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The Journal of Legislative Studies

ISSN: 1357-2334 (Print) 1743-9337 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjls20

Parliamentary committees: A global perspective

Malcolm Shaw

To cite this article: Malcolm Shaw (1998) Parliamentary committees: A global perspective, TheJournal of Legislative Studies, 4:1, 225-251, DOI: 10.1080/13572339808420547

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Parliamentary Committees:A Global Perspective

MALCOLM SHAW

This article begins with a discussion of the nature of committee arrangements inparliaments and explores various theories about committee behaviour. The exceptionallegislative committees found in the United States are discussed. Attention is devotedto recent changes in committee arrangements in the industrial democracies, such as amovement away from ad hoc to standing committees and a tendency to replicateexecutive jurisdictions. The special circumstances in France are considered. The widevariety of arrangements in legislatures in the Third World are noted, with case studiesillustrating weak committee systems in the traditional and authoritarian Third Worldand stronger systems in continuous and intermittent Third World democracies.Whether established, new or future democracies are considered, pressures to enhancelegislative authority can be seen at the committee level throughout the world.

Having endeavoured to look broadly at committees in legislatures in the1970s,1 I have recently had a further look and would like in this article toconvey my current thoughts about this institution. While the earlier studydealt with committees in eight national legislatures, I intend for presentpurposes to bring a more analytical focus to a subject usually dealt with ona country-specific basis.

THE UNIVERSALITY OF COMMITTEES

In 1955, K.C. Wheare produced a book called Government by Committee?This title suggests the ubiquity of the institution with which we areconcerned and affords an opportunity to consider whether there is anysignificant alternative to the small group in the routines of government.Even a cursory consideration of this matter leads one to the conclusion thatpublic affairs are nearly always conducted by small groups of men andwomen. They meet in city halls, bureaucracies and legislatures and engagein face-to-face discussion around tables and in armchairs.

Yet, one must quickly add, there are also the less intimate plenarymeetings of legislatures, occurring in the 'chamber' or on the 'floor'. Suchgatherings of parliamentarians, often in their hundreds, are obviously of

Malcolm Shaw is a Research Fellow, University of Exeter.

226 THE NEW ROLES OF PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES

great importance. Bagehot, writing in 1867, called such meetings 'the grandinquest of the nation', providing an opportunity 'to express the mind of theEnglish people on all matters'. Warming to his theme, Bagehot added: 'Agreat and open council of considerable men cannot be placed in the middleof a society without altering that society' while also providing 'politicaleducation ... to the whole nation'.3

At the same time, a mass meeting of legislators is not an outstandingplace to get things done, even if, to return to Bagehot, the Commonschamber is better organised than, say, a London club. Bagehot mentions anEnglish saying that 'a big meeting never does anything' and points to theparadox that Britain is nevertheless governed by a big meeting. The waythis has been got around, according to Bagehot, is by choosing a committeefrom those of its members in whom the House has the most confidence. Heis here referring, of course, to the Cabinet, 'a committee of the legislativebody selected to be the executive body'.4

While the relationship of cabinet to parliament is well known, there hasbeen less attention to what is left of parliament's plenary identity afterauthority has been delegated to ministers. In this connection, it is certainlythe case that the whole membership, or a large part of it, has frequentopportunities for 'a big meeting'. This arises in relation to broad discussionsof major legislation and other issues, often when asking Questions. Yet forthe most part meetings in the chamber may be characterised in a differentway. Most 'plenary' meetings are occasions attended by a relatively smallminority of members who have a specialist or constituency interest in theparticular item of business before the house. Thus, plenary meetings arelargely a series of meetings of informal 'committees', with the personnelchanging as the business changes. It can indeed be said that nearly all thetime of the plenary chamber is devoted to a series of 'committee' meetings.

While one does not want to overdraw this pattern, one can say thatlegislatures not only have committee systems at a structurally devolvedlevel but they also have less structured committees at the plenary level. Thisarrangement accommodates Wheare's concept of government by committeein the legislative as well as the more obvious executive side of government.It seems clear that too stark a dichotomy is normally drawn between thefloor and committee levels in legislatures inasmuch as informal 'committee'work on the floor commonly accompanies formal committee work off thefloor. In this matter of false dichotomies, one is reminded of AnthonyKing's contention in a different parliamentary context that 'it is seldomhelpful to speak of "executive-legislative relations'" due to the overridingpresence of relations within and among the political parties.5

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 227

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Having suggested that committee work in legislatures is more widespreadthan it first appears, I would like to turn to more specific matters, beginningwith an identification of broadly based efforts at committee analysis. Duringthe past 20 years, two book-length, cross-national studies of this subjecthave appeared.6 One is the previously mentioned Committees inLegislatures, edited by John Lees and myself in 1979; this deals,individually and cross-nationally, with the committee systems in threeEuropean countries - Britain, Italy and West Germany - and five othercountries - the United States, Canada, Japan, India and the Philippines. Theother book-length study is Las Comisiones Parlamentarias, edited by JuanCarlos Ochoa in 1994; this deals, individually and cross-nationally, with theUnited States, Germany, France, Italy and Britain.7 A number of extendedcross-national studies of legislatures which include material on committeescould also be mentioned. The most up-to-date of these is Herbert Döring'sedited book Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, published in1996, which includes chapters on committees in 18 countries by IngvarMattson and Kaare Stram, and by Erik Damgaard.8

The cross-national studies that include the United States make it clearthat committees in Congress are basically different from committees inother legislatures. The following statement, which appears in both the Lees-Shaw and Ochoa books, makes this point: 'It should be emphasized ... thatthe committee system in the American Congress is not only the strongestsystem in the present study; it is by far the strongest. It might in fact beargued that the American committee system is in some ways a deviantcase."

The nature of the congressional committee system as a feature ofAmerican government is well known. Since Woodrow Wilson characterisedcongressional committees as 'little legislatures' in 1885, their characteristicshave frequently been examined and discussed.10 Their distinctiveness, whenviewed cross-nationally, is occasionally mentioned in textbooks oncomparative politics." However, this theme has not been incorporated untilrelatively recently in multi-country studies of legislatures.

This is not the place to discuss at any length the working of Americancommittees. Their importance, their elaborate staffing, their cultures, theirreciprocity and their internal hierarchies have been discussed elsewhere.12

Nevertheless, by way of illustration, it may be useful to provide detailsabout one of their characteristics, namely the two-tier structure of nearly allof the House and Senate committees. Subcommittees are found in otherlegislatures, but those in Congress are so much more elaborate that theyprovide an exceptional example.


In 1997 there were 87 subcommittees in the House of Representativesand 68 in the Senate.13 The Committee on Education and the Workforceprovides an example of the two-tier arrangement. This committee has 45members, who provide the membership for five subcommittees. This hasmeant an average of 2.75 assignments per member, including assignmentsto the full committee and the subcommittees. Such commitments, inaddition to members' other work, are only possible with substantial support(by international standards) by professional and clerical staff at both the fullcommittee and subcommittee levels. In this situation it is common forcommittee members to devote their efforts mainly to the subcommittees ofwhich they are members and to assume that other members are doing thesame.

While such arrangements are interesting and illustrative, it is even moreinstructive to consider why American committees should be so differentfrom their counterparts in other national legislatures. In the context of thepresent focus on global patterns, why are American committeesexceptional?

In seeking an explanation, one should first turn to the party system. AsI have maintained elsewhere, when parties exert only a weak control overlegislative committees, the committees are free to develop a life of theirown and to make a strong contribution to the outputs of the legislature. Lackof party control may result from such party characteristics as weak cohesionor multi-party situations.14 David Olson has discussed the party-committeerelationship, concluding: 'Parties and committees are ... contradictory andeven mutually exclusive means of internal organization fin a legislature].The importance of each is inversely proportional to the other. The moreimportant the committees, the less important the parties, and vice versa."5

American parties normally exert sufficiently loose control over Houseand Senate committees that this circumstance provides an importantexplanation as to why US congressional committees can function as theydo.16 On the other hand, parties exert weak control over committees in thelegislatures of a number of other countries, yet their committees do notconduct themselves like American ones. Therefore, further explanations arerequired as to why congressional committees are unique.

This inquiry has taken me to the literature on American exceptionalism.A number of scholars - including Seymour Lipset, Aaron Wildavsky andRichard Rose - have provided some general ideas about Americanexceptionalism.17 While none of them mentions legislative committees, theirobservations nevertheless provide useful guidelines. There seem to be threefurther explanations for American-style committees.

First, there is the matter of anti-statism. While one finds this elsewhere,a particularly virulent strain of hostility towards public authority exists


among Americans. Entrenched in revolutionary origins and constitutionaldoctrine, its persistence is noted by Lipset:

The American public has indicated in opinion polls that it continuesto favour a divided government and a weak state. Whenever samplesof the population are asked by pollsters whether they prefer thePresident and both Houses of Congress to be controlled by one partyor divided between two, they choose the latter response by goodlymajorities.'8

This is where the committees of Congress come in. Complying with publicpreferences, their job is to hold the executive in check by exposing andexcising misguided policies, incompetence, and venality.

Second, the president and the other American political executives do notconstitute Bagehot's committee of the legislature in whom fellow membershave particular confidence. These executives operate in another place andhave their own agenda. Montesquieu would be pleased to see his separationof powers applied so vigorously for so long. The name of the game is forCongress to do what it can to overcome the numerical odds - 535 to threemillion - in the name of balance. This can only be accomplished by creatinga counter-bureaucracy centred on Capitol Hill. A crucial part of thisbalancing act consists of committees, subcommittees, and their staffs.

Third, there is comity. John Hart has suggested that an unspokenarrangement exists whereby neither the White House nor Congressinterferes with the other's staffing arrangements. 'It may be', says Hart,'that most members of Congress are reluctant to go too far in criticisingpresidential staffing practices for fear of drawing attention to their own staffexplosion.'" In practice, Congress has a relatively free hand to acquire thefinancial resources needed to operate a committee-driven counter-bureaucracy. My impression is that parliaments elsewhere do not enjoycomparable resource autonomy.

COMMITTEE CHANGE

Whether in America or elsewhere, it is widely agreed that the impact alegislature has is crucially dependent on its committee arrangements. AsMezey has noted, if a legislature is to have strong policy-making power, italso has to have a highly developed committee system generating policyexpertise.20 In order to achieve this, significant change in committeearrangements occurs in countries where the legislature seeks to play asignificant role. Because the details matter - to the executive as well as tolegislators - it is not uncommon to find relatively frequent changes rangingfrom tinkering to moving the goal posts drastically, as occurred in France in


1958. The importance of committees is made clear by the vigour with whichcommittee reform often is pursued.21

Such change is not only a matter of increased structural differentiationassociated with political development in the Third World or in emergingdemocracies in central and eastern Europe.22 It is also found in matureWestern democracies,23 where one of the most interesting changes in recentdecades needs to be identified and accounted for. This is a trend away fromad hoc arrangements and towards parliamentary committee systems that arespecialised and permanent and replicate executive departments. Thecommittee-specific contributions to Döring's valuable and up-to-date studyof 18 parliaments in western Europe provide details about this.24 Thesituation is that no fewer than six countries in western Europe have recentlymade the aforementioned transition. Britain, Denmark, Portugal and Spainestablished systems of permanent, specialised committees in the 1970s and1980s. Ireland did so in 1993, and Switzerland brought its previouslyunused specialised committees into use when reforms were effected in1991.25 By now all 18 countries have such committee arrangements in theirparliaments. In 16 cases the committees deal with legislation.26 In Britainand Ireland they are concerned with administrative oversight.27

A related development is the increased use of public hearings byparliamentary committees in western Europe.28 In some cases committeesconcerned with legislation have begun conducting hearings for the firsttime. This occurred in Belgium in 1985, in Sweden in 1989, in Finland29 andFrance in 1991, and in Greece in 1993. In Italy30 and Germany the use ofhearings, exceptional before the 1970s, has increased. Although notconcerned with legislation, the departmental select committees in Britainbegan a significant increase in public hearings in 1979.3' In parliaments witha long tradition of conducting public hearings, they are holding more ofthem. In general, the trend concerning hearings reflects a desire for fullerinformation and enhanced administrative accountability.

Let us now consider the tendency for committee jurisdictionsincreasingly to replicate those of executive departments. As several writershave suggested, such an arrangement facilitates oversight and law-makingas well as the formation of issue networks involving legislative,administrative and interest group specialists.32 Replication is not usuallyexact, and some legislatures, notably in Denmark, have narrowerjurisdictions in their committees than in their ministries. But linkages havetypically become close. The advantages in such linkages tend to precludeexcessive one-tier particularity and to ensure that subcommittees report tomore inclusive parent committees whose jurisdictions resemble those ofministries.

It is apparent that there are some instructive similarities between


legislative and executive hierarchies. If one ignores scale, they have broadlycomparable policy demarcations. They also have similar agendas at anypoint in time. In both branches of government there are advantages - as forleaders in all large organisations - in a devolved arrangement which enableslegislators and administrators to get their work done more effectivelythrough a division of labour and the encouragement of specialisation.Moreover, the arrangement enables specialists to defer to one another inaccordance with norms of reciprocity.

Yet things do not always work out this way. There is the case of France.The founders of the Fifth Republic were sufficiently disillusioned with thepowerful parliamentary committees of the Third and Fourth Republics thatthey were determined to jettison them. They had had enough of thesecommittees' 'advantages'.

The parliamentary committees that existed in France during the first sixdecades of this century are sometimes linked with those in the AmericanCongress in terms of importance. They achieved the kind of impact that oneassociates with congressional committees. In fact the French committeesprior to 1958 could accomplish things beyond what can be accomplished inthe US Congress. For example, the French committees could in effect bringdown the government." They 'could manoeuvre to upset the carefullybalanced compromises by which coalitions live'.34 In addition, theysometimes benefited from the participation of former ministers from thedepartments with which they were dealing. A variation on this theme foundthe committee chair converted from being the effective shadow minister tobecoming the real minister. As Philip Williams has said concerning theFinance Committee:

[It was] a rival centre of leadership to the cabinet: the most"governmental" committee of all in outlook, but also the mostdangerous if it decided to oppose. In the Third Republic it was accusedof being a "committee of successors". ... In the Fourth it harassed andhampered most governments ... due to rising young politicians using itas a springboard for promotion.35

Charles de Gaulle was determined to bring an end to this situation.Accordingly, the Constitution of the Fifth Republic sought drastically tocurb the committees of the National Assembly. Article 42 requires thatdiscussion of bills on the floor has to take place on the government's textrather than, as before, on a text produced by a committee. This was astraightforward change that had the desired effect although committeescould still proffer amendments during debates so long as they did not havefinancial implications.

The change incorporated in Article 43 of the French Constitution has


had a more interesting history. This provision limits to six the number ofpermanent committees in each house.36 The idea was that such cumbersomecommittees, ranging in size from 60 to 120 members, were unlikely to becentres for intrigue by specialists and lobbyists. But students of committeebehaviour will see loopholes in this scheme, and they were realised in twoways. Meetings of the committees were attended differentially by memberswith a specialist interest in the business of the day. Additionally, informalsubcommittees were set up to bring back to some extent the jurisdictions ofthe Fourth Republic. Efforts by the government to curb subcommitteedevelopment have been unsuccessful, and these subcommittees are nowofficially sanctioned. Nevertheless, the constraints on committees, togetherwith other constitutional requirements aimed at diminishing the power ofthe French Parliament, have produced changes in France at variance withthose occurring elsewhere in western Europe.

Change in Britain provides us with another interesting case. In 1979,after 700 years, the Mother of Parliaments acquired its own set ofpermanent, specialised committees replicating the Whitehall departments intheir jurisdictions. Originally consisting of 14 committees, there are now 16departmental select committees. However, unlike developments of this kindelsewhere, the select committees at Westminster are not authorised to dealwith legislation. Instead, these committees are concerned with overseeingthe departments with which they are associated and investigating relevantpolicy issues. A detailed consideration of bills after second readingcontinues to be the concern of a separate set of ad hoc committees(illogically called standing committees) unless this stage is kept on the floor,as often occurs.

It is not a simple matter to assess the impact of the departmental selectcommittees in Britain. One has to accept that their outputs arerecommendatory, that is, the committees cannot compel the government todo anything. Yet since they were created the government has notinfrequently been susceptible of persuasion. For example, the responses bythe government to recommendations from two of the committees during the1979-83 Parliament are set out in Table 1. The Education, Science and ArtsCommittee is shown to have had its recommendations accepted more thanone-quarter of the time. The Social Services Committee had even moresuccess; its recommendations were accepted more than one-third of thetime.

In view of the foregoing, it has to be concluded that the new Britishcommittees have made their mark.37 Sometimes they have persuadedgovernments to change their views - occasionally on a basic matter, moreoften on details. Yet government policy isn't everything. There is also thematter of public opinion. While the executive dominates, the battle for the

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

TABLE 1

233

REPORTS OF DEPARTMENTAL SELECT COMMITTEES IN THEBRITISH HOUSE OF COMMONS AND GOVERNMENT RESPONSES TO THEIR

RECOMMENDATIONS, 1979-83

Committee Meetings Reports Response %Accepted Kept under Review Rejected

Education,Science&Arts

Social Services

166

154

19 26.5

35.1

46.4

45.2

27.1

19.7

Source: Gavin Drewry (ed.), The New Select Committees: A Study of the 1979 Reforms, 2ndedn. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), pp.100, 249, 335 and Annex 22.2.

Note: The reports exclude special reports. These are mainly government responses tocommittee reports.

TABLE 2

PROPORTIONS OF TELEVISED SUMMARIES OF PROCEEDINGS IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENTDEVOTED TO DEPARTMENTAL SELECT COMMITTEES

Departmental select committeesOther items











'The Record'Minutes N

-

124

1213

025

025

223

619

025

322

124

520

Programme

7 May 1996

8 May

9 May

10 May

14 May

15 May

16 May

17 May

21 May

22 May

23 May

'Westminster Live'Minutes N

050

644

050

_

347

050

050

-

050


public's support in the next general election proceeds, and the selectcommittees play their part in this arena. As Michael Rush has said of theirperformance: 'Government policy and administration now comes under farmore detailed scrutiny than was the case even in the recent past, not only bysubjecting ministers and senior civil servants to much more publicquestioning, but by gathering and publishing ... oral and written evidence ...which would not otherwise be available.'38

A measure of how high a profile the departmental select committeeshave is found in Table 2. This table records the amount of time devoted tothese committees in the two television programmes which broadcast editedsummaries of proceedings in parliament, namely 'The Record' and'Westminster Live' on BBC2. The survey covers three weeks of suchbroadcasts in May 1996 and shows that 15.4 per cent of this broadcastingtime was devoted to the departmental select committees. This seems arelatively impressive level of coverage in view of the fact that thesecommittees compete for broadcasting time with all the other proceedings inthe plenary-oriented Commons and Lords as well as interviews in thetelevision studio. As for coverage of other committees during thesebroadcasts, the only instances were three minutes of the Scottish GrandCommittee and less than one minute of the Welsh Grand Committee.39

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

In their study of committees in 18 west European parliaments Mattson andStrom remarked that committees come in almost endless varieties. Theseauthors dealt with such variables as committee types, tenure, numbers, size,jurisdictions, internal devolution, leadership, degree of privacy, legislativerole, minority party membership and use of hearings. Having classifiedvarying practices under these headings, they added that 'the analyticalliterature has only managed to scratch the surface of committeearrangements ... many of the critical questions have not yet even been asked,much less answered'.40 In another contribution to the 18-nation study, inwhich he explores the impact of party on committees, Damgaard reactssimilarly, suggesting that 'a very huge number of specific nationalcircumstances and peculiarities have deliberately been ignored orsubdued'.41

It is noteworthy that Mattson, Strom and Damgaard deal only withwestern Europe. Complexity is magnified when one moves farther afield,geographically and systemically, where increased disparity can undermineefforts at generalisation.42 Some features related to legislative committeesseem to be widespread: committees are consensual; their membership in allcases I have come across is proportional to party strength in the chamber;


they facilitate expertise and encourage participation. But probing beyondsuch broad generalisations can uncover novel variations.

The need to get beyond form to discover reality is illustrated by the caseof Japan.43 Various indicators lead one to expect a strong committee systemin the Japanese Diet. The Diet has permanent, specialised committees whichare widely utilised. They are based on the American congressional model, alegacy of the post-war military occupation. In relation to the eightcommittee systems in the Lees-Shaw study, it has the most generousstaffing other than the American Congress. Nearly all of the Diet'scommittees have seven or more researchers, although, significantly, someare on loan from the relevant ministry.

Hans Baerwald, a leading authority on the Diet, has no doubt about theextent of the influence of Japanese committees. Notwithstanding theirspecialised orientations, American influence, and generous staffing:

Most committee work in the Diet is an exercise in futility. Committeeshave extended meetings. The meetings are open to the public ... andsome sessions are televised. The committees have an elaborate staff. ...They can and do call Cabinet ministers to respond to interpellations, aswell as experts to testify. They can and do conduct investigations. ...They publish their proceedings on a verbatim basis ... but theirauthority is a chimera and their accomplishments largelymeaningless.44

Why does one find this dissonance between image and reality? Baerwaldaccounts for it by describing the pre-legislative stages in policy formulationin Japan. He depicts an elaborate sequence of party and ministerialbargaining. After a bill is drafted in a Japanese ministry it is then consideredby the appropriate study group of the dominant Liberal Democratic party,which is noted for the numerous organised factions that comprise it. Thepolicy council of the party then considers it. Next it goes to the party'sexecutive council. Then it goes to the Council of Vice Ministers and finallyto the Cabinet. All this occurs before the bill is introduced in the Diet. Bythe time the bill reaches a standing committee it has been subjected to somany accommodations that it is unthinkable for the committee, where thegovernment has a disciplined majority, to alter it.

The Japanese example illustrates the difficulties one encounters whentrying to say something general about committees in legislatures. Mattsonand Stram make a commendable effort to do so, and we now return to theirefforts, commenting in particular on three theories concerning committeesthat they have adapted from other sources and which they proffer aspossible explanations concerning committee behaviour.

First, there is the idea of committees operating as instruments for


obtaining gains from trade.45 According to this theory, policy equilibrium isattainable in the context of varying preferences which may derive fromdiffering constituency interests. This scenario finds committees obtaining'property rights' over particular policy areas, with committees deferring toone another as trading ensues.

This view from the pork barrel is too American to be applicableelsewhere in a robust way, although the hypothesis should be tested in otherlegislatures. It is difficult to envisage such an arrangement in aparliamentary setting where single-party control over a majority of themembers prevails. In Japan, trading may well occur somewhere in thepolitical system, but clearly not in the Diet's standing committees.

Second, there is the idea that committees are about acquiringinformation. The emphasis here is on improving the quality of the policyprocess by realising the strengths of a large membership with differentialexpertise or potential for it. The assumption is that specialisation will beencouraged on a cost-benefit basis. If a member will incur the cost ofbecoming an expert and applying his knowledge to public problems, he willobtain respect and deference in exchange. 'The trick for the legislature as awhole', according to Mattson and Strom, 'is to generate an incentivestructure that induces members to take the trouble of acquiring expertise'.46

This goes to the heart of organisational devolution. One not only enhancesthe quantity of the outputs but also the quality. This explanation for thefunctioning of committees in legislatures seems highly plausible. At thesame time, the specifics vary.

To illustrate how expertise can be organised, the example of the GermanBundestag is instructive. In Germany information is marshalled through adistinctive style of interaction between committees of the Bundestag andcommittees of the major parties, all of which are specialised on policy lines.The committees of the parties and the Bundestag constitute parallelstructures whose experts interact with an unusual degree of symmetry. Partycommittees for the three main parties meet on Monday. A striking featureabout these party committees is that their work is thorough; they formsubcommittees; receive evidence; and meet with ministers, civil servantsand spokesmen for interest groups. Party executives and plenary partycaucuses then meet on Tuesday. The Bundestag and its committees meet onWednesday, Thursday and Friday. Thus, having met in their party groups todetermine policies and tactics, members converge in Bundestag committeesto deal with issues during meetings where genuine give-and-take onsubstantive points occurs. A consequence of this arrangement for theBundestag is that less time is spent in floor sessions than is usual in othercomparable parliaments. On the other hand, the policy outputs are broadlybased.47


The third idea about why committees function as they do has to do withwhat Mattson and Strom call 'partisan coordination'. According to thistheory, strong committees are an instrument of party leaders. Where there isstrong party leadership, so it is argued, the leaders exercise their authoritythrough strong committees in the legislature. This view has been putforward by Gary Cox and Matthew McCubbins, who mainly have in minda recent phase of strong influence by party leaders in the US House ofRepresentatives.48

There is a definitional problem here, namely what is a strongcommittee? This author's view of this is that a strong committee in alegislature is one that has a significant independent impact on public affairs.Apart from the exceptional circumstances of Capitol Hill, domination ofparliamentary committees by the leadership of a single governing party hastended to mean a constricted impact by the committees, as in Japan andBritain. In general, partisan co-ordination, Washington style, does not seemto provide a widespread example.

COMMITTEES IN THE THIRD WORLD

It is difficult to achieve a global perspective on committees withoutconsidering their roles in Third World legislatures, to which the rest of thisarticle is devoted. Here we are dealing with more than 100 countries inAfrica, Asia and Latin America where one finds a disproportionately highincidence of economic underdevelopment, dependence and poverty;adverse social statistics on such matters as educational attainment and lifeexpectancy; and a heritage, with a few exceptions, of colonialism. Yet, ifinformation on the complexities of committee arrangements in someindustrial countries is sketchy, the problem is magnified in the developingcountries where data is sparse and the settings range from stable democracyto tyranny.49

Notwithstanding such variation, the national legislature as an institutionis ubiquitous. In 1973 Blondel found that only five countries, all in theMiddle East, had never had a legislature.50 While legislatures in the ThirdWorld are sometimes abolished or suspended by authoritarian rulers, theytend in due course to be reinstated as a symbol of regime legitimacy. In thiscontext, what kind of legislative settings are provided for their committees?One has to say that the typical Third World legislature is not intended toplay a very important part in governing arrangements. Although Packenhamand others have advised us that such an intention does not preclude theperformance of significant functions by legislatures such as mobilisationand recruitment, this commonly occurs within a framework of dominationby authoritarian, often military, leaders."


In order to provide a framework for analysis it is useful to considervarious efforts to classify legislatures. Polsby has depicted a 'continuum oflegislative power', with independent 'transformative legislatures' at oneend and 'legislative arenas' at the other.52 Blondel has grouped legislatureson four levels in accordance with their influence within the politicalsystem." Weinbaum has set out a typology of five classes of legislaturesbased on relations with the executive. They are: co-ordinate, subordinate,submissive, indeterminate and competitive-dominant.54 At one end ofPolsby's continuum are 'legislative arenas' in which members are soconstrained by the executive or the ruling party that they exercise littleindependent authority. Where Blondel sees the 'lowest influence', there isonly a small amount of activity during infrequent meetings of thelegislature. As for Weinbaum's 'submissive' legislatures, they 'are withoutpurpose or program'; they 'neither modify laws nor provide a setting for thecareful consideration of alternative policies'. Legislatures to which theforegoing descriptions apply are commonplace in the Third World.

If legislatures in the Third World tend to be constrained, low in influenceand short of purpose and programme, one would not expect the committeeswithin them to amount to much. Devolving work on sub-units is normallylinked, as has been suggested, with expanding the capacity, effectivenessand impact of the legislature. If Third World legislatures which aredominated by authoritarian rulers perform a modest role, it would seemlikely that their committees must do the same. Writing in the 1970s,Weinbaum found this to be the case with 'submissive' legislatures:

The centralized structure of submissive chambers leaves little roomfor competent legislative committees. The job of a committee [in asubmissive legislature] is to educate and exhort rather than to producea set of experts to parallel those in the ministries. Whether because ofmembership turnover or assignment procedures, most submissivelegislatures turn out few committee veterans.55

Blondel, on the other hand, is not so sure. He acknowledges that inlegislatures of the lowest influence we know little about their committeesbut he suspects that, in the privacy of these institutions, group influence ondetailed matters may have an importance which is absent in plenarymeetings.56

DISCONTINUITY

A factor which cannot help but detract from the effectiveness of committeesis discontinuity. One reason why the Ways and Means Committee in the USHouse of Representatives and the Public Accounts Committee in the British


House of Commons are so important is that they have been around since1795 and 1861 respectively. In contrast there is often severe discontinuity inThird World committees due to regime, personal and legal factors.

As far as regime discontinuity is concerned, a recent study has shownthat between 1960 and 1990 one-third of the states in the Third Worldexperienced more than 20 years of military rule. Another one-thirdexperienced lesser periods of military rule, leaving only one-third of thesenations with no experience of military government.57 All parts of the ThirdWorld have seen regime discontinuity, with constitutional and non-constitutional phases succeeding one another. Such sequences have beenaccompanied by numerous suspensions and reinstatements of legislativeauthority.58 A study of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis), which was created in1906, traces its history up to 1971. During this 65-year period five'legislative eras' existed amid bombing of the Majlis and physical threatsagainst deputies by mobs.59 An extreme example of discontinuity arose inBurma in 1947 when the leader of the opposition arranged for the entirecabinet to be assassinated in the belief that he would then be invited to formthe next administration. Instead he was hanged.60

Discontinuity in committee membership is a logical consequence ofhigh turnover in the chamber. In Latin American countries, for example, ahigh proportion of members tend to be renewed in each election. Also,motivation on the part of legislators may be low, with membership of thelegislature commonly seen as a staging post in a political career, not adestination. The end result is often a conspicuous lack of expertise on thepart of committee members, a tendency reinforced by high absenteeism anderratic meetings. Some committees never meet.

The matter does not end with the aforementioned dimensions ofdiscontinuity. Such tendencies are accentuated by formal requirements ofhigh turnover. Members of some Latin American congresses are affected bysuch requirements. Costa Rica has the longest unbroken' record of stabledemocracy in Latin America, beginning with the conclusion of a civil warin 1949. But its democracy is associated with legislative term limits of twokinds. First, members of Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly are prohibitedby law from serving consecutive terms. Even more drastically, Costa Ricanlegislators are required by tradition to rotate committee chairs and otherleadership positions in the Assembly annually.

Studies of Latin American legislatures show that formal requirementsand informal traditions of rapid turnover are widespread." In addition to theturnover requirements already mentioned, one finds procedures wherebypresiding officers, chamber directorates, members of committees, and evencommittee staffs must change annually. It is significant that the short-termcommittee staff officials are often seconded temporarily from executive


departments. It is also significant that the exceptional case of Chile, whereWestern-style continuity of committee members and committee staffs isusual, is considered historically to have the most powerful legislature inLatin America. More will be said later about the Chilean Congress. Fornow, it can be noted that discontinuity in most Latin American legislaturesimpedes the acquisition of specialist knowledge and expertise by committeemembers and staffs. According to Loewenberg and Patterson, the one-termtradition in Latin America 'prevents parliament from being an independentforce in politics'.62

An example of discontinuity in a legislature in another region isprovided by Iran, where the Majlis followed a practice of assigningmembers to its committees by lot. This procedure obviously inhibits thedevelopment of expertise.

THE TRADITIONAL THIRD WORLD

It would be useful to draw together some of the foregoing generalisations aswell as new ones by looking at specific countries. First, settings which seemrepresentative of the Third World and which are therefore designated astraditional Third World examples are examined, followed by settings whichare less representative but which are nevertheless illuminating. The firstcategory consists of examples from Latin America (Colombia), Africa(Kenya), and the Middle East (Lebanon). The second category consists ofexamples from Latin America (Chile) and Asia (India).

A rare example of field research on the committee system of a ThirdWorld legislature exists in relation to Colombia. This research wasproduced by James Payne, who deals with the Colombian Congress in thelate 1960s." He depicts a committee system whose input into the policyprocess is modest.

Committee activity generally takes the form of (1) acrimoniousdebates scarcely connected with policy matters, as twenty or thirtycongressmen make political attacks, or (2) boring rubber-stampsessions in which a few stout-hearted congressmen sit through areading of some document and drearily vote unanimous approval. Inshort, Colombian committees are not policy-making bodies ... theirmembers do not wish to make policy.64

When Payne wrote, there were seven standing committees in eachchamber of the Colombian Congress. The workload on committee memberswas not arduous. Some committees never met; others met only a few timeseach session. Payne estimates that the average congressman spent about onehour a week in committee meetings. Witnesses were rarely called to give


evidence. Investigations were not conducted. Committee staffs were modest- usually a secretary and two typists. Congressmen had no office and nosecretary. Specialist knowledge was quite limited, and there was littleinterest in legislative detail. At the floor level, debates not infrequentlyfeatured zambra (physical violence), with observers in the galleriescheering and shouting down speakers. In summary, Payne found theColombian Congress superficial and demagogic. In line with LatinAmerican practice, the Colombian congressmen did not stay around forlong. There was a high rate of turnover, with only about 20 per cent of themembers serving consecutive terms.

In Kenya, committees in the single-chamber National Assembly werefound to play an even less prominent role than those in Colombia. This isperhaps not surprising since Kenya had had less time to develop politically,having achieved its independence 144 years later than Colombia. It followsthat Kenya is also less integrated socially and economically than Colombia.A further factor is Kenya's colonial connection with the Westminstertradition of weak parliamentary committees.

As a consequence of the foregoing, the committee system in the KenyanNational Assembly is very rudimentary. Legislation, appropriations and taxmeasures are all dealt with by the full membership on the floor. This meansthat there is a severe shortage of time available to members. The alleviationof the time constraint which a Western-style system of standing committeesprovides is missing. Consequently, the most important committee in theAssembly is the Sessional Committee, which makes crucial determinationsof the order in which business is dealt with on the floor. There is also aPublic Accounts Committee, which meets regularly and audits governmentexpenditure, and select committees which are sometimes appointed to dealwith specific issues and occasionally to conduct investigations.

Loewenberg and Patterson commented concerning Kenya:

The Kenyan National Assembly, with its fragmentary committeesystem and dominant party leadership, falls at one end of the range ofpossibilities. The very limited influence of this parliament on policymaking is clearly related to the weakness of its committees and to thepowerful role played by the leaders of the only permitted party.65

Further signs of legislative weakness of Kenya's National Assembly canbe mentioned. Members tend to be weak in the depth and breadth of theirspecialist knowledge. Facilities and services, including staffing, are modest.Direct criticism of the government's policies is avoided, leaving the detailsof policy implementation and constituency issues as the main concerns ofmembers. Yet one can be too dismissive of what is achieved. Where nationalunity is weak, as in Kenya, a unifying and legitimising instrument such as a


national parliament has utility even by existing. The alternative wasindicated in the early 1990s when tribal clashes in the western provincesclaimed thousands of lives and left tens of thousands homeless.

In Lebanon one finds a country which is even less unified than Kenya. Itsreligious and ethnic cleavages are as profound as any in the world. This hasmeant that little attempt is made to find common ground. An overridinghistoric principle has been to moderate and contain differences. As oneobserver of Lebanese politics has said: 'The system has not been built onconsensus but on accommodation.'66 Holding the country together as a singlegoverning entity, whenever possible, is considered to be achievement enough.

Accordingly, by agreement, the top political offices, from president ondown, have traditionally been allocated to different religious groups so as toensure balance. Likewise, in elections to the Chamber of Deputies, balancehas been sought by a law allocating seats to the various religiouscommunities, with, for example, a Maronite Christian running against aMaronite Christian. Groups are also to be represented proportionately in theCouncil of Ministers and the public service.

In this context what is the role for the Chamber of Deputies and itscommittees? Like James Payne, Ralph Crow has provided us with a pictureof a committee system in a Third World legislature around 1970." Crowdepicts Lebanese deputies as experiencing a situation not unlike that of theircounterparts in Colombia and Kenya: infrequent meetings, modestexpertise, meagre support resources and a dominant executive. PlacingCrow's findings in a broader perspective, Kornberg and Musolf conclude ofthe Chamber of Deputies: 'Its overt performance tends to be so desultorythat little status is ascribed to it as an organization.'68 Crow found thatdeputies were holding plenary meetings only 44 days each year, withquorums painstakingly achieved only after long delays.

During the period under examination, the eight standing committees inthe Lebanese Chamber of Deputies replicated executive jurisdictions andthere was reasonable continuity of committee membership. However, thedistribution of work among the committees was very uneven in that theBudget and Finance Committee handled all bills having a financial aspect,which meant most of them. This left the other committees with a shortfallof bills. In general, a lack of specialist knowledge by committee membersand the prominent involvement by ministers and civil servants in their workresulted in a very weak input by the committees, with the government beingauthorised, from time to time, to issue decree laws.

DEMOCRACY IN THE THIRD WORLD

Despite recent significant advances of démocratisation, the political systemsin the Third World have historically been mainly authoritarian. They may


have had democratic arrangements when independence was gained; theymay call themselves democratic; they may be under pressure from aiddonors to move in a democratic direction. But their governing systems, atleast in past decades, typically have embodied predominantly authoritarianfeatures which include a weak legislature with an underdevelopedcommittee system.

Yet there are also countries - increasing in numbers recently - whoseeconomic and social characteristics place them in the Third World but whoalso govern themselves democratically. A handful of such countries havebeen democratic continuously since attaining independence, namely India,Papua New Guinea, Botswana, Mauritius and several island states in theCaribbean. The Gambia was part of this select group until a military coupended 29 years of multi-party democracy in 1994. Various reasons havebeen suggested to explain these cases, but there is an absence ofagreement.69 One theory is that very small countries have a better chance ofexperiencing stable democracy than larger countries where socialcomplexity and cleavages make its achievement more difficult, but Indiacannot be explained in this way. There is also the case of Singapore, a verysmall country with authoritarian rule combined with legendary economicsuccess. A 'global competitiveness report' issued by the World EconomicForum in 1997 places Singapore first in the world in its economic rankorder.70

A much larger category of Third World democracies than continuousones are intermittent democracies. One of the latter is Chile. Although itspolitical culture is so strongly democratic that the intermittency label maybe misleading, the 17-year span of military rule under General Pinochetfrom 1973 to 1990 cannot be brushed aside.

Compared with former colonies in Africa and Asia, those in LatinAmerica have had a much longer period of independence. With itsindependence achieved by 1818, a new constitution in 1833 set Chile on thepath to democracy. A competitive multi-party system developed, andproportional representation was adopted. The powerful legislature whichbecame established in Chile in the nineteenth century is reminiscent ofthatof the French Parliament during the Third and Fourth Republics. At timesthere was something close to government by Congress. As an authorityconcluded of Chilean government in the 1950s: 'The center of power hasvirtually been transferred from the president to legislature.'71

Since a powerful legislature normally realises its potential throughstructural differentiation, it is not surprising that the committees in theChilean Congress are strong and well developed. They have not onlyprovided Chileans with procedures for rigorous administrative oversightand a review of the details of legislation, but they have also fulfilled a raredecisional role beyond what one finds in many parliaments in industrial


democracies. The committees in Chile often provide a major input into thesubstance of legislation, some of which originates in Congress. This occursin both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Riders are appendedliberally. Budgets are altered. Committees pigeonhole bills. One studyfound pigeonholing to be the fate of more than one-third of the bills referredto Senate committees in the 1960s.72

Weston Agor's study of the Chilean Senate includes an analysis of thetime taken to pass eight key administration bills.73 The average number ofdays spent in committee per bill was 73 while the average number of daysspent on the floor was 19. Put another way, 84 per cent of the time spent onthe average bill was in committee; 16 per cent on the floor. This dominantrole for committees in Chile contrasts markedly with their position intraditional Third World legislatures. The Chilean Congress has a committeesystem more like that in the American Congress than elsewhere in the ThirdWorld. For example, the executive in Chile often fails to get his way; thenon-presidential party often controls at least one of the houses;compromises are commonly struck; there is a high level of continuity ofcommittee members and staff; staff provision is generous by Third Worldstandards; and norms of expertise and specialisation prevail when membersare allocated to committees.

However, this situation produces strains. While Chile has one of themore developed economies in the Third World, there is neverthelessimbalance: Chile is more developed politically than economically.Between 1932 and 1970 competition between the executive and Congressled to no administration succeeding in securing re-election. Each presidentsaw his political backing evaporate before the end of his term. Thisdiscontinuity ended with the Pinochet coup in 1973.74 Commenting on thecoup, an authority on democracy in the Third World said: 'In Chile,political structures that had facilitated political participation proved toomuch of a threat to elites. Elites and populist demands could not becompromised.'75

India provides a different kind of Third World democracy from theexample found in Chile. While American influence can be seen in theChilean Congress, the Westminster tradition is prominent in India. WhileChilean democracy was interrupted, India has enjoyed continuousdemocracy since its independence in 1947, although restrictions imposed in1975-77 when Indira Gandhi was prime minister gave cause for concern.While legislative assertiveness was brought to a halt in Chile in 1973, the'emergency' in India was met with a firm rejection of Mrs Gandhi'spreviously invincible Congress party in the election of 1977.

Authorities on the Third World have noted that India, like Chile, had theadvantage of a long historical development towards democracy. While


democratic institutions tended to be imposed rapidly and superficially onAfrican colonies, there was a measured and gradual 'nativisation' of thecivil service and other aspects of political life in India, as there was in onlya few other Third World democracies such as Jamaica, Trinidad andTobago, and the Philippines. Indigenous political parties came on the sceneearly in these countries. The Congress Party in India was founded in 1885.Even partition, however painful, was functional in democratic terms sincePakistan has proved much less receptive culturally to democracy than India.

A number of other explanations have been offered to account for thesurvival of Westminster-style parliamentary democracy in India, despite thepoverty in which one-third of its people live. The complexity of grouppatterns involving linguistic, religious, regional and caste cleavages hasresulted in a heterogeneity that avoids the dichotomous divisions of Canada,Belgium and Northern Ireland. Moreover, central political control isrestricted in the federal arrangement, with diversity so profound that inter-group compromises and moderation have become the norm. It has also beenargued that there is less at stake for elites in political outcomes in India thanelsewhere.76 Finally, the quality of political leadership can be mentioned.India benefited from the early guidance of Nehru and others committed torepresentative government and social improvement.

Subhash Kashyap has written about the committee system in the IndianLok Sabha.77 He depicts an arrangement with striking similarities to thecommittee system in the British House of Commons before the reform atWestminster in 1979 which produced the departmental select committees.At the same time, there are significant differences. The absence ofcommittees overseeing the individual executive departments in India is animportant difference. Such scrutiny is provided in the Lok Sabha by threefinancial committees - the Public Accounts Committee, the EstimatesCommittee and the Committee on Public Undertakings. These are the mostimportant standing committees in the Lok Sabha, and they provide a morethorough oversight than is usually found in Third World legislatures.

As far as legislation is concerned, the Lok Sabha, like the British Houseof Commons, appoints a new ad hoc committee to take the committee stagefor each bill dealt with off the floor. But there is a difference. Most bills inthe House of Commons go to ad hoc committees whereas only a smallproportion of them do so in the Lok Sabha. During the Lok Sabha sessionthat ended in 1970, 216 bills were passed, but only 25 had been referred toa committee. The others were taken through all their stages on the floor. Itis obvious that the Lok Sabha devotes less time to scrutinising legislationthan occurs at Westminster. However, in one vital respect the committees onlegislation are similar in the two parliaments: changes made in bills incommittees are normally ones that are acceptable to the government.


A further difference is that the specialised committees of the dominantCongress Party in India play a more important role than is the case withparty committees at Westminster. Kashyap considers the party committeesto be more important than the Lok Sabha committees in relation to policymaking, a tendency which reminds one of the Japanese Diet.

Generally speaking, while the Lok Sabha is not a strong legislativechamber and the outputs of its committees are far less important than thoseproduced in Chile, the Indian legislature provides a profoundly importantservice. It serves as a focus for national integration in one of the world'smost heterogeneous countries. While there is a high turnover of Lok Sabhamembers, it is common for most of them to have university degrees. Incontrast, when Congo (formerly Zaire) was granted its independence in1960, there were only 16 university graduates in a population of 13million.78

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Kashyap has remarked, 'A legislature is known by the committees it keeps'.Until recently, the committees found in legislatures in the Third Worldtypically accorded with a generalisation about them by Blondel: 'Outsidewestern countries, the committee system is usually not well developed. Inmany Third World states, few committees exist and those which do meetinfrequently.'79

It appears that this situation is changing in view of the recent increase inthe incidence of democracy in the Second and Third Worlds. As Pinkneynotes in his study of democracy in the Third World: 'A book on democracyin the Third World would have been a very short book if it had been written20 years ago'. Writing in 1993, he continues:

Today virtually all the governments of Latin America have beenchosen by means of competitive elections. In Asia, South Korea,Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand and Nepal have all emerged frommilitary or personal rule. In Africa, 25 of the 41 nations have heldcontested elections during the past five years or expect to do so in thenear future.... The transformation of so much of the world in so shorta time is remarkable.80

As has been found in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, theoncoming of democracy requires the development of institutions associatedwith self-government. This means the development of political parties,interest groups and a national legislature.81 Such institutions may alreadyexist in new democracies, but they need reorienting and elaborating. Thelegislature is a particularly vital part of this reordering for both substantive


and symbolic reasons. As Olson and Mezey have said, 'the strength of anation's legislature is often viewed as directly related to the strength ofthatnation's commitment to democratic procedures'.82

In order to examine the consequences for legislative committees ofdémocratisation it is illuminating to examine recent developments in Asia.The Philippines is an obvious starting point since it is back in business witha strong congressional committee system following the interruption of theMarcos dictatorship from 1972 to 1986." The situation in the Philippinesbears obvious similarities to that in Chile, where an interregnum occurred atabout the same time in a context of developmental tension.

Gordon Hein's study of various Asian legislatures provides valuableinsights concerning committee development in the region.84 He presents apicture of country after country expanding the capacity of its parliamentarycommittees either to achieve congruence with a new democratic order or inanticipation of possible movement in that direction:

As legislatures in many Asian countries have taken on a greater rolein lawmaking, policy formulation, and budgetary oversight, the needfor an effective, well-functioning committee structure has expandeddramatically. ... It is hoped that through effective and well-staffedcommittee operations, it will be possible to achieve a much more in-depth level of discussion and analysis of policy issues.8S

Hein also reports a perception that committees are seen as settings in whichissues can be addressed in a more reasoned and issue-focused manner thanon the floor.

Thus we have come full circle. As was noted earlier, parliamentarycommittee change - in particular through structural differentiation - ishappening in the First World. So, too, is change — particularly thedevelopment of parliamentary committee infrastructure - happening in theThird World.86 Fiji builds a new parliament building. Indonesia addscomputers to its committee operations. Library and research services areenhanced in Taiwan and South Korea. Parliament in Pakistan gives greaterindependence to its committees. As Hein says, the days of the passive,rubber stamp legislature in Asia may be numbered. Further, this pattern ofnew and more meaningful parliamentary committee roles appears to be aglobal development.

NOTES

1. J.D. Lees and M. Shaw (eds.), Committees in Legislatures: A Comparative Analysis(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979).

2. K.C. Wheare, Government by Committee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955).


3. W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Collins-Fontana, 1963), pp.152-3.4. Bagehot, The English Constitution, p.66.5. A. King, 'Modes of Executive-Legislative Relations: Great Britain, France, and West

Germany', Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol.1 (1976), p.11.6. Additional to this, of course, are the 30 new studies of parliamentary committees, ranging

from Russia to South Africa and from Korea to the United States, collected in the just-published book, L. Longley and A. Ágh (eds.), Working Papers on Comparative LegislativeStudies II: The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees (Appleton, WI: ResearchCommittee of Legislative Specialists, 1997).

7. J. da Silva Ochoa (ed.), Las Comisiones Parlamentarias (Vitoria: Parlamento Vasco, 1994).8. H. Döring (ed.), Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin's

Press, 1996).9. Lees and Shaw, Committees in Legislatures, p.387; also quoted in da Silva Ochoa, Las

Comisiones Parlamentarias, p.65.10. A leading recent study is S. Smith and C. Deering, Committees in Congress (3rd edn.,

Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1997). Congressional committees as agents of reconciliation betweenthe US House and Senate are examined in L. Longley and W. Oleszek, Bicameral Politics:Conference Committees in Congress (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1989).

11. See, for example, A. Ranney, The Governing of Men (4th edn., Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press,1975), pp.364-5.

12. See, in particular, C.C. Campbell and R.H. Davidson, 'U.S. Congressional Committees:Changing Legislative Workshops', this publication.

13. 'Players, Politics and Turf of the 105th Congress', Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report(22 March 1997), Supplement.

14. M. Shaw, 'Conclusion', in Lees and Shaw, Committees in Legislatures, pp.391-8.15. D. Olson, The Legislative Process: A Comparative Approach (New York: Harper and Row, 1980),

p.269. See also J. Owens, 'Curbing the Fiefdoms: Party-Committee Relations in the ContemporaryU.S. House of Representatives', in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers on Comparative LegislativeStudies II: The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees, pp.183-98.

16. For an alternative assessment stressing recent congressional developments, see J. Unekis andJ. Franke, 'The Resurgence of Partisanship in Committees of the U.S. House ofRepresentatives', in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative StudiesII: The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees, pp.355-74.

17. B. Shafer (ed.), Is America Different? A New Look at American Exceptionalism (Oxford:Clarendon, 1991).

18. Shafer, Is America Different?, p.8.19. J. Hart, The Presidential Branch (New York: Pergamon, 1987), p.171.20. M. Mezey, Comparative Legislatures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), p.64.21. See, for example, R. Hazan, 'Political Reform and the Committee System in Israel:

Structural and Functional Adaptation', this publication.22. See A. Ágh, 'Changing Parliamentary Committees in Changing East-Central Europe:

Parliamentary Committees as Central Sites of Policy-Making'; and D. Olson et al.,'Committees in the Post-Communist Polish Sejm: Structure, Activity and Members', both inthis publication; and N. Biryukov and V. Sergeyev, 'The Political Role of StandingCommittees of the Russian Supreme Soviet, 1990-93'; G. Ilonszki, 'Some External andInternal Dimensions of Parliamentary Committees in Hungary: Western ResearchFrameworks and Central European Experiences'; and D. Zajc, 'Functions and Powers of theCommittees in the New Parliaments: Comparisons Between the East Central and WestCentral European Countries', each in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers on ComparativeLegislative Studies II: The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees, pp.471-504.

23. See, for example, V. Delia Sala, 'The Italian Parliamentary Committees: From DemocraticConsolidation to Decision-Making', pp.407-22; J. Halligan, J. Power and R. Miller, 'Rolesof Parliamentary Committees: A Development Perspective on the Australian System',pp.221-38; and C.E.S. Franks, 'Constraints on the Operations and Reform of ParliamentaryCommittees in Canada', pp. 199-208; each in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers onComparative Legislative Studies II: The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees. A


more theoretical cross-national perspective on parliamentary change is provided in L.Longley, 'Parliaments as Changing Institutions and as Agents of Regime Change: EvolvingPerspectives and a New Research Framework', Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol.2, No.2(Summer 1996), pp.21-43.

24. I. Mattson and K. Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees', and E. Damgaard, 'How PartiesControl Committee Members', in Döring, Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe.

25. For a study of the Swiss changes, see R. Lüthi, 'The Reform of the Committee System of theSwiss Parliament in 1991: The Influence of Institutional Factors and CommitteeDifferences', in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies II:The Changing Roles of Parliamentary Committees, pp.423-40.

26. They may or may not deal with other matters as well.27. Concerning the British instance, see P. Norton, 'Nascent Institutionalisation: Committees in

the British Parliament', this publication.28. Mattson and Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees', pp.294-5. See also the revised and updated

version of this study: K. Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees in European Democracies', thispublication; as well as Y. Mény, Government and Politics in Western Europe: Britain,France, Italy, Germany (2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.207.

29. See M. Wiberg and M. Mattila, 'Committee Careers in the Finnish Parliament, 1945-1994',in Longley and Ágh, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies II: The ChangingRoles of Parliamentary Committees, pp.167-80.

30. See Delia Sala, 'The Italian Parliamentary Committees'.31. See Norton, 'Nascent Institutionalisation: Committees in the British Parliament'.32. Mattson and Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees', p.270. See also K. Strøm, Minority

Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.71.33. It could conceivably be argued that the Ervin Committee in the Senate and the Judiciary

Committee in the House brought down the Nixon government, but the analogy is a loose one.34. P. Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (London: Longman,

1964), p.242.35. Williams, Crisis and Compromise, pp.252-3.36. It is interesting that, specifically following the French example, Greece established six

permanent committees in its parliament with broad responsibilities.37. For further assessment of the changing roles of British parliamentary committees, see

Norton, 'Nascent Institutionalisation: Committees in the British Parliament'.38. Da Silva Ochoa, Las Comisiones Parlamentarias, pp.200-201 (translation).39. This survey was conducted by the author. Further evidence of public interest in the select

committees is found in the practice of the BBC of broadcasting on the radio each week a halfhour summary of their proceedings.

40. Mattson and Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees', p.303. See also the updated and revisedconclusions in Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees in European Democracies'.

41. Damgaard, 'How Parties Control Committee Members', p.321.42. A good starting place for such global perspective is the scholarly essays contained in the just-

published massive international parliamentary reference work, G. Kurian (ed.), WorldEncyclopedia of Parliaments and Legislatures (Washington, DC: Congressional QuarterlyBooks, 1997), 2 vols.

43. See also the geographically linked study of Asian parliamentary committees provided in C.Park, 'The Organization and Workings of Committees in the Korean National Assembly',this publication.

44. H. Baerwald, 'Committees in the Japanese Diet', in Lees and Shaw, Committees inLegislatures, pp.345-6.

45. This theory is discussed in K. Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organization (AnnArbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991); K. Shepsle and B. Weingast, 'PositiveTheories of Congressional Institutions', Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol.19 (1994),pp.149-79; and K. Shepsle, The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle: Democratic Committee Assignmentsin the Modern House (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

46. Mattson and Strøm, 'Parliamentary Committees', p.254.47. N. Johnson, 'Committees in the West German Bundestag', in Lees and Shaw, Committees in


Legislatures, pp. 102-47.48. G. Cox and M. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).49. For reflections on cross-national parliamentary developments in Third World regimes, see J.

Hibbing and L. Longley, 'On Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and NewlyDemocratic Regimes', in L. Longley (ed.), Working Papers on Comparative LegislativeStudies J: The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and Newly DemocraticRegimes (Appleton, WI: Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, 1994), pp.3-11; L.Longley and A. Ágh, 'On the Changing Nature of Parliamentary Committees', in Longleyand Ágh, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies II: The Changing Roles ofParliamentary Committees, pp.2-14; and L. Longley and D. Zajc, 'The First Years of theNew Democratic Parliaments', in L. Longley and D. Zajc (eds.), Working Papers onComparative Legislative Studies III: The New Democratic Parliaments - The First Years(Appleton, WI: Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, 1998).

50. J. Blondel, Comparative Legislatures (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p.7.51. R. Packenham, 'Legislatures and Political Development', in A. Komberg and L. Musolf

(eds.), Legislatures in Developmental Perspective (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,1970), pp.521-82.

52. N. Polsby, 'Legislatures', in F. Greenstein and N. Polsby (eds.), Handbook of PoliticalScience (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), p.277, vol.5.

53. Blondel, Comparative Legislatures, pp. 137-9. See also J. Blondel, ComparativeGovernment (2nd edn., London: Prentice-Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995), p.249.

54. M. Weinbaum, 'Classification and Change in Legislative Systems: With ParticularApplication to Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan', in G. Boynton and C. Kim (eds.), LegislativeSystems in Developing Countries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1975), pp.35-43.

55. Weinbaum, 'Classification and Change in Legislative Systems', p.40.56. Blondel, Comparative Legislatures, p.137.57. B. Smith, Understanding Third World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1996), p.16.58. For examples of Argentina and Turkey, see D. Ferreira Rubio and M. Doretti, 'The

Emergency and the Relationship Between the Executive and the Congress During PresidentMenem's Administration in Argentina: Use and Misuse of Prerogative Powers', and Ö.Gençkaya, 'Consolidation of or Resistance to Democracy: Redemocratization and theTurkish Grand National Assembly', each in Longley, Working Papers on ComparativeLegislative Studies I: The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and NewlyDemocratic Regimes, pp.133-48 and 321-34.

59. Weinbaum, 'Classification and Change in Legislative Systems', p.47. See also J. Bill, 'ThePolitics of Legislative Monarchy: The Iranian Majlis', in H. Hirsch and D. Hancock (eds.),Comparative Legislative Systems (New York: Free Press, 1971), pp.360-69.

60. C. Clapham, Third World Politics (London: Routledge, 1990), p.67.61. See A. Rosenbaum and G. Reed, 'The Development of Legislative Bodies as Institutions of

Democracy in Central America: Some Participant Observations'; and P. Rundquist and C.Wellborn, 'Building Legislatures in Latin America'; both in Longley, Working Papers onComparative Legislative Studies I: The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments inDemocratizing and Newly Democratic Regimes, pp.373-405.

62. G. Loewenberg and S. Patterson, Comparing Legislatures (Boston, MA: Little, Brown,1979), p.22.

63. J. Payne, 'The Colombian Congress', in Hirsch and Hancock, Comparative LegislativeSystems, pp.176-87.

64. Payne, 'The Colombian Congress', p.181.65. Loewenberg and Patterson, Comparing Legislatures, p.211. See also N. Stultz, 'The National

Assembly in the Politics of Kenya', in Kornberg and Musolf, Legislatures in DevelopmentalPerspective, pp.303-33; and R. Hopkins, 'The Kenyan Legislature: Political Functions andCitizen Perceptions', in Boynton and Kim, Legislative Systems in Developing Countries,pp.207-31.

66. R. Crow, 'Parliament in the Lebanese Political System', in Kornberg and Musolf,Legislatures in Developmental Perspective, pp.273-302.

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 2 5 ]

67. Crow, 'Parliament in the Lebanese Political System'.68. A. Kornberg and L. Musolf, 'On Legislatures in Developmental Perspective', in Kornberg

and Musolf, Legislatures in Developmental Perspective, p. 11.69. For a discussion of 'continuous democracies' in the Third World, see R. Pinkney, Democracy

in the Third World (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993), pp.81-100.70. The Guardian, 21 May, 1997, p.3.71. R. Scott, 'Legislatures and Legislation', in H. Davis (ed.), Government and Politics in Latin

America (New York, 1958), p.331.72. W. Agor, 'The Senate in the Chilean Political System', in Kornberg and Musolf, Legislatures

in Developmental Perspective, p.243.73. Agor, 'The Senate in the Chilean Political System', pp.246-7.74. P. Cammack, D. Pool and W. Tordoff, Third World Politics (2nd edn., London: Macmillan,

1993), p. 116. See also Blondel, Comparative Government, p.251.75. Pinkney, Democracy in the Third World, p.74.76. J. Manor, 'How and Why Liberal and Representative Politics Emerged in India', Political

Studies, Vol. 38 (1990), p.21.77. S. Kashyap, 'Committees in the Indian Lok Sabha', in Lees and Shaw, Committees in

Legislatures, pp.288-324.78. Cammack et al., Third World Politics, pp.60-61.79. Blondel, Comparative Government, p.261.80. Pinkney, Democracy in the Third World, p.1.81. See U. Liebert, 'The Politics of Parliamentary Institutionalization in New Democracies:

Comparative Perspectives on Germany, Southern, and Eastern Europe' and B. Rasch,'Parliamentarism and Legislative Dominance: Democratic Institutionalization in Europe';both in Longley and Zajc, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies III: The NewDemocratic Parliaments - The First Years.

82. D. Olson and M. Mezey (eds.), Legislatures in the Policy Process: The Dilemmas ofEconomic Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.xi-xii.

83. For a discussion of the committee system just before the Marcos takeover, see R. Jackson,'Committees in the Philippine Congress', in Lees and Shaw, Committees in Legislatures,pp. 148-90; and R. Stauffer, 'Congress in the Philippine Political System', in Kornberg andMusolf, Legislatures in Developmental Perspective, pp.334-65. See also S. Reyes and V.Perez-Corral, 'Sectoral Representation in the Eighth Philippine Congress: Traditional vs.Alternative Polities', in Longley, Working Papers on Comparative Legislative Studies I: TheRole of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and Newly Democratic Regimes,pp.67-86.

84. G. Hein, 'Strengthening Legislatures in Asia: The Challenges of Institution Building,Political Power, and Popular Legitimacy', in Longley, Working Papers on ComparativeLegislative Studies I: The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and NewlyDemocratic Regimes, pp.361-71.

85. Hein, 'Strengthening Legislatures in Asia', p.364.86. See: A. Baaklini and C. Dawson, 'Building Legislative Institutions in Emerging and Newly

Democratic Nations'; Hein, 'Strengthening Legislatures in Asia'; Rosenbaum and Reed,'The Development of Legislative Bodies as Institutions of Democracy in Central America';Rundquist and Wellborn, 'Building Legislatures in Latin America'; and W. Robinson and F.Miko, 'Parliamentary Development Assistance in Central Europe and the Former SovietUnion: Some Lessons From Experience'; each in Longley, Working Papers on ComparativeLegislative Studies I: The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and NewlyDemocratic Regimes, pp.351-428.

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