Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Theories of Legislative Organization and the Development of U.S. State Legislative Committee Systems

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Over the course of the twentieth century, the committee systems of U.S. state legislatures have undergone major transformations in their structure and procedure. The purpose of this Doctoral Dissertation Research Support project is to assess these changes using three well-known theories concerning the role of the committee system in the U.S. Congress. These theories are the distributive, informational, and partisan theories. While each theory views the committee system as an agent of some principal group associated with the legislature, and assigns committees a very specific and different role/purpose in the legislative process, none of these theories have directly addressed the conditions under which committee procedures and structures will change and how they will change. The goal of this Doctoral Dissertation Research Support project is to delineate and empirically test expectations about changes in committee system structure and procedure based upon the distributive, informational and partisan theories of legislative organization. First, why will committee systems change? Second, how will the committee system be changed? Will these changes be structural, procedural or both? Specifically, with respect to procedure, when will the committee system be strengthened relative to the floor of the chamber and when will it be weakened? These questions need to be addressed both theoretically and empirically, and will be the focus of this project. Data collected from all 50 states for the period 1955-1996 will be used to address these questions.