scholarly journals Do Better Committee Assignments Meaningfully Benefit Legislators? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in the Arkansas State Legislature

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Broockman ◽  
Daniel M. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Randomized Experiment ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Committee Assignment ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
Existing Data

AbstractA large literature argues that the committee assignment process plays an important role in shaping legislative politics because some committees provide legislators with substantial benefits. However, evaluating the degree to which legislators benefit from winning their preferred assignments has been challenging with existing data. This paper sheds light on the benefits legislators accrue from winning their preferred committee assignments by exploiting rules in Arkansas’ state legislature, where legislators select their own committee assignments in a randomized order. The natural experiment indicates that legislators reap at most limited rewards from winning their preferred assignments. These results potentially raise questions about the robustness of widely held assumptions in literatures on party discipline and legislative organization.

The Committee System in State Legislatures

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Lysle Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Conference Committee ◽  
Committee Assignments

Every state legislature in the United States is divided into a considerable number of standing committees. In spite of obvious advantages which seem to render it indispensable, the development of the committee system has been attended by great evils. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that with the committee system the worst evils connected with legislative organization and procedure are intimately associated.It is the chief purpose of this paper to point out the principal weaknesses or defects of the committee system in connection with state legislatures generally, and particularly the defects which have appeared in the practical operation of the system in the Illinois legislature; and at the same time to discuss certain proposals designed to remedy these defects.These weaknesses and proposed remedies will be taken up in the following order:I. Defects in the methods of making committee assignments.II. Defects due to the number of standing committees.III. Defects due to the size of committees.IV. Defects due to the lack of a definite and fixed schedule of committee meetings.V. Defects due to the lack of publicity and to the irresponsibility surrounding committee proceedings.VI. Defects due to the insufficient control of each house over its committees.VII. Defects peculiar to the committee on rules and the conference committee.

Electoral incentives, party discipline, and legislative organization: manipulating legislative committees to win elections and maintain party unity

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naofumi Fujimura
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
Japanese Diet

Political parties are often faced with seemingly opposing goals when trying to secure members’ reelection and maintain party unity. On one hand, a party needs to fulfill members’ diverse electoral needs for their reelection, and on the other hand, the party must force members to vote in unison according to party lines for collective decisions. How does a party influence its members to take unified action while meeting their individual electoral needs? Through an analysis of the Japanese Diet, this study argues that parties attempt to achieve the reelection of their members and maintain party unity by manipulating legislative committee assignments and deliberations. In particular, the study demonstrates that a party shapes committees in a different way according to policy areas over which committees have jurisdiction. A party tends to accept its members’ requests for affiliation and allow their self-management in committees concerned with particularistic benefits so that they can deliver specific benefits to each electoral district. In addition, a party tends to assign members who have average policy positions in the party to committees concerned with general benefits to make policies that satisfy many constituencies.

scholarly journals Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan N. Katz ◽  
Brian R. Sala
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Connection ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Committee Assignment ◽  
Committee Assignments

Most scholars agree that members of Congress are strongly motivated by their desire for reelection. This assumption implies that members of Congress adopt institutions, rules, and norms of behavior in part to serve their electoral interests. Direct tests of the electoral connection are rare, however, because significant, exogenous changes in the electoral environment are difficult to identify. We develop and test an electoral rationale for the norm of committee assignment “property rights.” We examine committee tenure patterns before and after a major, exogenous change in the electoral system—the states' rapid adoption of Australian ballot laws in the early 1890s. The ballot changes, we argue, induced new “personal vote” electoral incentives, which contributed to the adoption of “modern” congressional institutions such as property rights to committee assignments. We demonstrate a marked increase in assignment stability after 1892, by which time a majority of states had put the new ballot laws into force, and earlier than previous studies have suggested.

scholarly journals Making Sense of an Unstable Legislature: Committee Assignments in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, 1946–2001

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-64
Author(s):  
Silvina Lilian Danesi ◽  
Ludovic Rheault
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
Chamber Of Deputies

Latin American legislatures have gone largely unstudied, with the functioning of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies prior to the 1980s being an entirely unexplored subject. This paper fills that gap by examining the organization of the Chamber, with particular focus on its standing committee system from 1946 to 2001. We assess the portability of two U.S.-based theoretical approaches to legislative organization by applying them to committee assignments. An original data set of Argentine deputies was constructed and a way of measuring political power in committees was devised for this study. Despite weak democratic governments, military interventions, and changes to the electoral system, we find that ruling parties have consistently influenced the committee system, shaping its structure and securing an over-proportion of their deputies in key committee positions. These results support the applicability of the U.S. originated Cartel Theory of legislative organization to understanding and studying legislatures outside that country.

The Committee Assignment Process and the Conditional Nature of Committee Bias

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1149-1166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Hall ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Work Groups ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Committee Assignment ◽  
Legislative Structure

The view that congressional committees tend to be biased subsets of their parent chambers provides the foundations for a substantial body of theoretical literature on distributive politics and legislative structure. More recent revisionist work suggests that committees composed of preference outliers are in fact rare. We reject the categorical account of preference outliers a priori and elaborate conditions under which committees should be unrepresentative of their parent chambers. We argue that the most widely available and frequently used data—floor roll call votes—are inappropriate to the task of assessing outlier predictions in any form. Finally, we conduct a differentiated set of hypothesis tests within one policy jurisdiction to illustrate the characteristics of evidence and analysis necessary to evaluate alternative theoretical accounts of legislative organization. The appearance of policy-relevant biases in congressional work groups, we conclude, is not so much rare as it is conditional, and we suggest several conditions on which future models of legislative organization should build.

Who brings home the pork? Parties and the role of localness in committee assignments in mixed-member proportional systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 488-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Gschwend ◽  
Thomas Zittel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Self Selection ◽  
Rich Data ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
Selection Of

The assignment of seats to specialized standing committees is a most consequential choice in legislative contexts. Distributive theories of legislative organization suggest that electoral incentives to cultivate personal votes result in the self-selection of legislators to committees best suited to please their constituents and, thus, to secure reelection. However, these theories discard the partisan basis of European parliaments and therefore fail to adequately assess the politics of committee assignments in these particular contexts. This article aims to explore the significance of distributive theories for the German case in differentiated ways and on the basis of a new and rich data set including statistical data for five legislative terms (1983, 1987, 1998, 2005, and 2009). It argues that in partisan assemblies, political parties might develop an interest in distributive politics themselves and might assign distinct types of legislators to distinct committees to seek personal votes contingent upon distinct electoral incentives. Particularly, we argue that Germany’s mixed proportional system provides incentives to parties to assign legislators with profound local roots to district committees best suited to please geographic constituents.

Where's the Party?

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Krehbiel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Using Data

Political parties are prominent in legislative politics and legislative research. Using data from the 99th Congress, this article assesses the degree to which significant party behaviour – defined and operationalized as behaviour that is independent of preferences – occurs in two key stages of legislative organization: the formation of standing committees and the appointment of conferees. Four hypotheses are developed and tested. When controlling for preferences and other hypothesized effects, positive and significant party effects are rare. A discussion addresses some criticisms of this unorthodox approach and attempts to reconcile some differences between these and previous findings.

Democratic Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives: Strategic Aspects of a Social Choice Process

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 889-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Rohde ◽  
Kenneth A. Shepsle
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Choice Process ◽  
Committee Assignment ◽  
Committee Assignments

This paper examines the committee assignment process for Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Unlike previous studies of committee assignments, this paper employs data on the requests for assignments submitted by members to the Committee on Committees. The theoretical perspective employed is one in which all the participants in the process are rational actors who have goals they want to achieve and who choose among alternative courses of action on the basis of which alternative is most likely to lead to the achievement of those goals. We argue that the allocation of committee assignments affects the goals of all the participants in the process, and thus we consider the choices of actors in the process in terms of their goals; specifically the goals of re-election, influence within the House, and good public policy.After first considering the process from the point of view of the member making requests, we show that the member's requests are related to the type of district he represents, and that the number of requests he makes is related to such considerations as whether he is a freshman, whether he faces competition from a member from his state, and whether there is a vacancy from his state on his most preferred committee.The process is also considered from the point of view of the members making the assignments. Decisions on assignments are found to be affected by seniority (where success in getting requested committees is inversely related to seniority), margin of election (where members from marginal districts are more successful), and region (where southerners are less successful than members from other regions).

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