Why does the majority party bother to have minority party members on committees?
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629811429049 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | Hong Min Park |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Why does the majority party
bother to have minority party
members on committees?
Journal of Theoretical Politics
24(2) 248–264
©The Author(s) 2011
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DOI:10.1177/0951629811429049
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Hong Min Park
University of Alabama, USA
Abstract
Why would a generic parliament have committees with minority party members? If the majority
party considers minority party committee members a burden, then it could choose to exclude
minority party members entirely from the committee system. This, however, has rarely happened
in history. In this paper, I provide an informational rationale for the bipartisan committee system
through a simple signaling model. I show that, in equilibrium, the majority party on the floor
can extract better information and, therefore, enact more preferred policy outcomes by forming
committees with members of both parties.
Keywords
committees; Congress; majority party; minority party
1. Introduction
Political parties and standing committees are the two most important organizations in
almost every national legislature in the world. Committees are the center of legislative
and investigative activities, and are often interpreted as a tool to promote partisan goals
(Deering and Smith, 1997). Political parties and their leaders try to influence committees
by assigning members, regulating tasks, resources and committee personnel, reviewing
committee decisions, and controlling access to the floor (Cox and McCubbins, 1993).
One thing that appears to prevent more complete control of committees by the majority
party is the presence of members of the other party.
Why would a generic parliament have committees with minority party members? In
other words, why does the majority party tolerate minority party members on commit-
tees? Minority party members on committees might be viewed as moving final outcomes
Corresponding author:
Hong Min Park, Department of Political Science, University of Alabama, 340 ten Hoor, Box 870213,
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
Email: hmpark1@ua.edu
Park 249
from that preferred by the majority party, or moving resources away from the major-
ity party members, or both. Furthermore, in most parliamentary settings, if the majority
party considers minority party committee members a burden, then it could choose to
exclude minority party members entirely from the committee system. This, however, has
rarely happened in history. What benefits do minority party members on committees pro-
vide to the majority party on the floor? This paper provides one possible explanation to
this question through a simple signaling game.
I argue that, in equilibrium, the majority party on the floor has an incentive to include
minority party members on committees. Specifically, the majority party can extract more
benefits from their own partisan delegations simply byhaving minority party members on
committees at the same time: minority party members constrain the behavior by majority
party delegations on committees. This is an informational rationale for the presence of
minority party members on committees. Without relying on normative arguments or a
repeated game framework, I show that the majority party can expect to be better off by
having minority party members on committees.
After I discuss the uniqueness of my approach in examining this ironic situation,
I formally develop a signaling model game, where the majority party on the floor is
the principal and committee delegations are the agents. Then, the paper concludes by
elaborating theoretical extensions and possible applications.
2. How to approach the question
Some have just assumed that the majority party cannot exclude minority party mem-
bers from the committee system. They usually justify this assumption with normative
rationales, such as upholding democratic values, preserving institutional legitimacy, or
defending minority rights. For example, minority party members and their constituents
would feel much more ‘democratic’ when they are included in the decision-making pro-
cess. Supporters and voters for the minority party would have higher political efficacy
when their representatives are actively participating in the policy-making process.
While these normative rationales are a very important part of the story, my approach
differs in that I do not rely on normative motivationsfor political actors. Rather, I assume
a high level of utilitarianism for all legislators, allowing each legislator to choose an
option based on cost–benefit calculations. If the majority party came to the conclusion
that it would be better off without minority party members on committees, and if it were
actually able to implement that, then it should be able to choose an option of restricting
minority party members from the committee system. My model allows this type of deci-
sion by endogenizing the majority party’s choice between a majoritarian and a bipartisan
committee system.
My approach also differs from the logic of ‘repeated games’. The goal under the
repeated game framework is to eliminate or reduce the social inefficiencyobser vedin the
equilibria of games such as the prisoner’s dilemma game: a player can be deterred from
obtaining short-term gain by the threat of punishment that reduces long-term benefits
(Fudenberg and Maskin, 1986; Calvert, 1995). Applying the method here, for example,
consider a hypothetical committee system which does not allow minority party members.
The majority party knows it might lose majority status in some future election, after
which it could reasonably be concerned with being excluded from the committee system.
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