The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/46112 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation
Author: Mickler, T.A.
Title: Parliamentary committees in a party-centred context : structure, composition, functioning
Issue Date: 2017-02-22
Chapter 7
Conclusion: The Role and Workings of Specialised Committees in
Parliaments with Strong Parliamentary Party Groups
Are Specialised Committees Microcosms, Outliers, Watchdogs, or ‘Under the Thumb’?
P
A R L I A M E N T S are present throughout the world and engage in a wide variety of tasks which are vital to representative democracies. They control the government, make laws, link the citizens to the government and represent the beliefs and ideas of their constituents by having debates on matters of the moment (Loewenberg, 2011; Kreppel, 2014). In representative democracies, the legitimacy of the smallest unit within legislatures, the elected representative, is derived from regular elections. By means of a wide range of electoral systems, legislators obtain a political mandate to take decisions on behalf of the citizens and represent the interests of their voters. However, voters still remain the popular sovereign. Representatives remain accountable for their actions at the next election. Voters can evaluate the representatives’ job performance and either renew their mandate or discontinue it at the next election. Parliaments can therefore be understood in terms of a chain of delegation (Bergman et al., 2000) of electorate (principal) to legislators (agents). Elections are the crucial mechanisms to enforcing the responsibility of elected representatives.Given the crucial nature of the tasks that are ascribed to parliaments, it is important to understand how these institutions conduct their business and how
legislators reach decisions. The plenary sessions, although usually the venue where decisions are given assent, are not necessarily the place of the actual formation of will where the decisions are extensively debated. Beyond the immediately visible plenum, parliaments are complex institutions which work through several other venues. These prepare, and sometimes even take decisions. After the constitution of a legislature, legislators differentiate themselves and organise themselves in various groups. These differentiations (which are summarised under the term legislative organisation) are a universal phenomenon. The outcome of this process is a system of various sub-groups which allow for differentiations in terms of “hierarchy (functional differentiation) and specialisation (horizontal differentiation)” (Mattson &
Strøm, 1995, p. 62). These differentiations are necessary in order to allow for an efficient working of legislatures. The actual formation of will is therefore
‘outsourced’ to different ‘decision centers’. The plenary session is mostly simply the public display of the decisions taken in these other venues. Of major importance to parliaments around the world are two particular outcomes of the process of legislative organisation: parliamentary party groups and parliamentary committees.
Parliamentary party groups form a central component of legislative organization and preference aggregation which promote decisional efficiency in the chamber and allow legislators to influence policy. In modern democracies, the vast majority of individual legislators is not elected as independent members. Elections are usually structured through competition between parties. Parties offer choices over policies and personnel through elections.
Their involvement before the constitution of a new legislature is undisputed and does not end after the constitution of a new legislature. Members of the representative body who are “elected either under the same party label or under the label of different parties that do not compete against each other in elections, and who do not explicitly create a group for technical reasons only” (Heidar &
Koole, 2000, p. 249) usually cluster into parliamentary party groups. Especially within parliamentary systems of government, in which the government rests on the absence of a majority in the chamber against it, parliamentary party groups are usually strongly organised to collectively support the government or bring it down. Strong parliamentary party groups are characterised as “powerful floor coalitions, capable of disciplining their members and passing their programs, [...] effectively dominating the legislative agenda and taking responsibility for the final legislative product” (Cox & McCubbins, 1993, p. 5). Parliamentary party groups are focal points for understanding the decision-making process within parliaments. However, parliamentary party groups are not the only decision center within parliaments. All modern parliaments work through committees.
These issue-specific sub-groups subdivide the plenum and prepare documents or even take decisions on behalf of the floor. Together with parliamentary party groups, committees are “the most important component of legislative organization and preference aggregation” (Saalfeld & Strøm, 2014, p. 372) within legislatures. These topic-specific subgroups consist of legislators across
parliamentary party groups and are also heavily involved in agenda setting and processing legislation.
The puzzle that has guided the analysis follows from the co-existence of these two type of subgroups in legislatures and the implications for the functions ascribed to parliaments. Although the involvement of parliamentary party groups within legislatures and their influence on individual legislators is sometimes viewed suspiciously (free mandate versus party discipline), the actions of the parliamentary party group have a democratic mandate. The subdivision into parliamentary party groups is parallel to the choice of the voters. Any actions that are taken are, therefore, at least in principle, also subject to the evaluation of the voter at the next election. This is not clear for committees: Voters do not elect committee members. The heavy reliance on committees raises several questions about these institutions. How do committees derive their power and how are decisions taken? How do we need to assess committees within the democratic chain of delegation? This dissertation attempted to shed some light on specialised committees of legislatures with strong parliamentary party groups by analysing the structure of committees, the composition, and the working procedures and how these relate to parliamentary party groups. The main research question guiding the analysis was formulated as: ‘How do specialised committees work in parliaments with strong parliamentary party groups?’.
The importance of committees in the decision-making processes of modern parliaments around the world makes it vital to understand why they are structured the way they are and how legislators behave within them. All three themes (structure, composition, working procedures) are important building blocks as they complement each other. By only focusing on the structural features little can be said about the daily operations and workings of committees in the legislatures. Similarly, formal structures determine the
‘playing field’ of legislators and need to be included in order to allow for a larger picture. After analysing the considerable variation of committee system autonomy across legislatures in thirty legislatures, the subsequent issues were tackled on case studies of the Irish Dáil Éireann, a case with strong local roots of its legislators, the German Bundestag, a mixed-member system and the Dutch Tweede Kamer to which legislators are elected in a single nation-wide district.
As other studies which have analysed committee workings, this study built on the congressional framework of distributive, informational and partisan theories of legislative organisation. Despite heightened interest, there is not yet a European ‘home-grown’ theoretical framework available comparable to the U.S. theories. Some scholars have been sceptical about the merit of the congressional theories of legislative organisation outside of the USA and have called for a discontinuation of the heavy reliance on these theories. However, - to borrow the famous statement from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - why look so far afield when there is so much close at hand?.209Rather than developing a
209 Translated from the German original phrase “Warum in die Ferne schweifen? Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah”.
new framework, I argued that the knowledge and insight gained from a long-standing research tradition on the U.S. Congress and U.S. state legislatures cannot be ignored and needs to be taken into consideration. Combining the rich literature on committees in the United States with the study of committees in other national legislatures is sensible. Legislatures outside the U.S. provide additional ground for testing the predictions of the congressional theories. The aim of the study was to give the congressional theories another thorough test by increasing the scope of the analysis and including the functioning of committees and the structural features. The only serious alternative to the congressional theories, the ‘keeping tabs’ perspective was added to the theoretical framework. This perspective is a valuable addition to the theoretical framework. Its predictions are directly applicable, as this theory has been developed for the analysis of legislatures with strong parliamentary party groups. It also added the role of committees in coalition government situations which would otherwise not have been a prominent factor.
Certain adaptations were made to account for the different institutional setting. Most prominently, the role of parliamentary party groups as central gatekeepers in the process was acknowledged. For each theory, the general concepts functioned as heuristic devices to disentangle several broad organisational rationales which guided the analysis. Although it is clear that the congressional theories were ‘stretched’ to a certain extent they still remain close to their original form. Based on the framework committees are either seen as (more or less) representative microcosms to increase the efficiency of the parliamentary process (‘parliamentary party group centred informational rationale’), composed of outliers to provide particularistic benefits to outside groups (‘parliamentary party group centred distributive rationale’), ‘under the thumb’ of the leadership of parliamentary party groups (‘parliamentary party group centred partisan rationale’) or watchdogs in coalition situations (‘keeping tabs’ rationale).
The approach used in this study is not radically new and I do not want to overstate my contribution with regard to an innovation of the utilisation of the theories, but attempts were made to go beyond the existing literature in terms of the discussion of the limitation of the application of the theories, but also with regard to the scope of the analysis. By including structural variation and the relationship to the parliamentary party group two issues have been tackled which, compared to the structural manifestation of committee assignments, have received relatively little scholarly attention. For each of the three sub-questions theoretical predictions and testable hypotheses could be formulated.
One of the central findings of this study is that the congressional theories, despite being developed for the analysis of a particular legislature, have merit for the study of legislative organisation in other legislatures. The concepts and expectations led to a deeper understanding of legislative organisation in the analysed legislatures. The congressional theories performed well with regard to their ‘home turf’ of committee assignment. Although the allocation of legislators does not follow a ‘deterministic’ pattern, the aim of this analysis was
to ‘cut through the noise’ and find recurring patterns. Using the concepts derived from the congressional theories and the ‘keeping tabs’ perspective, it was possible to find stable patterns in the statistical analysis. The deduced rationales and hypotheses were also able to capture the room for manoeuvre of committee members as well as the formal structures.
The Substantive Performance of the Theoretical Framework
With regard to the more substantive performance of the theories themselves, the main findings are surprising. They are summarised in Table 7.1 (p. 234) for the analysis on committee structures and Table 7.2 (p. 236) for the analysis on committee composition and assignments. The results of the qualitative part of the study on committee workings is summarised in Table 7.3 (p. 238). The ‘most obvious’ choice to be able to capture the processes in the analysed legislatures would be the partisan theory, as it already places parliamentary party groups as central actors to explain why legislatures are organised in the way they are.
However, generally speaking, the partisan perspective performed poorly in the analysis. Partisan considerations were hardly influential the statistical analysis of formal committee structures. The results indicated that the variable which tested a partisan rationale (the majority parliamentary party group(s) seat share, hypothesis 1) did not have a significant effect on the level of committee autonomy. With regard to the assignment of legislators to committees, there was little evidence of a leadership-controlled composition of committees.
Committees are not ‘under the thumb’ of the leadership. In two of the analysed legislatures, the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag, preferences were given by legislators and the assignment process was influenced by these wishes and preferences. Partisan stacking, as well as structurally manipulating the composition of committees, were not evident. In several legislative periods the data indicated a weak effect of the number of legislative periods (hypothesis 14) with regard to being assigned to highly important committees. The interviews provided further support for the existence of a certain hierarchical order.
However, these patterns do not constitute a ‘greasy pole’ that inexperienced legislators have to climb in order to be eligible for a place on an important committee. It is much more plausible to argue, based on the evidence presented in this dissertation, that parliamentary party groups strive for a mixture of new and experienced legislators in order to prevent a gap of knowledge when experienced legislators discontinue their career. This was also further backed up in the interviews. Interviewed legislators indicated clear limitations of the influence of the parliamentary party group leadership by mentioning cases in which the leadership did not intervene in the creation of ‘outlying’ committees, even though these were considered important committees. This is in stark contrast to the predictions of the partisan rationale. When transferring the congressional theories to countries with strong parliamentary party groups, the absence of a ‘tight’ grip of the parliamentary party group leadership is unexpected.
Table 7.1: Results of the study - quantitative part on committee structures
Hypotheses committee structures Result
PT H1: governing party or coalition’seat share No influence
DT
H2: electoral systems: ‘personal vote’ No influence H3: connection between MPs and districts No influence H4: levels of corporatism Partial support
IT
H5: size of parliament No influence
H6: workload of parliament Strong influence
KT
H7: frequency of coalition formation Strong influence H8: ideological distances coalition partners Strong influence H9: frequency of minority governments No influence
Control 1: length parliamentary democracy No influence
Control 2: bicameralism No influence
Abbreviations: PT= partisan theory; DT = distributive theory; IT = informational theory; KT =
‘keeping tabs’
The partisan rationale is, however, well-applicable in one of the cases, i.e.
the committee stage of legislation of the Dáil. The partisan rationale highlights the usage of the committee system for agenda control by the majority parliamentary party group or the majority coalition. Committees in the Dáil are instrumental to the government and are primarily expected to get the bills through with little counter pressure. Committee proceedings with regard to legislation are closely tied to a higher principal. Individual legislators operate under a relatively tight whip. However, instead of the parliamentary party group leadership, the committees primarily follow the lines of the executive. Ministers, as spokesperson of a parliamentary party group, largely structure the positions.
These positions are established before the bill reaches the committee stage and government legislators in committees follow the government line. Influence is mainly possible via other channels and not formally in committee.
Some readers might be surprised by this conclusion that committee work is not organised according to the partisan rationale. However, to clarify this let me refer back to the discussion of the theoretical section. The conclusion does not implicate a side-lining of the influence of parliamentary party groups.
Throughout the whole analysis, it was presumed that parliamentary party groups have a major stake in the organisation of the analysed legislaturse. I strongly concur with Damgaard (1995) who argued that parliamentary party groups and committees are the two crucial organisational structures in
parliaments but the former clearly dominate the latter. The theoretical section distinguished several broad rationales with regard to how parliamentary party groups organise their work in committees (structure, composition and functioning).
The most ‘minimalist’ view with regard to the involvement of the other members of the parliamentary party group and the leadership was the distributive rationale, but both the partisan as well as the informational rationale highlight their involvement, although in different ways. It is true that certain elements of the analysis provide support for elements primarily ascribed to the partisan or the distributive rationale. Whenever this was the case, I explicitly highlighted this (e.g. the role of the parliamentary party group leadership in the working procedure and the committee selection procedure).
The main conclusion is based on the general performance of the deduced rationales in all three sections of the analysis. It is true that, in some legislatures, legislators are assigned to committees with outlying preferences and that in certain areas the leadership has the right to declare things as ‘Chefsache’ and take over. However, generally speaking, at least in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag, there is a strong involvement of the experts in the committee who have to withstand the test by the other ‘rank and file’ legislators in the parliamentary party group meeting. The main focal point is not the leadership and the checks and balances are (at least in principle) applicable to all areas.
Additionally, this analysis provides insight into the distribution of resources and parliamentary rights to individual legislators after they have obtained a mandate. There are also other partisan influences which may happen before this, most notably via the candidate selection method. This process takes place almost wholly within particular parties and influences the behaviour of its members (Hazan, 2014, p. 214). Parties who control the candidate selection could prevent the reselection of disloyal legislators. Such considerations cannot be ruled out but they are not part of the focus of this study. This book provides insight into the question how parliamentary party groups organise their work with regard to committees given the members that they have. The results are therefore a partial aspect within the lifespan of a legislator and its relationship with the central party organisation.
With regard to the distributive rationale, the variables did not perform well in terms of explaining the variation of committee autonomy. An exception is the level of corporatism (hypothesis 4). The variable initially did not pass common significance levels in the linear regression analysis, but the lasso regression, as well as the stepwise selection, hinted at a relationship between the level of autonomy of a legislature’s committee system and how corporatist a country is.
There is some support for the argument that legislatures in more corporatist countries establish stronger committee systems. This finding indicates that rules in parliaments are created to accommodate these institutionalised interactions between interest groups and the legislature. The effect of the level of corporatism is, however, an ’adapted’ test which goes quite far away from the original prediction of the distributive theory in its congressional form.
Table 7.2: Results of the study - quantitative part on committee assignments
Hypotheses committee assignments Result
DT
H10: constituency demand of constituencies
Bundestag: Strong influence Dáil Éireann: Strong influence Tweede Kamer: Partial influence H11: members’ external interests
Bundestag: Strong influence Dáil Éireann: No influence Tweede Kamer: No influence
IT
H12: advantages in policy-related knowledge
Bundestag: Strong influence Dáil Éireann: Strong influence Tweede Kamer: Strong influence H13: committee experience
Bundestag: Strong influence Dáil Éireann: Strong influence Tweede Kamer: Strong influence
PT
H14: legislative periods and important committees
Bundestag: Weak influence Dáil Éireann: Weak influence Tweede Kamer: Weak influence H15: ideological distance and important
committees
Bundestag: No influence Dáil Éireann: No influence Tweede Kamer: No influence
KT H16: watchdog committee (vice) chairs
Bundestag: Patterns support predictions Dáil Éireann: Patterns support predictions Tweede Kamer: Patterns support predictions
Abbreviations: PT= partisan theory; DT = distributive theory; IT = informational theory; KT =
‘keeping tabs’
Originally, the distributive rationale highlights the re-election goal of representatives, and this purpose is absent in the context of corporatism. The variables which actually tested the re-election purpose in the form of the reliance on a ‘personal vote’ (hypothesis 2) and a district demand (hypothesis 3) did not explain variation in committee structures.
Support for the distributive rationale with regard to the assignment process (hypothesis 10 and hypothesis 11) was found in some legislatures. In the Bundestag, committees can be truly ‘outlying’ with external interests biased in one direction. There was no evidence of a ‘structuring hand’ of the parliamentary party group leadership or a desire of the other members of the parliamentary party group to find people from among their midst to serve as
‘opposite pole’. In the Tweede Kamer and the Dáil the variable did have very little influence. With regard to constituency characteristics, the interviews indicated the applicability of this factor in the Bundestag and the Dáil, i.e. those legislatures in which legislators, at least partially, have a clear connection to individual districts. Constituency characteristics are able to account for some of the structural manifestations of committee specialisation. However, a more fundamental problem arises with regard to the motivation behind the assignment patterns. Interviewed legislators argued that committee work is not
helpful at the next election in terms of real electoral added value. Voters would not naturally gravitate towards a legislator because of what he or she can do for his/ her constituency based on the committee membership. Many legislators stated that the average citizen is not well-informed about the committee membership, and even if he or she is, the information that citizens seek from their legislators usually relates to all policy areas and not only the ones that the legislator is responsible for in the committee. Constituents expect their candidates to be able to inform them about all policy areas, not only about the area in which they are the specialists who they are in the legislature. Legislators still join committees which resonate with constituencies’ characteristics because committees are the primary source of actual information on an issue.
Although voters inquire about many topics, legislators seem to anticipate that many questions will still be on topics which stem from their committees’
jurisdiction and try to be prepared for this eventuality.
A distributive rationale with regard to the working procedures could not be observed, either. In the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer, committees and their members do not develop a life of their own, uncoupled from the rest of the parliamentary party group. It is certainly true that committee members possess a high degree of freedom when developing the initial position. However, the internal processes are more closely described by the informational rationale.
The initial position is cross-checked and can be subject to changes if the parliamentary party group does not support it. It would also be too simplified to describe the processes in the Dáil with a distributive rationale. The process regarding self-chosen issues (i.e. other than government proposals) which are put on a committee’s agenda in the Dáil follows such a distributive logic to a certain extent. Legislators of all Irish parliamentary party groups, including those of the government coalition have much more autonomy to decide what to work on and how to do it. They are able to place issues on the agenda themselves and experience committee work as being much more rewarding in terms of output. There is very little reporting back to the parliamentary party group and also much less intervention from the parliamentary party group leadership in the things that are done. This is applicable to all policy areas and not only those which are deemed to be highly important.
The data provided support for the ‘keeping tabs on coalition partners’ logic of committees proposed by L. W. Martin and Vanberg (2011). Based on the results of the analysis of formal structures, more autonomous committees are established when the government consists of multiple parties on a regular basis (hypothesis 7) and when the parties in the coalition differ ideologically over an extended period (hypothesis 8). In these situations, committee structures are strengthened. Whether committees are actually used in order to check on the coalition partner cannot be concluded based on this part of the analysis. The test of this ‘keeping tabs’ perspective with regard to committee assignments (hypothesis 16) relied on assignment patterns of ‘watchdog’ (vice) chairs. The overview provided some evidence that (vice) chairs of one coalition party are structurally placed to shadow a minister from the coalition partner. However,
this image of assignment patterns in the three legislatures is not unambiguous.
There are frequent exceptions visible and a thorough test was difficult for those legislative periods in which one parliamentary party group holds the vast majority of seats. The analysis of committee workings also covered the actual interactions between coalition legislators. There was some evidence which supports the ‘keeping tabs’ logic. First and foremost, party politics is still important within committees. Interviewed legislators in the Tweede Kamer, the Bundestag and the Dáil highlighted that they try to put forward their own parliamentary party groups’ policies first within committees. They carefully check what the coalition partners do. There are agreements to not surprise the coalition partner. Nevertheless, these are seen as ‘partnerships of convenience’
and working together does not imply that legislators are not on their toes to carefully watch the actions of the legislators of the coalition partner(s). In the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag, the two legislatures with the more clearly defined internal structures, the committees are an early warning system which signals at an early stage that problems might arise. In case these problems do arise, an attempt is made to solve them by a relatively clearly defined escalation ladder to smoothen the differences.
Across all three analyses, the variables connected to the informational rationale were best able to capture the processes. This rationale highlights the use of committees as information-gathering and -processing institutions which serve to increase the efficiency of parliamentary party groups. In the analysis of
Table 7.3: Results of the study - qualitative part
Relationship of individual committee member with...
Bundestag Dáil Tweede Kamer
‘rank-and-file’
legislators (same parliamentary party group) on the same committee
Informational, clear reporting
requirements
Partisan (legislation), distributive (discretionary)
Informational, clear reporting
requirements
‘rank-and-file’
legislators (same parliamentary party group) not on the same committee
Informational, clear reporting
requirements
Distributive, no reporting requirements
Informational, clear reporting rights
leadership of their own parliamentary party group
Informational, umbrella function
Partisan, highly influential
Informational, umbrella function
‘rank-and-file’
legislators (other parliamentary party group) on the same committee
Informational and
‘keeping tabs’
Informational and
‘keeping tabs’
Informational and
‘keeping tabs’
formal committee structures, the workload of parliaments (measured as the average number of bills per plenary session, hypothesis 6) is best able to explain variation in the legislatures analysed (the analysis attempted to establish correlation). Across the analysed thirty legislatures, committees have more formal autonomy in those legislatures which face a higher workload. With regard to the statistical analysis of committee assignments the factors connected to the informational theory had the greatest influence. From among the more personal characteristics of legislators, advantages in knowledge related to a policy area (hypothesis 12) are by far the best predictor to explain the assignments. The influence is also present in the Dáil, in which the leadership of most parliamentary party groups takes the decisions autonomously. This is particularly interesting due to the result concerning committee experience (hypothesis 13), the strongest effect across all countries.210 There is compelling evidence for a pattern that legislators who have been on a committee in the prior legislative period are likely to continue on the same committee. The coefficients relating to this variable are significant for all legislative periods in all analysed parliaments. As legislators are assigned to a large extent based on their advantages in knowledge and are subsequently able to further deepen their knowledge (by staying on the committee), a strong case can be made for the prediction of the informational rationale.
The working procedures in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag are best characterised with an informational rationale as well. The role that committees have is primarily instrumental: To paraphrase Gilligan and Krehbiel (1990, p.
535), committee members are entities that ultimately are responsible to, and held accountable by, their parliamentary party group.211All legislators have to go through a system of scrutiny after first developing a position autonomously and cross-checking it against a range of factors (e.g. the position that the parliamentary party groups have taken in the past). At least one group of legislators has to be consulted which monitors the spokesperson’s work. The within-PPG work groups do not change the proposed position often, but the possibility exists. In this sense, my conclusion closely resembles the proceedings of political groups in the European Parliament described by Ringe (2010). Ringe (2010, p. 58) argues that political groups establish a series of information filters, “originating from the rapporteur and coordinator to the committee working groups, the coordinator meetings, the party working groups, and finally the party plenary”. However, the process described in the European Parliament is slightly different with regard to the party line. Contrary to the European Parliament, in which those who work on a dossier can heavily influence the party line, spokespersons in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag are expected to draw back much more on existing positions if they exist.
Parliamentary party groups in the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer may be
210 Committee experience is not a personal characteristic, but an acquired skill which is obtained by serving on a committee in two consecutive terms.
211 The original quote refers to committees as “entities that ultimately are responsible to, and held accountable by their parent chamber” (Gilligan & Krehbiel, 1990, p. 535).
more consolidated in their prior positions compared to political groups of the European Parliament. This makes spokespersons much more confined in their room for manoeuvre, as there are a number of clear positions available on which they can draw on.
Outside of this formal structure, every legislator from the parliamentary party group has the right to get more information on a topic. Legislators are also able to approach their colleagues via informal routes. It is the responsibility of the interested non-spokesperson to gather information. Nevertheless, the spokespersons also need to have a keen sense of who they should inform outside of their work group in order to minimize ’unpleasant surprises‘. The parliamentary party group leadership has an umbrella function to prevent actions by the members in committee which may produce outcomes with detrimental effects for the larger parliamentary party group. The parliamentary party group meeting is in any instance the final hurdle that a committee member has to overcome. A wish from a legislator is sufficient in order to put something on the agenda of the parliamentary party group meeting and discuss it. In this sense, committees are clearly used to ’keep the sludge‘ moving by dealing with the workload for the parliamentary party groups. Even if the issue is not discussed in-depth during the meeting of the parliamentary party group, the position needs to have majority approval. Such a system ensures that the vast majority of policy choices reflects the wishes of the parliamentary party group. The parliamentary party group always remains the main principal and has a chance to ’whistle back a legislator’.
My interviews highlighted the deduced rationales, but also showed the effect of other factors. These are important additions to provide a more complete picture of the working procedures, but most of these should not come as a surprise to those who are more familiar with the internal organisation of parliamentary party groups in the different countries. The importance of Landesgruppen in Germany is well-known. The interviews also uncovered some more pragmatic reasons, such as the role of committees to balance a possible disadvantage a legislator might have at the next election in case a constituency colleague received a prestigious assignment. In this sense, the analysis ties in nicely with the specific configurations present in the various countries.
Discussion: Committees and the Chain of Delegation
What are the implications of these findings in terms of the democratic workings of parliaments? The puzzle that was presented in the introduction of this book referred to the strong reliance on committees within parliaments and what the effect of this is for the workings of representative democracy, given that this subdivision does not have an immediate democratic mandate. The results of the empirical chapters can be used for a more general outlook in the analysed cases. This is done by relating the wider implications of the used theories to the puzzle and ask ‘what if committees in legislatures would work according to a given rationale?’.
The distributive theory of legislative organisation views ‘outlying’
committees as a logical consequence of how individual legislators organise themselves and how decisions are reached within legislatures. In terms of the democratic chain of delegation, the relationship between legislators and voters is based on small, closed circles. Within committees, legislators attempt to distribute particularistic benefits to their constituents in order to get re-elected and preserve their power. Looking back at the functions that are usually ascribed to parliaments, the distributive theory takes the function to serve local demands (a partial aspect of the representative function) to the extreme.
However, parliaments are also venues for the expression of different perspectives that are present in the whole nation. Although the direct beneficiaries of this system of ‘pork barrel’ politics may value it, several other groups that do not benefit directly from it, are excluded. This is certainly a distortion of the democratic mandate.
Regarding the partisan rationale, the implications for the chain of democracy are dependent on the saliency of an issue. One the one hand, some areas which are of central importance to a party will be closely monitored by members of the parliamentary party group. However, those areas which are not deemed to be valuable will not be in the focus. Only if another party values these neglected areas they will work on it. However, not only does this create an imbalance regarding the output on issues that parliaments cover (as members of parliamentary party group A will focus extensively on issue X, while members of the other parliamentary party group might simply not care about the proceedings), it is likely that there will be some issues which nobody feels responsible for. This is in contrast with the control function that parliaments should fulfil.
Similar considerations are presented in the ‘coalition logic’ of the ‘keeping tabs’ perspective, although to a lesser extent. According to this perspective, coalition parties monitor actions of their coalition partner closely in committees to minimize unintended outcomes. Whether this should be seen as a problematic aspect of how parliaments fulfil their role is dependent on the particular understanding of democracy. Those who subscribe to a majoritarian view (the government coalition, backed up by a majority, should be able to take decisions relatively unobstructed) might value this as a positive effect. However, even though the government parties control each other, the theory is silent about the role of the minority parties. If one subscribes to a more consensus-oriented understanding of democracy, this exclusion of a portion of legislators can be viewed negatively.
Such an exclusion of a portion of issues and legislators is not present in the informational theory. This perspective views legislators as being suspicious about outlying committees and does not make explicit distinctions into policy areas (uncertainty is a universal phenomenon). Looking at the alternative (the absence of an informational rationale in the organisation of a legislature) the major consequence would be that legislators will have greatly increased uncertainty about the consequences of policies they enact.
Arguing from a normative perspective of how parliaments should fulfil their functions, the results of this study provide a positive view of how committees work within the analysed legislatures with strong parliamentary party groups.
Based on the analysis of structural features, there is evidence that committees in the analysed legislatures are, first and foremost, used to cope with the workload of a legislature. Based on all the different factors that were taken into consideration in this study, stronger committees are established in those legislatures which face a higher workload. Should stronger committees be found in legislatures in which individual members have a higher interest to provide particularistic benefits to their constituencies this could lead to a distortion of the democratic mandate, but I did not find evidence of such a distributive rationale. Given the importance of the different functions that parliaments fulfil in a political system, the reliance on committees can be interpreted as a sign that parliaments take this very seriously and try to deal with their workload as best as possible.
The subsequent analysis of the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer supported the informational rationale also on a micro-level. With regard to the question
‘who gets what and why’ an equally positive image is provided by the analysis.
There is strong evidence that, generally speaking, committees are disproportionally composed of legislators who have advantages in knowledge due to their prior education and occupation. The assignment process is not dictated by a strong leadership without any considerations of the strength of a legislator. In the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag, legislators were able to give their preferences and are often able to get their preferred spot. Of course, there are exceptions to this. In the complex assignment process with limited places, not all legislators are able to get what they want. However, even in those instances a lot of cases were later resolved due to mid-term changes or in a later legislative period. The process in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag can, therefore, best be described as ‘self-selection with restriction’. The parliamentary party group leadership does not intervene on a massive level.
There were no signs that the leadership rewards loyal behaviour or structurally places legislators in certain committees. This means that rather than having the most loyal legislators or those with external interests in a committee, committees cluster experts on a topic which bring most expertise into the decision-making process. Rather than being ‘under the thumb’ of the majority parliamentary party group leadership or securing the wishes of a subgroup of legislatures, the evidence points towards a more neutral, ‘knowledge’-driven usage of committees.
The results with regard to the distributive rationale provide an interesting picture. On the one hand, the results of the analyses on Tweede Kamer and the Dáil indicate a clear non-applicability of the prediction that external interests drive the assignment. In the Dáil such an assignment logic is prevented through the low amount of registered interests of TDs, while in the Tweede Kamer strong norms exist to not assign legislators which have an outlying interest to corresponding committees. Such wariness is not present in the Bundestag, at least not in all parliamentary party groups. Especially in the larger
parliamentary party groups, frequent assignments are made which one might view as something of dubious character. However, in terms of the actual opportunities for legislators to manipulate policies and provide pork to these groups, committee members in all legislatures are constrained. Based on the results, committees are not used to provide particularistic benefits to constituents. This is simply because the possibilities are limited institutionally, but also because legislators are embedded in internal procedures which would prevent this.
The fact that many legislators are assigned to committees which are reminiscent of the constituencies they come from can, in combination with the earlier factors (very few opportunities to provide pork as well as the internal structures in the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer), also be seen as a positive sign. Basing this argument merely on the assignment pattern, the fact that legislators are driven by problems which occur in their constituencies is a good sign for the representative function of parliaments. Given that they are not able to provide particularistic benefits to the constituencies via the committee system is a ‘win-win’ situation in terms of democratic chain of delegation when we presuppose that parliaments are responsible for making policies for the whole nation. The support of the ‘keeping tabs’ perspective is an additional positive aspect of the way how committees within these legislatures operate.
Countries with frequent coalition situations and countries in which these coalitions differ ideologically, strong committees are established which, at least in principle, have the possibility to control for ministerial drift and hold the government accountable. The usage of ‘watchdog chairs’ also indicates that specialised committees are used to prevent ministerial drift.
With regard to the working processes, once committee members are assigned, an equally positive conclusion can be drawn from the process in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag. After committees are filled, committee members still need to secure the approval of the parliamentary party group.
This is described by the informational rationale which highlights the agent role of committees. The internal work groups of parliamentary party groups in these two legislatures provide strong checks and balances on the positions that are developed. In case a legislator would attempt to ‘sneak’ something by his or her colleagues, several groups have the opportunity to intervene. This is especially true because colleagues know that these relationships exist, which makes them attentive. Of course, this rests on the assumption that the other legislators of the parliamentary party group take their watchdog function seriously. The interviews indicated that they are and that this form of collective intelligence is quite successful in preventing slip-ups through solo actions.
Compared to the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer, processes in the Dáil need to be valued more negatively in terms of a desirable usage of committees.
Positions are established before a bill reaches the committee stage. During the discussions within the parliamentary party groups, legislators have a certain amount of influence. However, government legislators in committees are expected to follow the established government line and operate under a
relatively tight whip. In the Dáil the evidence from the second and third part ties in nicely with the general impression of Irish TDs who have a very strong local focus. Committee work is not very high on the priority list, especially when it comes to working on draft legislation. This makes sense when understanding the relationship between the parliamentary party group leadership and the individual TDs. The parliamentary party group leadership has a relatively tight grip on the individual TDs in the legislative process. The room for manoeuvre of Irish legislators is restricted when it comes to legislation. There is a different self-perception compared to legislators in the Tweede Kamer and the Bundestag. The decision-making process in the Dáil does not have a favourable structure for strong committee influence, giving that the committee stage comes after the general debate in the chamber. It is interesting, however, that some evidence was found for a different logic with regard to discretionary work of TDs. With regard to putting their own items on the agenda and working on it, legislators indicated that much more freedom is granted to individual legislators. They highlighted that this aspect of their work is more rewarding and they were able to cater to, for example, issues that relate directly to their districts.
One should not forget that the committee system of the Dáil is still relatively new. Only four ‘generations’ of TDs have worked in it and it will be interesting to see whether the autonomy that is experienced on discretionary issues can lead to an adaptation and spill over to the proceedings regarding draft legislation.
There are signs of a move towards the German and Dutch model. Most strikingly is the introduction of the internal work groups in the Fine Gael parliamentary party group. It was highlighted by many backbenchers as a significant reform and many wished for it to continue. Although these do not yet fully operate under the same logic as the within-PPG work groups in the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer, it is interesting to see whether they will develop this function in the near future. Given the introduction of pre-legislative scrutiny, there is some evidence for a continued strengthening of the committee system of the Dáil.
Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research
This study did not lead to the formulation of a new theoretical model distinctively developed for the study of legislative organisation in parliamentary systems of government. Although the analysis has shown that the congressional theories can be applied, one might still view the heavy reliance on the congressional theories as a weakness of the analysis. It might be that the deduced rationales and the subsequent analyses do not convince a sceptical reader. One might argue that, despite the adaptations, the origin of the theories is such a unique institution precludes any application to other legislatures. To counter this criticism the deduced rationales are not far-fetched. When approaching the study of legislative organisation completely afresh, assuming that parliamentary party groups assign legislators who have relevant knowledge or who are more experienced to committees is a very reasonable strategy for parliamentary party groups to pursue. I will even go so far to suggest that the
framework presented in this dissertation also has important ramifications for the study of its ‘home-turf’: the U.S. Congress. The debate on this legislature is stuck on methodological and theoretical grounds. One of the main apples of discord is the question of the role of parliamentary party groups in the legislature. As has been argued in this dissertation, informational and distributive theory work under the assumption of weak parliamentary party groups. This assumption and point of departure constrain their analysis.
Evidence which supports outlying committees is, for example, interpreted as evidence for the prevalence of ‘self-selection’ to underline the non-applicability of the partisan theory. However, recent literature seems to suggest that parliamentary party groups have indeed become important players in the internal organisation of this legislature. Rather than prematurely concluding on the superiority of the partisan theory and its predictions, the congressional literature might benefit from the central placement of parliamentary party groups used in this study and treat the theories as organisational rationales.
Some congressional scholars have advocated that a less-stylised usage of the theories has more merits for future committee research (see e.g. Hall &
Grofman, 1990; Maltzman, 1995, 1997; Rohde, 1994). These authors contend that more than one perspective is needed as explanation of legislative organisation and decision making.212 While this is an interesting point, my study goes further. I present a framework which unites informational, distributive and partisan considerations as valid strategies of parliamentary party groups by relaxing the basic assumption of the weakness of parliamentary party groups. This allows us to analyse how parliamentary party groups organise their work in committees and how individual legislators and committees interact.
There are some further suggestions for subsequent analyses of other legislatures apart from the U.S. Congress. The current case selection of the Dáil, the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer has led to the discovery of distinct working mechanisms in each of the three legislatures. The three cases were analysed across multiple legislative periods and the reliance of qualitative and quantitative methods makes the results relatively robust with regard to these three cases. The presence of several country-specific factors is an important revelation which has implications for studies trying to broaden the evidence of this study towards workings of specialised committees in other legislatures.
Although the eventual goal of our endeavour to study parliaments needs to be to generalise our findings on rules and proceedings, future research needs to leave some room for such idiosyncratic mechanisms. The congressional theories and the insight of this study will help to approach these cases, but the results should hint at the importance of country-specific patterns as an addition to the general framework.
212 For example, Rohde (1994, p. 134) notes: “Rather than seek a single, universal account of congressional politics -whether distributive, informational, partisan, or anything else - we should recognise that all of these considerations operate in varying degrees and that the variation is systematic and predictable”.
The driving argument behind the case selection was to choose a range of cases which differ with regard to the connection which individual legislators have towards districts. Although the baseline case selection, from which these cases were chosen, all have strong parliamentary party groups (compared to the U.S. Congress), there is some variation in the degree of influence within these cases. This is not accounted for in the case selection. The three selected cases do not differ with regard to the grip that partisan forces have on their legislators.
The current case selection of the Dáil, the Bundestag and the Tweede Kamer represent cases in which parliamentary party groups are strong and cohesive.
However, within the list of 33 analysed legislatures some legislatures are characterised by weaker influence of central partisan organisation. As an example, the Italian parliament, although still classified as a case with strong parliamentary party groups, is characterised by many intra-party factions which have a strong effect on how the parliamentary party group behaves (for more information, see Giannetti & Laver, 2005). Future research should also focus on these cases and determine whether they, therefore, resemble more closely the practices in the U.S. Congress, or whether they resemble those processes depicted in this dissertation. The results of this study will be helpful to disentangle and place these other legislatures, even though the evidence cannot be transferred to those cases directly.
In general, this analysis was particularly concerned with the role of the
‘regular’ legislator in committee. The role of individual legislators is an often neglected factor in more macro-oriented studies of legislatures. The empowerment of these actors and the primary focus on them suits the goal of the analysis, but it leaves out those legislators who, within the process of legislative organisation, are differentiated in terms of ‘hierarchy’. The first legislators who would come to mind are those who in this study are referred to as the leadership of the parliamentary party group. Although several legislators were interviewed who function as whips and (vice) chairs, the ‘real’ party leaders were, in most parliamentary party groups, not able to participate. Their voices are therefore not reflected in a similar way as those of the other legislators. Most interviewed legislators are ‘rank-and-file’ legislators. The insights they provided form invaluable input, but the number of interviewed chairs, let alone party leaders was not high. More specific research which focuses on their role is therefore needed. This will also provide more insight into the predictions of the ‘keeping tabs’ perspective. This perspective was an important theoretical addition. However, in terms of thorough tests, this perspective was treated, at least for some parts of the analysis, differently from the congressional theories. This is mainly because of the overlap in predictions and its narrow focus which prevented the formulation of predictions, e.g. with regard to the assignment patterns. Future research needs to further investigate whether committee (vice) chairs actually behave as ‘watchdogs’. Unfortunately, the interviews were unable to capture this.
Despite these limitations, this study ends on a positive note with regard to the future research agenda on how legislatures organise themselves and the
implications of the various forms on the working procedure. Luckily, the times of a “Washington bias - which deems Congress, and Congress alone, as the only legislature worthy of study” (Nelson, 1974, p. 120) are over. Parliaments across the world provide many interesting questions which need to be addressed. In the ongoing debate on the applicability of the congressional theories, developed in a very different legislature which might indeed be a “deviant case”
(Lees & Shaw, 1979, p. 387) in many respects, my study shows that the concepts are helpful to understand other legislatures. The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods has shown support for some predictions, has highlighted shortcomings, but also introduced new factors which will help us to further push the research agenda. The theoretical framework presented in this dissertation offers a way to approach this topic and reach a deeper understanding of parliaments and how legislators organise their work within them.
