Examining the Structure of Legislative Committees

by Karl Kurtz

At the American Political Science Association meeting in Philadelphia last week, Nancy Martorano (University of Dayton), Ron Hedlund (Northeastern University) and Keith Hamm (Rice University) presented a paper, "Legislative Committee Jurisdiction and Administrative Oversight: Patterns in the American States."  [If this link doesn't work, go to the APSA meeting page, click on "APSA Annual Meeting papers in the left column and enter "legislative committee jurisdiction" in the search box.] The paper examines the extent to which committee jurisdictions in the states are clear and delineated in the rules, consistent between house and senate and organized in parallel to state executive agencies. 

Their interest in the question of parallel jurisdictions between legislative committees and the executive branch is fueled by international comparative research that suggests that the more parallel the jurisdictions the more likely that parliamentary committees are to engage in oversight of  executive agencies.

I'm not sure that I buy off on the argument in the American state legislative context that parallel committee structures lead to more legislative oversight of the executive.  It seems to me that lots of other factors are at least as relevant to the conduct of oversight including, among other things, the culture and politics of the state, the commitment of leadership/committee chairs to oversight, the presence and scope of legislative audit or program review offices and the nature of the appropriations process.

Nonetheless, Martorano, Hedlund and Hamm's paper produces some interesting data on the organization and structure of state legislative committees based on data from all 50 states for the 2005-06 legislative sessions that I summarize below the jump.

• The average state has 20 executive departments.  West Virginia has the fewest (10) and Virginia the most (49).
• The average legislative chamber has 19 standing committees.  The extremes are the New Mexico Senate with 8 and the Texas House with 40. 
• Six states (AK, CT, MA, MD, ME, SD) rely primarily on joint committees between the two chambers.  The average number of committees in the joint states is 14 with a low of 7 in Alaska and a high of 22 in Massachusetts.
• Only 20 of the 99 legislative chambers specify the jurisdictions of their committees in the rules.
• On average, judging mostly from the names of the committees, 40% of the committees in a legislative chamber have a single jurisdiction that matches up with an agency, and 37% oversee two or more executive departments.  But in almost an equal number of cases (38%--don't ask me why these numbers don't add up to 100%) there is no clear match between the jurisdiction of committees and executive departments.
• The closer the ratio of legislative committees to executive departments is to one, the more likely there is to be a match between committee jurisdictions and executive agencies.
• More professionalized legislatures (i.e., those that spend more time in session, have more staff and whose members are better paid) are more likely to have committee jurisdictions that match executive agencies.

The authors conclude:

"The results of this effort suggests that many chambers have considered their role in oversight when designing their committee systems.  However, no chamber has designed their committee system to perfectly match the organization of the executive branch.  Additionally in most chambers, a number of committees must legislate for and oversee policies in more than one jurisdictional area and/or agency.  This greatly increases the challenge in attaining effective oversight."

The paper contains 19 charts showing the numbers and jurisdictions of committees in each chamber in all 50 states.  To get to the paper, click on the link in the first paragraph and enter a portion of the title or one of the author's names (e.g., martorano) in the search box.

Comments

[Rich Miller]

Couldn't find it. How about downloading it and posting a better link here?

[Karl Kurtz]

OK, I know it's kind of a kluge-y link, but it will work. If you click on the link for the title of the article in the first paragraph, it will take you to a page that says, "There has been a problem accessing this page." Down at the bottom of that page it says, "You can try to enter this organization by clicking here." If you click on that link, it will take you to the search page where you can enter either a portion of the title of the article or one of the author's names.