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The Committee Assignment Process and the Conditional Nature of Committee Bias

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  • Hall, Richard L.
  • Grofman, Bernard

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Hall, Richard L. & Grofman, Bernard, 1990. "The Committee Assignment Process and the Conditional Nature of Committee Bias," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(4), pages 1149-1166, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:84:y:1990:i:04:p:1149-1166_21
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. K. Kanthak, 2004. "Exclusive Committee Assignments and Party Pressure in the U.S. House of Representatives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 391-412, February.
    2. Frisell, Lars, 2000. "Taking Advice from Imperfectly Informed Lobbyists: When to Match Hawks with Hawks," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 355, Stockholm School of Economics.
    3. Randall S. Kroszner & Philip E. Strahan, 2001. "Obstacles to Optimal Policy: The Interplay of Politics and Economics in Shaping Bank Supervision and Regulation Reforms," NBER Chapters, in: Prudential Supervision: What Works and What Doesn't, pages 233-272, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kroszner, Randall S., 2000. "Obstacles To Optimal Policy: The Interplay of Politics and Economics in Shaping Bank Supervision and Regulation Reforms," Working Papers 158, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    5. David C. Nixon, 2003. "Policy-Making by Different Means," Rationality and Society, , vol. 15(3), pages 345-360, August.
    6. de Figueiredo, John & Silverman, Brian, 2004. "How Does the Government (Want to) Fund Science? Politics, Lobbying and Academic Earmarks," Working papers 4484-04, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    7. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    8. Randall S. Kroszner & Philip E. Strahan, 2000. "Obstacles to Optimal Policy: The Interplay of Politics and Economics in Shaping Bank Supervision and Regulation Reforms," CRSP working papers 512, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    9. Fang-Yi Chiou, 2011. "The role of procedural commitment in informational theories of legislative organization," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(4), pages 532-558, October.
    10. John M. de Figueiredo & Brian S. Silverman, 2002. "Academic Earmarks and the Returns to Lobbying," NBER Working Papers 9064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Randall S. Kroszner, 2000. "The economics and politics of financial modernization," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Oct, pages 25-37.
    12. Cheryl L. Eavey & Gary J. Miller, 1995. "Subcommittee Agenda Control," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 7(2), pages 125-156, April.
    13. Alan E Wiseman, 2013. "Information and political institutions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 301-308, July.

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