Keith E. Hamm

Patterns of Influence among Committees, Agencies, and Interest Groups

This essay reviews the research ascertaining the patterns of influence among legislative committees, executive agencies, and interest groups. The literature review is organized around six major topics. First, the classificatory criteria utilized to identify subgovernment phenomena are examined. Second, the impact which similar perspectives or similar interests have is determined. Third, interaction patterns among the relevant participants are analyzed. Fourth, the nature, extent, and consequence of different exchange relationships are explored. Fifth, the impacts which the three sets of actors have on policy are summarized. Sixth, the relevant studies dealing with appropriations politics are summarized. Suggestions for future research are contained in the conclusion.

Campaign Finance Laws and Candidacy Decisions in State Legislative Elections

This article examines the influence of campaign election laws on patterns of candidacy in state legislative elections. Previous studies demonstrate that restrictions on campaign contributions affect levels of campaign spending and competition, but do such legal conditions influence the likelihood that incumbents running for reelection are even challenged? How important is this effect relative to other factors, such as ballot access laws and district political variables, in influencing rates of contestation in primary and general elections? Analyses of state- and district-level features in 1994, 1996, and 1998 show that low contribution limits increase challenger emergence in general elections.

Interest-Group and Party Influence Agents in the Legislative Process: A Comparative State Analysis

Rather than focusing on the development and internal dynamics of interests groups, the study reported here examines the involvement and success of interest groups in relation to party-oriented influence agents in the legislative public policy-making process. Party influence agents studied are the governor, legislative majority party leadership, and legislative minority party leadership. Data employed are interest group, gubernatorial, and party leadership positions on a random sample of bills considered by the legislatures of California, Iowa, and Texas, with the ultimate success of each agent based on the legislatures final disposition of measures in which agents were involved and held the same or conflicting positions. This study strongly suggests overall that the two influence agents within government--governor and legislative majority party leadership--can effectively offset the lobbying efforts of interest groups. Of these two-party agents, however, no consistent pattern appears across states as to their relative importance.

Political Parties as Vehicles for Organizing U. S. State Legislative Committees

In this paper we assess the role of political parties in organizing state legislative committees. This research is guided by an explanation found in Malcolm E. Jewells early work on responsible political parties in U.S. state legislatures and in his more recent assessment of the conditions associated with state legislative control by strong political parties. We evaluate majority party representation (MPR) on the membership of all standing committees in 10 state legislative chambers for the last two sessions in each decade of the twentieth century. Findings from two of our earlier studies of majority party representation on committees are also included.

Factors Influencing the Adoption of New Methods of Legislative Oversight in the U. S. States

This study examines the adoption of two relatively new methods of state legislative oversight-rule and regulation review and sunset. The patterns and differences among the states through 1979 in utilizing these methods are analyzed. An empirical model concentrating on five factors-general legislative capabilities, existing oversight capabilities, administrative structure, executive power, and divided party control-is tested to account for the variation in both the adoption of these techniques and the specific method used. Using discriminant analysis, findings suggest that the adoption of rule and regulation review is associated with greater conflict between the executive and the legislature and greater divided party control, while the adoption of sunset is associated with low legislative professionalism and low existing oversight.

Committee Specialization in U.S. State Legislatures during the 20th Century: Do Legislatures Tap the Talents of Their Members?

The authors use an informational-theoretical perspective to examine the appointment of legislative committees, using new measures of knowledge and expertise as well as a unique database. While competing theories (distributive and partisan) do not deny that legislative committees are a source of vital knowledge and expertise necessary for legislative policy making, information theory places the wisdom and expertise needs of collective decision making—that is, specialization—on very complex topics by legislative generalists as the raison d’être for a committee system. Thus, the authors investigate one of the fundamental arguments of information theory—that committees are formed to meet the basic knowledge and expertise needs of a legislative body. The findings from U.S. state legislative data indicate that significant member differences regarding prior knowledge and expertise exist by committee jurisdiction, state, and session, reinforcing the applicability of information theory while also suggesting the impact of setting and organizational factors. The authors also explore implications of these findings.

Effects of Structural Change in Legislative Committee Systems on Their Performance in U. S. States

This paper examines the effects of changes in committee structure on subsequent committee performance. The dimensions of committee structure are derived from organizational theory, while the dimensions of committee performance involve a modification of Rosenthals work. A prechange-postchange analysis, covering a 12-year period, is conducted in five U.S. state legislative chambers. Findings indicate that the greatest impact on performance is on those activities the committee can control most readily, namely the screening and shaping of legislation, rather than on floor acceptance. The magnitude of performance change is a function of both the initial performance levels and the amount of structural change.

Partisan Stacking on Legislative Committees

One aspect of the partisan model for legislative committee development that is rarely studied is the degree to which the majority party seeks to control legislative committees—and, thereby, chamber decisions—via numerically “overproportional” majority party representation on standing committees. This form of “party stacking” is often mentioned in the literature but has received little systematic examination and hypothesis testing. Using data from state legislative committees for all 49 partisan legislatures in the 2003–04 and 2005–06 sessions, we found support for the partisan model: majority party stacking is associated with a slim majority party advantage in a state legislative chamber.

Structuring Committee Decision-Making: Rules and Procedures in US State Legislatures

The rediscovery of rules and procedures as an important element for understanding legislative decision-making has become very apparent in recent summaries of research on Congress and European Parliaments. Institutional factors are now seen as critical factors that structure and restrict how individual legislators can go about their decision-making responsibilities. The goal of this article is to provide a landscape of the evolution of committee system structure in US state legislatures so that future research will be able to test current theories of institutional change. The major conclusion of this research is that US state legislatures have formalised the structure of their committee systems over the course of the twentieth century and that many similarities and few differences exist in committee system structure between US state legislative upper and lower chambers. Further, this article discovers that four distinct dimensions - property rights, codification of basic structure, internal democracy and minority party rights - of committee system structures exist in US state legislative chambers.

Measuring State Legislative Committee Power: Change and Chamber Differences in the 20th Century

Committees became a vital component of the decisionmaking process in most legislative bodies around the world during the 20th century. However, very little is known about how their status evolved. In particular, the complexity of, and variation among, committee systems have made it difficult for researchers to assess fully their role in lawmaking. We present a way to measure the structural nature of committee power in state legislatures in the United States, providing data rating 33 upper and lower chambers on six dimensions of committee power based on various legislative documents for 10 legislative sessions during the 20th century. Our method of measurement and these data should help researchers to better understand the evolution of legislative committee systems.