DAVID W. PRINCE
Bellarmine University
L. MARVIN OVERBY
University of Missouri
Legislative
Organization Theory and Committee Preference Outliers in State Senates
Recently, several studies of
Congress and the state legislatures have found evidence to support the information
theory of legislative organization, that is, that legislatures develop committees
whose characteristics reflect those of the parent body so as to acquire
unbiased policy and political information. However, most of these studies
have been conducted on the lower, larger legislative chambers. Senates,
as smaller bodies that often follow the lead of legislation originating
in their lower chambers, may have less need for unbiased information, perhaps
allowing those bodies to develop more outlying, unrepresentative committees.
We test this hypothesis in 42 state senates and find that unrepresentative
committees also tend to be the exception in these upper chambers. Furthermore,
as shown in previous studies of state house committees, the frequency of
committee outliers in state senates appears to be idiosyncratic, with cultural,
political, and institutional variables being unable to account for their
observed patterns. While results support the information theory of legislative
organization, evidence of outliers among party delegations on committees
in these senates provides some support for the party-dominant theory.
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