make a career out of legislative service alone, as in most national-level assemblies,
representatives are eVectively policy-making specialists in that they devote
their professional energies to this task (or at least whatever energies are left over
from the scramble to attain and maintain oYce, or seek the next). But legislatures
also hold informational potential beyond the sum of the individual eVorts of
their members through the division and specialization of analytical labor.
- 1 Specialization
Legislatures are often set up to encourage division and specialization through a set
of committees with policy-speciWc jurisdictions. These committees are charged
with supporting the development and review of policy proposals in their domains,
and drawing on the expertise of their members and staVto make recommendations
to the full assembly. An organizational diagram of just about any national
legislature would exhibit precisely such a set-up, with committees assigned policy
jurisdictions over economics, foreign aVairs, security, agriculture, labor, and so
forth. There is relatively little variation at the level ofXow charts, but considerably
more in the extent to which legislatures realize their potential as information-
producing institutions.
Londregan ( 2001 ) characterizes the expertise produced by well-informed policy-
makers as a public good insofar as it can generate high-valence policies, which
improve the lot of all citizens. Information can also be a political good, however,
insofar as those who can make legislative proposals can secure concessions
from their ideological opponents in exchange for delivering policy valence. In
Londregan’s study of Chilean politics, the president is vested with extensive consti-
tutional powers to control the legislative agenda, and the executive branch is also far
better endowed than the legislature with the institutional resources—primarily
staV—to collect information. Thus the Chilean executive, and the legislative coali-
tion that supports it, are the primary ideological beneWciaries of a combination of
agenda powers and information asymmetry (Londregan 2001 ).
Londregan’s account captures a key element of executive–legislative relations in
many polities—that executive branches are better endowed with policy expertise
than are legislatures—but raises the questions why this asymmetry exists, and how
stark is it? Chile is unusual in the extent to which the executive is exogenously
endowed with control over the legislative agenda (Baldez and Carey 1999 ; Siavelis
2000 ). In environments where legislatures are not similarly constrained, the
question is why some organize themselves to produce information and to be able
to develop high-valence policy proposals whereas others do not? We lack
comparative analyses of legislative staYng levels or other factors that measure
legislative organization 441