Committee Chairs and Legislative Review in Parliamentary Democracies

Parliaments are emblematic democratic institutions. Indeed, in parliamentary systems, legislators are usually the only national-level policy makers directly elected by citizens. Ironically, until quite recently, conventional wisdom among scholars held that parliaments play a negligible role in policy making. While legislatures in parliamentary systems are obviously critical to government formation and termination, they were perceived as having only a marginal influence on day-to-day policy decisions. Over the past several years, numerous studies have begun to challenge this understanding. ¹ A central conclusion that emerges from this literature is that, in parliaments endowed with strong legislative committees, legislators can exercise considerable influence on policy, particularly with respect to their scrutiny of government policy proposals. Effective scrutiny is necessary for the development of feasible alternatives to government initiatives and for holding government members to account for their actions. Standing committees that correspond to ministerial jurisdictions, that have extensive investigative powers and that possess the ability to force changes to government bills enable legislators to shape the policy initiatives of cabinet ministers in significant ways. ²

Although the general importance of strong legislative committees in parliamentary systems is now well understood, we know little about the extent to which the impact of committees depends on committee leadership – that is, on the chairs who head these committees. This contrasts sharply with the literature on the US Congress, which has examined the impact of chairs extensively and has shown that they are able to use their control of the agenda to secure policy concessions and distributive benefits, as well as increase their legislative productivity and success. ³ As in the American context, chairs in parliamentary settings typically possess significant formal and informal powers that may allow them to enhance or limit the effectiveness of the committees over which they preside. Therefore it is not surprising that scholars have recently taken an interest in understanding which parties are able to secure which committee chairs – in particular, whether parties in coalition governments systematically appoint committee chairs to ‘shadow’ ministries held by their partners. ⁴ However, while these studies have increased our knowledge about who is likely to chair legislative committees, they have not explored whether these committee chairs have a meaningful impact on policy making: Does the ability of...