Five major themes in legislative committees' research between 2010 and 2023: A review

Abstract

Legislative committees have recently received inadequate attention in the available interjurisdictional literature. This article in the 2024 Policy Studies Yearbook, published by Politics & Policy, reviews legislative committee data categories, methods, and the distribution of authorship to explore how legislative committee research has fared between 2010 and 2023. This review article establishes that since 2010, research on committee structure has been dominated by U.S. congressional theories and how to test them in noncongressional settings. The dominant aspect of legislative organization across the five reviewed themes is the selection of committee members, an essential aspect of understanding power dynamics in modern legislatures. As survey methods and case studies have increased, the archival analysis methods have decreased, indicating an increasing turn to first‐hand primary data in analyzing the internal organization of committees. There is also a growing trend toward greater collaboration among scholars.Related ArticlesJeong, Gyung‐Ho. 2016. “Electoral Rules and Bureaucratic Effectiveness.” Politics & Policy 44(6): 1089–115. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12184.Jones, Kate, and Kerry, Jacobs. 2009. “Public Accounts Committees, New Public Management, and Institutionalism: A Case Study.” Politics & Policy 39(5): 1023–46. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2009.00209.x/abstract.Pelizzo, Riccardo and Abel Kinyondo. 2014. “Public Accounts Committees in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Comparative Analysis.” Politics & Policy 42(1), 77–102. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12062.