Balancing Power: Committee System Autonomy and Legislative Organization

Abstract

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.

Informative Committees and Legislative Performance in the American States

“…Various efforts have been made to examine different aspects of the information theory (e.g., Battista 2004Battista , 2009Hamm, Hedlund, and Post 2011;Martorano 2006;Overby and Kazee 2000;Overby, Kazee, and Prince 2004;Prince and Overby 2005). For instance, to identify the presence of informative committees, 1 Overby, Kazee, and Prince (2004) examine policy positioning of committees relative to their host legislatures in 45 state lower chambers.…”

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

“…This concept has been used in studies of the US Congress and state legislatures (Deering, 1982;Martorano, 2006) and parliaments outside the US (Atkinson & Nossal, 1980). Committee autonomy refers to the degree to which decision-making in committees is influenced by members and outsiders (Fenno, 1966).…”

“…Similar to Martorano (2006), this study analyses committee systems using the concept of committee autonomy. This concept has been used in studies of the US Congress and state legislatures (Deering, 1982;Martorano, 2006) and parliaments outside the US (Atkinson & Nossal, 1980).…”

“…Martorano (2006) operationalises the concept of committee autonomy by an additive index of 11 procedures. This is also taken into consideration in the study at hand.…”

“…Large-n comparative studies of formal committee characteristics are scarce. A study on 24 US state legislative lower houses was provided by Martorano (2006), who applied the predictions of distributive, informational and partisan theories to the study of formal committee characteristics. Her analysis of committee autonomy provides support for the informational perspective.…”