the individual is providing as a member or consultant of the FACA advisory committee when determining if the individual has engaged in substantial gainful activity under titles II and XVI of the Act. Based on our experience with FACA advisory committees and the frequency and level of activity required by these committees, we believe that performance of activity on these committees does not demonstrate the ability to perform substantial gainful activity. We believe this to be consistent with Congress's view, as it has recognized in creating the Ticket to Work advisory committee, for example, that current disability beneficiaries should be considered for membership. This also will encourage individuals with disabilities to serve on FACA advisory committees, thereby providing the benefit of their unique perspective on policies and programs to the Federal Government.     

Political Parties and the Representativeness Of Legislative Committees

What role do parties play in determining which interests committees represent? In this article, I compare committee organization and representativeness in Nebraska's nonpartisan legislature with those in the partisan senates of Kansas and Iowa. I demonstrate that when parties do not organize legislative conflict, committees are less representative of the full chamber. I argue, however, that committee representativeness does not necessarily result from parties actively working to create representative committees. Rather, when legislative conflict has a definitive partisan structure and the committees are always controlled by the majority party, representative committees will result as a simple by‐product of the partisan structure and organization.     

Pre-Appointment Scrutiny Hearings in the British House of Commons: All Bark,or Some Bite?

In 2007 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed that House of Commons committees should start holding pre-appointment hearings for key public appointments. This was initially welcomed by MPs, who viewed it as an important step towards limiting executive power and strengthening the role of parliament. However, following the appointment of the Children's Commissioner against the advice of the relevant select committee, many MPs became disillusioned with the hearings. Based on extensive interviews with those involved in the appointments process, this article argues that while committees may lack formal veto power over appointments, they do have considerable influence. Most candidates said they would not have taken up their appointment against the advice of the select committee. So pre-appointment hearings should not be dismissed as pointless, but rather seen as an important mechanism through which committees can exert influence over public appointments. This tells us two important things about the powers of legislatures. First, it confirms that legislative influence is far more subtle than the simple exercise of veto powers, as scholars have long noted. But second, it also demonstrates that even the most central actors in the process (the MPs) may not appreciate this fact.     

Knowledge,Expertise, and Committee Power in the Contemporary Congress

Scholars, practitioners, and observers typically portray committee influence as rooted in traditional congressional processes and practices, which are thought to provide committees with powerful opportunities to block and shape legislative proposals. The erosion of regular order processes suggests these traditional processes cannot underlie committee power in the contemporary Congress. Drawing on a mixed‐methods approach of interviews with congressional staff and an original data set of every amendment offered on the floor of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, I find that absent these traditional process norms, committees in the contemporary Congress can rely on their specialized knowledge and expertise to influence the behavior of their colleagues and shape the legislation that passes.     

Informative Committees and Legislative Performance in the American States

The information theory of legislative organization suggests that legislative committees are designed to provide their parent chamber with necessary information to legislate. Despite empirical evidence for various aspects of the theory, we have limited knowledge of committees’ influence on legislative outputs. I argue that informative committees are more than information providers, that they also substantively impact legislative outcomes. With supportive evidence from the US state legislatures, this article shows that the presence of an informative committee system not only lowers the number of bills introduced to the legislature but also enhances the chamber's efficiency in transforming legislative proposals into laws.     

The Investigative Study Role of Canada's House Committees: Expectations Met?

Canada's House of Commons committee system, established to enhance the effectiveness of parliament, has operated in approximately its present form since 1986. However, information about what it accomplishes remains limited. This article focuses on the investigative/policy studies of committees. A questionnaire given to former cabinet ministers and analysis of previously unexplored committee data support the view that these studies have achieved a modest influence on governments, well short of expectations held in the mid-1980s. Furthermore, their influence is as a source of political intelligence more than the collaborative policy work and technical expertise given central importance by creators of the system. This supports scepticism about the influence achieved by the all-party agreement that continues to be reflected in about 70 per cent of committee reports, and may also be reflected in the written responses to committee reports by governments, an estimated 50 per cent of which are ambiguous. Nevertheless, the original vision reflected in the committees persists among many Canadian advocates of parliamentary reform.     

Party Effects in State Legislative Committees

Legislative scholars have theorized about the role of committees and whether they are, or are not, tools of the majority party. We look to the states to gain more empirical leverage on this question, using a regression discontinuity approach and novel data from all state committees between 1996 and 2014. We estimate that majority‐party status produces an 8.5 percentage point bonus in committee seats and a substantial ideological shift in the direction of the majority party. Additionally, we leverage a surprisingly frequent, but as if random occurrence in state legislatures—tied chambers—to identify majority‐party effects, finding similar support for partisan committees. We also examine whether the extent of committee partisanship is conditional on party polarization or legislative professionalism, but we find that it is not. Our results demonstrate that parties create nonrepresentative committees across legislatures to pursue their outlying policy preferences.     

Bicameralism and Minority-Party Influence on Legislative Development: Evidence from House Standing Committee Votes

The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority-party-dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority-party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority-party support in House committees predicts House and Senate passage. During unified party control of the chambers, an increase in Senate majority-party seats results in lower minority-party support for the legislation in the House committee, while during divided party control of Congress, the House majority passes more extreme bills as the chambers polarize. Even in the majority-party-dominated House, the minority’s preferences are incorporated into legislation, and the Senate’s institutional rules moderate bills to a significant degree.     

Low-cost policy specialisation,district characteristics and gender. Patterns of committee assignment in Romania

ABSTRACT

Committee assignment can influence the efficiency of legislative work, the success of parties in reaching their policy goals and even the electoral fates of individual legislators. Nevertheless, little is known about this process in the legislatures established in the Central and Eastern European democracies. These legislatures faced severe informational, electoral and partisan challenges which raised the stakes of efficient committee-seat allocation. Simultaneously, most parliaments in the region were endowed with strong committees. The Romanian Parliament is representative for this combination of conditions. Drawing on a dataset that covers the careers, sector knowledge, partisan and electoral attributes of all the members serving in five terms of the Chamber of Deputies the article shows that committee assignment is used to facilitate low-cost policy specialisation, district characteristics matter for gaining seats in committees with distributive potentials, while female legislators are confined to committees dealing with feminised policy areas.     

董事会委员会与公司治理

董事会承担公司的重大决策和监督经理层的角色,但董事会作为会议体机关存在缺陷。董事会委员会的设立可以弥补董事会的缺陷,并有利于独立董事发挥作用。委员会的产生和权力的立法模式不同,美国的模式值得借鉴。典型的董事会委员会包括提名、薪酬和审计委员会,他们在实践中发挥重要作用。我国应当将委员会纳入公司法中,同时委员会制度以及公司治理的完善需要公司法和其他法律、证券交易所规则、公司治理准则、公司章程的协同努力。     

Improving the Relevance of Parliamentary Institutions: An Examination of Legislative Pre-budget Consultations in British Columbia

This study examines the influence of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in the budgetary process in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The mandate of this committee is to conduct pre-budget consultations every year to seek the opinion of the population on the content of the next provincial budget. Many have recommended increasing use of legislative committees to bring back relevance to parliamentary institutions in Canada. It is believed that legislative committees provide an environment that is less conducive to partisan confrontations and can help in building the policy expertise of parliamentarians. Using interviews with committee members and a survey among participants in pre-budget consultations, this was found to be the case. The main finding points to the potential of legislative committees in performing a representative function because they can put forward the views of the public as part of the budgetary process.     

Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures

Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simple model of committee informativeness can predict the informativeness of the U.S. House's committees.     

A Lab Experiment on Committee Hearings: Preferences,Power, and a Quest for Information

In principle, committees hold hearings to gather and provide information to their principals, but some hearings are characterized as political showcases. This article investigates conditions that moderate committee members' incentives to hold an informative hearing by presenting a game‐theoretic model and a lab experiment. Specifically, it studies when committees hold hearings and which types of hearing they hold by varying policy preferences of committee members and the principal and political gains from posturing. Findings provide new insights to how preferences and power distribution affect individuals' incentives to be informed when they make decisions as members of a committee in many contexts.     

Committee Property Rights,Executive Dominance,and Political Parties in Latin American Legislatures

Motivated by theories of congressional committees in the US context, and building on the growing body of work focusing on the institutional features of legislatures in Latin American presidential systems, this paper explores two previously overlooked aspects of committee politics. Using comparative data from three Latin American countries, it examines the strategic and jurisdictional dynamics in which chamber leaders assign bills to committees and then investigate the factors affecting presidential and partisan success within committees. In general, the authors find that committees have strong property rights and that characteristics of both bills and bill initiators strongly influence the survival of legislation in committee. The results shed light on the effects of institutional design on the policy process in presidential systems.