Doctoral Research in Political Science: Executive Reorganizations and the Structure of U.S. State Legislative Committee Systems

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This Doctoral Dissertation Research Support investigation examines whether state legislatures organize themselves such that they achieve a parallel structure with the state executive branch's administrative agencies. The purpose for such organizational change is to increase policy expertise, encourage more efficient oversight, or minimize power asymmetries between the branches. The importance of this question lies in the observation that both legislative and executive reorganizations are empirical regularities in state government, and yet there is a dearth of literature explaining why such reorganizations occur. In fact, the majority of the literature on state executive reorganizations concludes that these reorganizations do not meet stated goals, or, basically, that they do not work. What the literature on both legislative and executive reorganizations has missed is the relationship between the two branches of government. That which happens in one branch of government will affect the actions of the other. This research will demonstrate that legislatures react to reorganizations in the executive branch by concomitantly changing their own structures, and, further, that they do so in order to maintain a parallel structure with the executive. Thus, at its conclusion, this research will fill the gap in the literature regarding the rationale for government reorganizations. The tests of this theory require an examination of the changes in the structure of committee systems and the structure of executive agencies. Data concerning institutional changes in U.S. state legislative committee systems and U.S. state executive agencies will be collected from 1900-1960.