The Role of Political Parties in the Information-Based Model of Committees

• In Event: Political Parties and Legislatures

Abstract

Why do legislative committees exist? How are they organized? There are multiple different theories that have been developed to shed light on these two questions (i.e. distributive benefits theory, majority party cartel theory), however, this paper will only be examining one in depth—the information-based model of committees developed by Gilligan and Krehbiel (1990). In this model, Gilligan and Krehbiel answer why legislative committees exist by arguing that the primary purpose of legislative committees is to reduce uncertainty regarding both the policy and its outcomes by providing specialized information to the legislative chamber about the policy. Gilligan and Krehbiel also provide the answer to how committees are organized, arguing that legislative committees only reduce uncertainty regarding policy outcomes when the committee is composed of members with diverse preferences and has a median member whose ideal point reflects the ideal point of the median member of the chamber.

But what happens when the preferences of the committees do not accurately reflect the preferences of the majority or minority party because the members of the party on the committee are not representative of the interests of the median party member in the chamber? Gilligan and Krehbiel (1990) make no assumption or statement on whether the diverse preferences held by the members of the committee need to reflect the preferences of the party medians in the chamber. Does simply having more diverse opinions mean that the entire chamber will place more faith in the policy presented by the committee? In this paper, I argue that having a committee composed of members with diverse preferences and a median member with an ideal point that reflects the ideal point of the median member of the chamber does not automatically convey more information or reduce uncertainty surrounding the policy outcomes.

I hypothesize that committees are created with the median member of the party in mind, not the median member of the chamber. To reduce uncertainty and guarantee that the preferences of each party are reflected in the proposed policy, parties design committees to reflect the median member of their own party, and because each party’s median is reflected in the committee, the committees also reflect the distribution of preferences in the chamber and the median member of the chamber by default. I test this theory using legislative sessions from five different states and find support for the theory.

Considering the role of parties in the committee assignment process does not disprove the model developed by Gilligan and Krehbiel, as the outcome is still the same—committees on average will reflect their parent chamber. What it does do is alter the focus of the model on the chamber median and the mechanism behind why committees often resemble their parent chambers. In the information-based model of committees, Gilligan and Krehbiel (1990) failed to consider the influence of parties in legislative chambers and as result assumed that the preferences regarding both policy and policy outcomes for all members of the chamber were the same. This does not accurately reflect what occurs in legislative bodies. The results of the data suggest that each party has their own preferred policy and policy outcomes. To reduce the uncertainty and ensure that the preferences of the party are reflected in the policy, political parties assign committee membership in a manner that ensures that median committee member of the party resembles the median party member of the chamber.

Authors

• Breanna Wright, Stony Brook University

• Michael Peress, SUNY - Stony Brook