Committee Staff Capacity and Legislative Performance: A Team Production Approach

• In Event: Committee Dynamics in the U.S.

Abstract

We seek to understand how the administrative and policy expertise capacity reflected by legislative committee staffs influence the legislative effectiveness of committees in Congress. This is a critical issue of inquiry given recent research has chronicled long-term trends in declining legislative staff capacity in all forms within the U.S. Congress (LaPira, Drutman, and Kosar 2020).

We adopt a novel 'team production' theoretical approach rooted for understanding both how and why the characteristics of organizational capacity (reflected by legislative committee staffs) shapes the distribution of organizational (legislator) effectiveness observed in legislative committees.

We address this research puzzle using a novel database constructed by the authors comprised of legislative committee staff information for both the U.S. House and Senate for the 1973-2019 sample period, coupled with the legislative effectiveness scores developed by Volden and Wiseman (2015).

By adopting a 'team production' organizational theory approach to this research puzzle, our aim is to define the contours in which legislative committee capacity potently shapes legislative behavior, from those instances and conditions where it is of marginal benefit.

Authors

• George A. Krause, University of Georgia

• Josh McCrain, University of Utah