Abstract
This article presents an argument for committee assignments based not on the traditional congressional theories, but on elements central to parliamentary systems: government formation. The argument of the article is that it is necessary to include the link between committees and cabinet governance for understanding parliamentary committees. This is tested on 40 years of committee assignments from the Danish parliament. The findings suggest that an approach inspired by a classic portfolio allocation model works best in explaining the distribution of seats and chairs between parties. Shadowing of coalition partners appears to matter little, if at all.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been an increased focus on how parties assign members to committees in parliamentary systems and how we can understand these assignments
This leads us to the second hypothesis: H2: Parties in government will seek to maximise representation on committees where the portfolio is held by another party in government. These two hypotheses are overlapping, but it is necessary to have both included. This is due to the fact that coalition governments might not be a majority government, which is the case in the analysis presented in this article where no majority coalitions exist
The results of the analysis suggest that assignment of committee chairs and seats in the Danish parliament is primarily explained by a logic inspired by the portfolio allocation model, it is the distribution of government portfolios that is determining how the committees are distributed
Summary
There has been an increased focus on how parties assign members to committees in parliamentary systems and how we can understand these assignments. Legislation needs to be shepherded through parliament, and by not controlling a majority of the members of the committees this may complicate the legislative process Oftentimes these minority governments are coalitions, and coalition formation and coalition governance has been a focus of much scholarly research. When studying committee assignments in parliamentary systems, focus on government formation and use of the related literature are mostly eschewed in favour of theoretical explanations formed on the US Congress. Two hypotheses are presented to understand whether parties seek to maximise membership of committees where they control the corresponding ministerial portfolio or whether parties are using committees as control mechanisms in coalitions This argument is tested on a data set covering 40 years of committee assignments in the Danish parliament, 1973–2015, a period with a stable institutional. It is through the party groups the MPs are assigned and it is the party groups who are the significant actors in the Danish parliament
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