IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v26y2014i4p521-547.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of oversight committees in closed rule legislation

Author

Listed:
  • Wim Van Gestel

    (Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven, Belgium)

  • Christophe Crombez

    (Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, USA; Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven, Belgium)

Abstract

We formulate a game-theoretical model of closed rule legislation in the presence of informational asymmetries. In the model an agenda setter with private information proposes a policy to a legislature. The legislature appoints an oversight committee to monitor the agenda setter. We study the rationale for this appointment, and analyze the equilibrium oversight committee member choices for the legislators. We conclude that it is optimal for the legislators to appoint oversight committee members who are as far from them as is the agenda setter, but in the opposite direction, rather than do the monitoring themselves. The appointment of such oversight committee members represents a credible means for the legislators to commit to reject proposals that they only marginally prefer to the status quo.

Suggested Citation

  • Wim Van Gestel & Christophe Crombez, 2014. "The role of oversight committees in closed rule legislation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(4), pages 521-547, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:26:y:2014:i:4:p:521-547
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629813507644
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629813507644
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629813507644?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crombez, Christophe, 1996. "Legislative Procedures in the European Community," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 199-228, April.
    2. Steunenberg, Bernard & Koboldt, Christian & Schmidtchen, Dieter, 1996. "Policymaking, comitology, and the balance of power in the European Union," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 329-344, September.
    3. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    4. Gilligan, Thomas W & Krehbiel, Keith, 1987. "Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 287-335, Fall.
    5. Krishna, Vijay, 2001. "Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules: Some Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(2), pages 435-452, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Adam Ramey, 2015. "Bringing the minority back to the party: An informational theory of majority and minority parties in Congress," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 132-150, January.
    4. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2008. "Contracting for information under imperfect commitment," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 905-925, December.
    5. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.
    6. Krahmer, Daniel, 2006. "Message-contingent delegation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 490-506, August.
    7. Lubensky, Dmitry & Schmidbauer, Eric, 2018. "Equilibrium informativeness in veto games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 104-125.
    8. Thomas König & Bernd Luig, 2017. "The impact of EU decision-making on national parties’ attitudes towards European integration," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 362-381, September.
    9. Galeotti, Andrea & Ghiglino, Christian & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic information transmission networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1751-1769.
    10. Christophe Crombez, 2002. "Information, Lobbying and the Legislative Process in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 3(1), pages 7-32, March.
    11. Alan E Wiseman, 2013. "Information and political institutions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 301-308, July.
    12. Jaehoon Kim & Lawrence S. Rothenberg, 2008. "Foundations of Legislative Organization and Committee Influence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 339-374, July.
    13. Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2008. "Veto-based delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 297-307, January.
    14. Hong Min Park, 2012. "Why does the majority party bother to have minority party members on committees?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(2), pages 248-264, April.
    15. Ambrus, Attila & Lu, Shih En, 2014. "Almost fully revealing cheap talk with imperfectly informed senders," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 174-189.
    16. Saori Chiba, 2024. "Information Transmission and Countervailing Biases in Organizations," Games, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-25, May.
    17. Christophe Crombez & Pieterjan Vangerven, 2014. "Procedural models of European Union politics: Contributions and suggestions for improvement," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 289-308, June.
    18. Ying Chen & Hülya Eraslan, 2013. "Informational loss in bundled bargaining," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 338-362, July.
    19. Dulleck, Uwe & Wigger, Berthold U., 2015. "Politicians as experts, electoral control, and fiscal restraints," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 106-116.
    20. Christophe Crombez, 2000. "Institutional Reform and Co-Decision in the European Union," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 41-57, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:26:y:2014:i:4:p:521-547. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.