Legislative Committee Research Articles

2021 AMCA Presidential Address.

2021 AMCA Presidential Address.

A Pandemic, Not a Panacea

A Pandemic, Not a Panacea

The accountability gap: Deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis

We employ multiple methods to gauge empirically the quality of the deliberative process whereby central bankers are held to account for their policy decisions. We use quantitative text analysis on the monetary policy legislative oversight hearing transcripts in the UK and US during the financial crisis. We find that the UK performs significantly better than the US in holding the central bank head to account on monetary policy, namely by engaging in a reciprocal dialogue between the legislative committee and the central banker. We then manually code selected exchanges from these transcripts, according to four criteria of deliberation: partisanship, accountability, narrative and response quality. We find that British MPs invoke almost no partisan rhetoric and target their questions more to relevant aspects of monetary policy; by comparison, their American counterparts seek to appeal more to their constituents and tend to veer away from discussing the details of monetary policy.

Trends and Gaps in African Legislative Research: Major Topics from the 1960s–2021

Abstract This article takes stock of African legislative studies, focusing on trends and gaps between the 1960s and 2021. It begins with a discussion on the nature of African legislative research by reviewing common research topics on African legislature between the mentioned period from leading scholarly journals in the field before delving into the generational studies and their specific foci. Particular circumstances under which African legislative studies operated are also noted. A notable feature of African legislative scholarship is that most of them are a product of different critical junctures in historical contexts in Africa, which underscores the importance of context-specific variables and histories in discerning legislative policymaking in Africa. The article demonstrates that legislatures are emerging as vital players in governance in some countries more than others, thus informing the recent comparative discourses for African legislative studies. Although the obtainable studies offer insights into the structure and operation of African legislatures, most fail to delve deep into the design and utility of various legislative functions and processes. This calls for a more focused study on the capacity of legislative committees and how they function. This review attempts to provide insights that may inform such an endeavour.

Maine approves plan to extend MH support to emergency responders

A Maine legislative committee has signed off on a proposal to try to help emergency responders better access mental health support, The Associated Press reported Feb. 7. The proposal establishes a presumption that firefighters, emergency medical technicians, police officers, emergency dispatchers and others who are diagnosed as having post‐traumatic stress disorder have the condition because of “extraordinary and unusual work stress,” a bill before the Maine Legislature states. The Legislature's Labor and Housing Committee unanimously approved the proposal on Feb. 7. Professional Firefighters of Maine backed the change. The organization said the bill would shift the burden of proof to the employer to prove the condition is not related to work. The full Maine Legislature must still vote on the proposal. The rule is currently on the books but is due to end in October. The bill before the Legislature would make it permanent.

Ruptured alliances: Prosecutorial lobbying, victims’ interests and punishment policy in Illinois

Using a combination of FOIA-requested legislative committee hearings and in-depth interviews, this manuscript investigates the work of Illinois prosecutorial lobbyists in state-level crime policy during a time of penal reform. I find that prosecutorial lobbyists are a regular and influential presence in policy discussions, advocating primarily for 'law and order' policies that expand prosecutorial discretion, even following the Great Recession. I also find that they repeatedly evoke their relationship to crime victims to frame their policy positions for a bipartisan audience. However, attention to discourse reveals that victims’ own interests regularly clash with prosecutorial discretion. These clashes create what I term discursive ruptures, or uncomfortable and surprising rhetorical fissures that emerge in what is otherwise seen as a near iron-clad political alliance. In such instances, prosecutors risk alienating a key source of their political legitimacy to protect their own discretionary authority. Beyond insight into momentary political discomfort, these ruptures suggest that the powerful and productive alliance between prosecutors and victims is neither as natural nor as robust as relational perspectives have generally assumed, unearthing fault lines in prosecutors’ unparalleled power to punish.

Expert participation in 25 years of Wisconsin abortion policymaking

ObjectiveState-level abortion restrictions grew considerably in number over the last two decades. This study examines the scope of expert testimony given in legislative committee hearings at which these laws are first debated. Study DesignWe gathered 265 testimonies given by experts at Wisconsin legislative committee hearings on 34 abortion bills from 1995 to 2019. We coded testimonies to identify testifiers’ ideological leaning and source of expertise. We conducted descriptive analyses of testifiers’ participation. ResultsExperts with anti-abortion rights views testified more often than experts with pro-abortion rights views (2.1 vs 1.4 testimonies per expert). Experts with an activism background testified more often than experts in medicine (2.5 vs 1.3 testimonies per expert). Anti-abortion activist experts represented the largest proportion of testimonies (32%) but the smallest proportion of testifiers (16%). Pro-abortion rights medical experts gave the fewest testimonies (24%) relative to their proportion of testifiers (31%). The number of testimonies given by pro-abortion rights activist experts remained stable over the study period. Testimonies given by all other kinds of experts were more numerous in recent years. ConclusionsThe experts who testify most frequently tend to espouse anti-abortion views and have backgrounds in activism rather than healthcare. These repeat testifiers may have more opportunities to build relationships with legislators and thus influence policy. Anti-abortion rights activist experts’ outsized role in legislative hearings, especially in recent years, should concern advocates of evidence-based reproductive health policy. Medical experts may be deterred from giving testimony by logistical or other structural barriers in the legislative process. ImplicationsThe family planning field should conduct more research on the role of experts in abortion policymaking. Future studies should examine testifiers in other states and identify barriers pro-abortion medical experts may face to testifying, as these experts are key for creating evidence-based abortion policy.

Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service: evidence from US states

AbstractExtensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new data on over 25,000 US state legislators and an empirical strategy to causally isolate the different channels that might explain these gendered differences in legislator behavior. After accounting for district preferences with a difference-in-differences design and for candidate backgrounds via campaign fundraising data, we find that women are still more likely to serve on women's issues committees, although the gender gap in bill sponsorship decreases. These results shed new light on the mechanisms that lead men and women to focus on different policy areas as legislators.

Community Pharmacy Practice in Nigeria: The Dilemma of Regulation

In Nigeria pharmacists are in chains everywhere in the practice of their chosen profession. This work sets out to unravel the contributions of the multiplicity of enactments on the subject, the use of committees, for example, the pharmacists inspection committee and executive officers as well as the abuse of powers by the agencies established under the enactments, to the miasma. In doing so, this work adopts the doctrinal method of research which involves the use of primary and secondary sources of law. Amidst other causes, this work observes that: (1) duplication and overlap of functions in the multiple enactments, (2) questionable provisions, (3) misconception and misapplication of the law, and (4) acts of abuses by the administrative agencies are the major contributors to the problems of the pharmacist in Nigeria. As to the solutions to the problems in pharmacy practice in Nigeria this work recommends: (1) refinement of the existing law, (2) pharmacists be exposed to the knowledge of administrative law; (3) pharmacists and chemists be made members of any legislative body or committee to enact laws or make regulations on drug matters.

The credibility of finance committees and information usage: trustworthy to whom?

IMPACT Local government politicians in Brazil were found to perceive the reports and referrals from legislative finance committees as trustworthy depending on the political scenario in which the report was generated. Information usage by politicians then depended on partisan demands—whether they were in opposition or in government. The quality of the accounting information delivered by finance committees needs to be improved and councillors should be encouraged to consider and use financial information more widely: not just in debates in council. Council finance committees could usefully include external specialists to validate referrals and tighten ties with audit institutions.

A case series of medical disputes related to chronic pain management in South Korea between 2009 and 2019: An analysis of the Korean Society of Anesthesiologists database.

As interventional pain management has been growing rapidly worldwide and chronic pain management is provided by a diverse range of practitioners, malpractice litigation has increased. Therefore, we examined the characteristics of medical disputes related to chronic pain management from 2009 to 2019 in South Korea.In this retrospective study, we analyzed the Korean Society of Anesthesiologists database covering case files from July 2009 to June 2019. We compared characteristics of patients, treatment details, mechanisms of injury, specific complications, clinical manifestations of injury, and outcomes between the first half (2009–2014, n = 33) and the second half (2014–2019, n = 65) of the study period using the Korean Society of Anesthesiologists Legislation Committee database.During the 10-year study period, the proportion of cases for chronic pain management in cases referred for surgical anesthesia or chronic pain management increased annually by 2.9% (R2 = 0.489, 95% confidence interval: 0.5%–5.2%, P = .024). While invasive procedure-related cases decreased from 63.6% in the first half to 38.5% in the second half (P = .019), complex regional pain syndrome-associated cases increased from 30.3% (10/33) to 55.4% (36/65) during this period (P = .019). The proportion of cases involving non-anesthesiologists in invasive procedure-related cases increased from 14.3% in the first half to 64.0% in the second half (P = .002). The majority of invasive procedure-related cases (82.6%, 38/46) were determined as ‘directly related to the procedure’. Of these, the 3 most common damaging events were bleeding, intrathecal injection of local anesthetics, and infectious complications (each n = 6).During a recent decade, there were several typical changes in the characteristics of medical dispute cases related to chronic pain management, including an increasing trend of cases for chronic pain management relative to surgical anesthesia-related cases, a higher severity of complications in cervical procedures, an increase in complex regional pain syndrome-related cases, and an increase in cases involving non-anesthesiologists.

Legislative committees in the Turkish Parliament: performing procedural minimum or effective scrutiny?

ABSTRACT This study examines committee influence on government bills during the AKP’s 2011–2015 majority government term in Turkey, an era characterised by democratic backsliding. It explores whether committees introduce more substantial amendments to government bills when they draw on their scrutiny powers (i.e. hearing sponsoring ministers, hearing stakeholders, forming subcommittees, secondary committee review) providing them diverse information and policy expertise. I hypothesise and test under what conditions committees use these competencies to initiate substantial changes. Overall findings based on a novel dataset indicate that legislative committees introduce more substantial amendments to government bills when they consult with sponsoring ministers and stakeholders. These findings suggest that the formal capabilities of legislative committees provide opportunities for legislators to influence government legislation even in adverse political contexts, as these mechanisms limit the government’s ability to impose its legislative agenda unilaterally. It contributes to the debates on strengthening legislatures for effective government scrutiny.

State legislative committee deliberations: Why some issues are difficult and where state legislators turn for help

AbstractObjectiveThis study explores why state legislators think some issues are difficult and where they turn for help with these issues.MethodsWe use content analysis of legislators’ interview responses to identify sources of difficulty that arose during committee deliberations.ResultsMany legislators say that issues are difficult because of committee and caucus politics, technical information, interest group pressure, jurisdictional competition, and budget constraints. We find few associations between sources of difficulty and legislator characteristics or institutional context. Mundane issues are often seen as difficult, with culture war issues rarely mentioned.Using cluster analysis, we identify five major categories of issue difficulty. We find that legislators grapple with these categories of difficulty by relying on interest groups, partisan staff, and committee members rather than on caucus leaders, the governor, or their voters.ConclusionThese findings contribute to our understanding of impediments to policy making that legislators navigate in legislative committees.

Are Weighted Games Sufficiently Good for Binary Voting?

Binary yes-no decisions in a legislative committee or a shareholder meeting are commonly modeled as a weighted game. However, there are noteworthy exceptions. E.g., the voting rules of the European Council according to the Treaty of Lisbon use a more complicated construction. Here we want to study the question if we lose much from a practical point of view, if we restrict ourselves to weighted games. To this end, we invoke power indices that measure the influence of a member in binary decision committees. More precisely, we compare the achievable power distributions of weighted games with those from a reasonable superset of weighted games. It turns out that the deviation is relatively small.

Leveraging legislative power: distributive politics and Committee work in Kenya’s National Assembly

ABSTRACT How do legislative Committees in emerging democracies spend their time? Committees are organisational devices for expanding valuable legislative time. Existing works posit that Committee work reflects legislatures’ need to rationalise their processes and outputs, acquire specialised expertise and information, and improve members’ electoral prospects by maximising policy impact. However, not all legislatures have the capacity to significantly shape policy design, influence executive agency behaviour during implementation, or advance their members’ political careers. This paper argues that in legislatures that fall in the latter category, Committee work focuses on maximising the personal benefit of individual legislators, as opposed to being geared towards policy impact or electoral goals. These findings increase our understanding of the industrial organisation of legislatures in emerging democracies where the executive-legislative balance of power favours the executive branch.

An analysis of member retention patterns for adult rare disease cohorts to support evaluating multiyear payment arrangements for novel therapies.

BACKGROUND: Traditionally, treatment for chronic conditions addressed symptoms or was disease modifying and required lifelong periodic administration and recurring costs. Cell and gene therapies for rare diseases often require a short administration period relative to their expected long-term clinical benefit. Costs have historically been recognized when the service or treatment is administered, resulting in the potential for the cost associated with the possible long-term clinical benefit of cell and gene therapies being incurred during a short administration period. Innovative payment arrangements have been proposed to improve the synchronization of the payment and the emergence of the clinical benefit. Expected payments associated with a multiyear payment arrangement will depend on many factors, but key drivers of the payments include efficacy, durability of effect, mortality, and member retention. This research extends a previous study by analyzing member retention for adult patients with certain rare diseases. OBJECTIVE: To develop member retention estimates from a US commercial payer's perspective for adults diagnosed with certain rare diseases during a 10-year period. METHODS: Four population cohorts were examined: (1) self-insured - all subscribers, (2) self-insured - rare medical condition, (3) fully insured - all subscribers, and (4) fully insured - rare medical condition. Seven rare medical conditions were prospectively selected: cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, Gaucher disease, hemophilia, sickle cell disease, spina bifida, and thalassemia. We limited the study cohort to members who were either the subscriber or the subscriber's partner and were aged 18 years or older; dependent children were excluded from the analysis, regardless of age. The IBM MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters research database for the 10 years ending December 31, 2016, was used as the basis for the analysis. The analysis was completed using the lifetest procedure available in version 9.4 of the SAS Software System for Windows. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to produce retention rates. A log-rank test with chi-square statistic was used to determine statistically significant differences between pairs of curves. RESULTS: The study found that the subscriber retention for the rare medical condition cohort is significantly higher than the all-subscribers cohort by at least 12 points at each 1-year period. The finding was statistically significant (P < 0.0001) for the self-insured and fully insured cohorts. At year 5, approximately 20% more of the rare medical condition cohort was retained as compared with the all-subscribers cohort regardless of payer type. In addition, the study found that the probability of retention for adults with each rare medical condition in the rare disease cohort was also statistically significantly higher than all subscribers regardless of payer type. CONCLUSIONS: In multiyear payment arrangements, it may be important to set expectations for member retention based on studies specific to particular member cohorts. Health insurers and plan administrators may have inaccurate expectations if standard assumptions based on all member populations are used. This study found that adults diagnosed with 1 of 7 rare medical conditions are retained longer, on average, than all adult subscribers. DISCLOSURES: Milliman received funding from bluebird bio for the conduct of this study and fees from AveXis, outside the submitted work. Jackson, Runyan, and Metz are employed by Milliman. Jackson and Metz are members of the American Academy of Actuaries and meet the qualification standards for performing the analyses in this report. Kenney is an independent managed care consultant and received consulting fees from Milliman during the conduct of this study; Kenney also serves as preceptor for the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, is immediate past president of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, and is a member of the Massachusetts Pharmacists Association Legislative Committee.

Legislative Investigations into Propaganda Activities (1919–1941)

The present work analyzes the complex relationship that was established during the interwar period between the American press and the legislative committees which investigated the propaganda activities of subversive movements and large private corporations during those years. The investigation is the result of the examination of journalistic sources and documentary evidence recently collected from various US federal and state archives. The main hypothesis is that the struggle against propaganda by both the press and the legislative committees became a new form of manipulation of public opinion, enabling politicians and reporters to exploit people’s aversion to the new persuasion techniques in order to satisfy their own personal interests and ideological purposes.

Examining the problem of joint custody in Japan: State familialism and family law reform

AbstractJapan's principle of granting sole child custody after divorce has been challenged by both the public and intellectuals. The country's ratification of the Hague Child Abduction Convention in 2014 and the Ministry of Justice's subsequent statement in 2019 regarding a possible inclusion of joint custody into the future family law are expected to lead to a move towards establishing shared parenting after divorce. Nonetheless, some activists and intellectuals in Japan have raised concerns that joint custody exposes the child and mother to the risk of violence by husband. Taking these debates into consideration, this article uses a social constructionist approach to analyse the records of the legislative committee and voices of activists to show the ways in which a challenge to the law and policy reform to shared parenting after divorce has been brought to a standstill in contemporary Japan.

Explaining Gender Segregation In Legislative Committees: A Case Of Punjab Assembly (2013-2018)

Legislative committees have the power to take decisions and influence key matters in Legislatures. Women’s descriptive representation is measured through their appointment in various including power/ masculine and low status/feminine committees. This study examines the gender gaps both vertical and horizontal in various parliamentary committees of the Punjab Assembly. The Punjab Assembly has been taken as a case because it is the largest Provincial assembly of Pakistan. The committee system has been taken as a unit of analysis from 2013 to 2018, in order to examine the women’s appointment as heads (horizontal) and member (vertical) in committees. The findings show that the committee allocations are gender-biased; women are over-represented in feminine and low prestigious committees, while under-represented in masculine and power committees. This study suggests, political parties may develop a gender-neutral mechanism for committee allocations.

The Politics of Select Committee Assignments in the British House of Commons

Legislative committees usually combine legislative and oversight functions. Most research has focused on the former. The British House of Commons offers an opportunity to shed light on MPs’ motivations to engage in the neglected oversight aspects of committee work, because its committee system separates lawmaking from investigatory functions. In this article, we examine the politics of assignment to the investigatory select committees. Using an original data set for the 2005–10 and 2010–15 Parliaments, we find that MPs’ long-standing policy interests are a strong and consistent predictor for select-committee assignments, especially when committees’ desirability increases. Our results are largely incompatible with partisan models predicting party loyalty to be a decisive factor in select-committee assignments. Evidence suggests that the “Wright reforms” have consolidated the self-selection mechanism operating in committee assignments. Against expectations of partisan motivations driving committee assignments, our evidence suggests that models based on informational concerns offer the most convincing rationale.