Committee Assignments Research Articles

Revolving Door Lobbyists

Washington's “revolving door”––the movement from government service into the lobbying industry––is regarded as a major concern for policy-making. We study how ex-government staffers benefit from the personal connections acquired during their public service. Lobbyists with experience in the office of a US Senator suffer a 24 percent drop in generated revenue when that Senator leaves office. The effect is immediate, discontinuous around the exit period, and long-lasting. Consistent with the notion that lobbyists sell access to powerful politicians, the drop in revenue is increasing in the seniority of and committee assignments power held by the exiting politician.

Money, Political Ambition, and the Career Decisions of Politicians, Second Version

In this paper we assess the impact of a variety of policies that may influence the career decisions of members of the U.S. Congress, using the empirical framework of Diermeier, Keane and Merlo (2005). These policies alter incentives to run for re-election, run for higher office or leave Congress, by altering wages, non-pecuniary rewards and career prospects (both in and out of Congress). We find that reducing the relative wage of politicians would substantially reduce the duration of congressional careers. Notably, however, the effect varies considerably across different types of politicians. A reduction in the congressional wage would disproportionately induce exit from Congress by “skilled” politicians, Democrats, and politicians who were relatively young when first elected. Interestingly, however, it would not cause the type of politicians who most value legislative accomplishments (“achievers”) to disproportionately exit Congress. Thus, wage reductions would not reduce the “quality” composition of Congress in this sense. Term limits also have similar effects on achievers and non-achievers. However, we find that term limits would disproportionately induce members of the majority party to exit Congress. This has the interesting implication that term limits make it more difficult to sustain substantial congressional majorities over time. We do find three types of policies that disproportionately induce non-achievers to leave Congress: (i) elimination of seniority as a determinant of key committee assignments, (ii) restricting private sector employment after leaving Congress, and (iii) reducing the seniority advantage in elections.

Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures

Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simple model of committee informativeness can predict the informativeness of the U.S. House's committees.

The Rationale behind Committee Assignment in the European Parliament

Although most of the legislative tasks of the European Parliament (EP) are performed in its committees, it is controversial how representative they are of the overall plenary. Distributive, informational and partisan theories suggest respectively that the committee assignments system is designed to (1) serve special interests outside the EP, (2) bring informational benefits to the plenary or (3) promote partisan interests. These propositions are examined via a representative sample of committees using an original data set of MEPs' profiles in the 6th European Parliament. The results show that, whereas information-driven committees attract mainly MEPs with relevant expertise, homogeneous special interests influence assignments to interest-driven and mixed committees, turning them into preference outlying committees. However, partisan considerations do not appear to influence individual assignments strategically.

The Value of Majority Status in the U.S. House

A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. In a recent paper (Cox and Magar 1999), we took advantage of the Republicans’ historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994 to assess the value of majority status in terms of lost contributions from access-seeking political action committees. This paper subjects our previous cross-temporal analyses to cross-sectional confirmation. Our results indicate that the Democrats suffered about a $60,000 loss per member in business receipts after losing their majority - even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members’ ability to raise money (e.g., committee assignments and voting record). Although it is difficult to disentangle the impact of partisan influences from constituent pressures and personal ideology in many areas (e.g., roll call voting), the election of 1994 provides a good opportunity to measure the value of majority status in facilitating fund-raising - and the results are clearly in line with current partisan theories of congressional organization.

The Electoral Connection and Legislative Committees

This article examines whether the career needs of legislators – to be re-elected or to move on to another political post – allow us to explain the rules governing committee structures and the committee assignments individual legislators obtain. It uses the institutional variations provided by Argentina, Costa Rica, and Venezuela to test hypotheses about committee assignments and committee assignment mechanisms. It finds that incentives created by candidate selection procedures and electoral rules show some relationship to committee assignments, but with a good deal of variation across national cases and individual careers.

Legislative women: getting elected, getting ahead

Understanding the Complex World of Women in US Politics - B. Reingold. Getting Elected. Competing in Congressional Primaries - J.L. Lawless and K. Pearson. Political Parties, Fundraising, and Sex - B. Burrell. Confronting Stereotypes and Double Standards in Campaign Communication - D. Bystrom. Symbolic Mobilization? The Impact of Candidate Sex - K. Dolan. Does Running as a Woman Mobilize Voters? - A.K. Stokes-Brown and M.O. Neal. Getting Ahead. Policy Leadership Beyond Women's Issues - M.L. Swers. Committee Assignments: Discrimination or Choice? - S.J. Carroll. Representing Gender and Ethnicity: Strategic Intersectionality - L.R. Fraga, V. Martinez-Ebers, L. Lopez, and R. Ramirez. Gender, Race, and the Exercise of Power and Influence - W.G. Smooth. Climbing Higher: Opportunities and Obstacles within the Party System - C.S. Rosenthal. Conclusion. Taking Stock and Setting a New Agenda - K. O'Connor.

U.S. State Legislative Committee Assignments and Encouragement of Party Loyalty: An Exploratory Analysis

AbstractAlthough political parties in U.S. legislatures cannot compel discipline with the threat of expulsion from the legislature, they can encourage greater party loyalty by strategically bestowing benefits upon favored members. This article explores the use of plum committee assignments to encourage legislators' loyalty to their parties. I outline a theory of how party leaders can use committee assignments strategically to encourage more loyal legislative behavior. This occurs when legislative rules meet two criteria: (1) parties and their leaders can determine who serves on committees and (2) committees have real authority over policy outcomes. I test the theory using data from five state legislatures that differ on the relevant set of legislative rules, finding more party loyalty shown by legislators who receive plum committee assignments when rules meet both criteria and no effect when they do not.

<em>JFSR</em>: A Dissenting View

JFSR:A Dissenting View Elizabeth Pritchard (bio) I joined the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion as a managing editor in 1992. Frankly, this opportunity excited me far more than did the generous scholarship I received to do my doctoral work at Harvard. In fact, the opportunity to work with the journal, and particularly so closely with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, was a major reason for my choosing to study at Harvard. But if I was chock-full of excitement, I was also more than a bit naïve about the workload and about the conflicts of producing feminist scholarship. Before starting doctoral work at Harvard, I had worked at a nonprofit specializing in conflict resolution. In my master's program, I had read a significant amount of feminist, postfeminist, and nonfeminist treatments of "difference." Nevertheless, I was still a bit taken aback that there were conflicts among the feminists with whom I would work and that the imperative of bringing feminist scholarship to print required ongoing compromise. I have since attributed this naïveté to the residue of my undergraduate education with Mary Daly, whose writings and speeches spun the dream of a New Time and New Space beyond [End Page 217] patriarchy. I have since come to recognize that there is no place where one can stand outside of what Theodor Adorno referred to as "damaged life."1 I have also learned that the desire to reach such a place is little more than a hopeless grab for purity and the avoidance of one's complicity in acts of injustice small and large, near and far. I have come to profoundly appreciate this hard-won wisdom (and its attendant skill set). And I credit the journal and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza with launching me on this leg of my feminist education! Many of the conflicts encountered at JFSR are not all that surprising. For instance, board members and reviewers have different expectations of what constitutes rigorous scholarship. This is an especially difficult issue given the different disciplinary approaches as well as religious traditions that JFSR encompasses, its mission to reach out to emerging scholars or scholars without sufficient scholarly resources, and its dedication to being a global and inclusive journal. Other conflicts have emanated from different assessments of the priority of an international board, various visions of the themes of the issues, dissimilar sensitivities to the dominance of Christian scholars, and material, and unequal levels of involvement in and dedication to the journal. These issues simmered for different people around criticisms of each other's work, feelings of marginalization or silencing at conferences, and lingering resentment at those episodes in which members from dominant racial, academic, economic, and sexual groups have sought recognition, and perhaps atonement, from members of oppressed groups. No doubt much of the conflicts and tensions experienced by those associated with the journal have been fed by a system hostile to the emancipatory vision espoused by all the persons involved with the publication—a system that divides them by discipline, overloads their committee assignments, disciplines them for not adhering to the corporate model that now dominates higher education, rewards them for "playing nice," tokenizes them when convenient, and demands their increasing supervision of students. There is not enough time or energy to consistently name and resolve our conflicts. We tend instead to refocus our energies on the shared tasks at hand: producing first-rate feminist scholarship in religion and prodding the academy and society toward just relationships. I would venture to say that those of us associated with the journal have had to learn to be tolerant of each other, of the particular struggles with which we each cope, and of the varied skill sets and temperaments we each bring to the table. Indeed, it strikes me that toleration is essential to successful coalitions like JFSR. I've been thinking a lot lately about conflict and "toleration." Toleration has been increasingly subject to scrutiny and found wanting. Toleration is depicted as righteous rhetoric cloaking more nefarious purposes, especially on the part of nation-states. Talk of toleration is a specific instantiation of what Mahmood [End Page 218] Mamdani refers to more broadly as "culture talk...

Legislative Representation, Bargaining Power and the Distribution of Federal Funds: Evidence from the US Congress

This article investigates the relationship between representation in legislatures and the geographic distribution of federal funds. In a legislative bargaining model, we demonstrate that funds are concentrated in high representation areas, and two channels underlie this result. The proposal power channel reflects the role of representation in committee assignments, and the vote cost channel reflects the role of representation in coalition formation. In our empirical analysis, we find that small states, relative to large states, receive more funding in the US Senate, relative to the House. We also find empirical support for the two channels underlying this relationship. Throughout the history of federations and international organisations, a key consti tutional design question involves how jurisdictions of different sizes are represented in legislative bodies and how their votes will ultimately be weighted. Large jurisdictions typically argue for delegation sizes or voting weights that are roughly proportional to population whereas small jurisdictions typically argue for an equal number of delegates or votes for each jurisdiction. This conflict over representation is presumably driven, at least in part, by a belief that increased representation strengthens bargaining power in the battle over the geographic distribution of funds authorised by these legislative bodies. In this article, I analyse the relationship between legislative representation, bar gaining power and the geographic distribution of federal funds from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. In addition to investigating the existence of a relationship between representation and federal funds, I also explore the underlying mechanisms. That is, I ask which political institutions, such as agenda control provided to commit tees and the formation of coalitions under majority rule, shape the bargaining power of jurisdictions in central legislatures and thus facilitate the relationship between repre sentation and the distribution of federal spending. To provide a framework for analysing these issues, I begin by developing a simple theoretical model of a central legislature that determines the crossjurisdiction distri bution of local public goods, which are financed by a national tax base. Both delegation sizes and population are variable, allowing me to consider a variety of institutional arrangements for jurisdictional representation. Legislators represent local interests, and, given the common pool problem associated with concentrated benefits and dis persed tax costs, attempt to increase ownjurisdiction spending but to restrain spending elsewhere. The model follows a recent literature on legislative bargaining, in which a proposer must secure a majority of votes in order to pass legislation and, due to the

New Pharmacy Faculty Enculturation to Facilitate the Integration of Pharmacy Disciplines and Faculty Retention

New Pharmacy Faculty Enculturation to Facilitate the Integration of Pharmacy Disciplines and Faculty Retention

Congress Benefits From Psychiatrist in Its Midst

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Association NewsFull AccessCongress Benefits From Psychiatrist in Its MidstKen HausmanKen HausmanSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:15 Aug 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.43.16.0012aPsychiatrist Daniel Bober, D.O., has had an experience of which only a handful of his colleagues can boast. Invited to join the staff of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Bober has been able to contribute directly to the development and advancement of mental health legislation as a Capitol Hill insider.Bober completed a 10-month stint as APA's 2008 Jeanne Spurlock Congressional Fellow earlier this year. The fellowship, now in its sixth year, provides an opportunity for residents and early career psychiatrists in the areas of child and/or minority mental health to learn about the legislative and public-policy processes from the inside, with the goal of preparing them to be mental health advocates in the future. Bober completed a residency in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center and a forensic psychiatry fellowship at the University of Massachusetts.Murray serves on several committees that have jurisdiction over health issues, including the ones that are responsible for the mental health parity bill and veterans' health concerns. Bober praised Murray as “a true champion of veterans and people with mental illness and, by virtue of her committee assignments, is able to put her interests in mental health to direct use.” He added that her positions on mental health issues made it easy for him to contribute his clinical training, experience, and knowledge.A particularly rewarding part of his Senate experience, he said, was meeting veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as their families, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where many of the most seriously injured combat veterans are sent. Bober noted that he was able to help Murray and her staff interpret numerous studies of veterans' mental health and discuss sequelae of serving in a war zone. In addition, he said, after meeting with veterans' service organizations and veterans' families, he was better able to“ more clearly define the legislative priorities that we should focus on when trying to help veterans and their families.”Bober also had the opportunity to brief Murray prior to the confirmation hearing for James Peake, M.D., to be secretary of Veterans Affairs. After his confirmation, Peake was the keynote speaker at APA's Advocacy Day program.The reauthorization bill for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was another area on which Bober worked. “I participated in weekly working groups with the HELP [Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] Committee staff to update and modify existing SAMHSA legislation to more clearly reflect the new challenges that we face in mental health and substance abuse treatment,” he said.The fellowship “was an experience I will never forget,” he stated, “and it has emboldened me to continue to serve those who may not have a voice and need someone to fight for them.”Information about the Jeanne Spurlock fellowship and APA's other minority fellowships is posted at<www.psych.org/Resources/OMNA/MFP.aspx>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

&lt;b&gt;Too Many Committee Assignments? How to Deal with Participant Fatigue&lt;/b&gt;

&lt;b&gt;Too Many Committee Assignments? How to Deal with Participant Fatigue&lt;/b&gt;

Committee Assignments in a Nascent Party System: The Case of the Turkish Grand National Assembly

In the USA, scholars have developed theories to explain the role of legislative committees, but these theories have not been widely tested outside the USA. This ambivalence results from the perception that the strength of political parties in parliamentary systems undermines the importance of other legislative institutions, including the committees. We surveyed members of the Turkish parliament during a period of considerable party-system turmoil to test the applicability of the prominent theories of committee organization (the distributive, informational, and partisan theories) to a parliamentary system. We found strong support for the distributive and partial support for the informational specialization and partisan theories. We consider the implications of these results for our understanding of the role of committees in parliamentary democracies and the study of parliamentary politics.

Going once, going twice, sold! The committee assignment process as an all-pay auction

I analyze the committee assignment process as an all-pay auction and derive equilibrium lobbying strategies of legislators competing for vacant seats on a committee. The model illustrates the relationship between sincere and revealed preferences, which earlier formal models of committee assignment do not explicitly consider. Incorporating seniority, party loyalty, effort constraints, or committee transfers can discourage those who highly value the assignment from competitively lobbying for the seat. I also offer an alternative interpretation of the model’s parameters to consider the pure partisan assignment model, where efforts are contributions to the party’s collective good.

The Impact of the Australian Ballot on Member Behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives

Katz and Sala linked the development of committee property rights in the late-nineteenth-century U.S. House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. If, as they posited, members sought personal reputations to carry them to reelection in the new electoral environment, the current article argues that behaviors with more immediate political payoffs also should have changed in ways their theory would predict. The article examines whether committee assignments, floor voting behavior, and the distribution of pork barrel projects changed in predicted ways and finds supportive outcomes, but usually only when the office bloc ballot, and not the party bloc ballot, was in use.

African‐American Diversity in the Boardrooms of the US Fortune 500: director presence, expertise and committee membership

This study examines participation of African‐Americans on the boards and board committees of the US Fortune 500. Prior work suggests the use of committee assignment to discern active versus figurehead involvement on boards. We use a logistic regression model that controls for director traits, firm characteristics and director resource‐dependence roles to compare the odds that a black director will be assigned to key committees to those for a white director. We find that black directors are more (less) likely than whites to sit on audit and public affairs (executive) committees. Black female directors are more likely than both white females and black males to serve on finance committees. Thus there is some evidence that race plays a role in determining assignment to corporate board committees.

Are Congressional Black Caucus Members More Reliable? Loyalty Screening and Committee Assignments of Newly Elected Legislators

Abstract. As previous research has suggested, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) demonstrates the characteristics of a well‐functioning vote‐producing cartel in both the degree and uniformity to which it supports the leadership of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives. As previous work has pointed out, this cartel is, therefore, rewarded by House Democrats through selection for service on “important” committees at the beginning of each Congress. However, Democratic leaders have very little, if any, information to guide them in their choices regarding committee placement for newly elected Democratic representatives. As such, they are likely to use past CBC uniformity and loyalty as a low‐cost screening device for predicting future reliability. Examination of the committee placement of newly elected Democrats to the U.S. House from the 103rd Congress through the 106th Congress reveals such a pattern by House Democratic leaders. In other words, newly elected CBC Democrats face much higher probabilities of receiving “important” committee assignments than their newly elected non‐CBC counterparts, ceteris paribus.

Money, Political Ambition, and the Career Decisions of Politicians

In this paper we assess the impact of a variety of policies that may influence the career decisions of members of the U.S. Congress, using the empirical framework of Diermeier, Keane and Merlo (2005). These policies alter incentives to run for re-election, run for higher office or leave Congress, by altering wages, nonpecuniary rewards and career prospects (both in and out of Congress). We find that reducing the relative wage of politicians would substantially reduce the duration of congressional careers. Notably, however, the effect varies considerably across different types of politicians. A reduction in the congressional wage would disproportionately induce exit from Congress by skilled politicians, Democrats, politicians who were relatively young when first elected, and those without pre-congressional political experience. Interestingly, however, it would not cause the type of politicians who most value legislative accomplishments (achievers) to disproportionately exit Congress. Thus, wage reductions would not reduce the quality composition of Congress in this sense. Term limits also have similar effects on achievers and non-achievers. However, we find that term limits would disproportionately induce members of the majority party to exit Congress. This has the interesting implication that term limits make it more difficult to sustain substantial congressional majorities over time. We do find three types of policies that disproportionately induce nonachievers to leave Congress: (i) elimination of seniority as a determinant of key committee assignments, (ii) restricting private sector employment after leaving Congress, and (iii) reducing the seniority advantage in elections.

Committee Assignment Politics in the U.S. House of Representatives by Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q. Kelly

Committee Assignment Politics in the U.S. House of Representatives <i>by Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q. Kelly</i>