worth testing systematically whether institutional factors such as the availability of
sub-national oYces and the decentralization of nomination procedures
systematically aVect legislative reelection rates.
Beyond reelection rates and the overall level of legislative tenure, patterns
of committee appointments should also be indicative of the extent to which
legislatures cultivate information. Again, this terrain is well mapped in the US
case (Shepsle 1978 ; Smith and Deering 1984 ; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991 ; Cox and
McCubbins 1993 ), but largely uncharted elsewhere. The studies we have of
committee membership suggest substantial variance in rates of committee tenure.
In Costa Rica, committee membership rotates annually, and most members hold
distinct assignments for each year of their four-year terms (Carey 1996 ). In Chile,
by contrast, where reelection rates are higher, there is also greater stability in
committee assignments from year to year and from term to term. Moreover,
there is a correlation between the jurisdictional salience of a committee and tenure
rates, with committees that handle higher-proWle policy issues also exhibiting the
most stable membership, as in the US Congress (Carey 2002 ). In general, however,
our knowledge of committee tenure across legislatures, particularly in new dem-
ocracies, is limited. Excellent studies of legislative institutions in post-Soviet
Russia, for example, provide data on the distribution of committee seats across
parties and factions, but not on the stability of membership at the individual level
(Remington 2001 ; Smith and Remington 2001 ).
Finally, although studies of legislative staYng are scarce, committees’ procedural
resources are potential indicators of their centrality to the legislative process and,
indirectly, of their ability to generate information and expertise. The most prom-
inent studies here have been motivated by a desire to understand minority gov-
ernments in parliamentary systems and suggest that the frequency of minority
governments prompts legislators to construct stronger committee systems (Strom
1990 ; Powell 2000 ). I return to this topic below, in Section 6.
Legislatures can potentially serve as hothouses of information and expertise
about policy. The extent to which they play this role can aVect both their ability to
bargain over policy on equal footing with executives as well as the overall quality—
or valence—of the policies produced. Prevalent patterns of formal legislative or-
ganization indicate that committees are the most promising mechanism by which
legislatures might cultivate expertise. The conditions that would allow legislative
committee systems to play this role appear to vary widely across national legisla-
tures, but our empirical knowledge in this area is relatively underdeveloped. Legis-
lative tenure and reelection rates vary considerably as, it appears, does the
composition of committees. Committee resources similarly vary, but there is
evidence from parliamentary systems that partisan opposition between the
branches triggers the development of strong, informative committees. Testing this
hypothesis more widely seems a promising avenue for future comparative research.
legislative organization 443