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Why are Congressional Committees Powerful?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Keith Krehbiel ,
Kenneth A. Shepsle  and
Barry R. Weingast
Keith Krehbiel
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Kenneth A. Shepsle
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Barry R. Weingast
Affiliation:
Washington University & Stanford University
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Abstract

In “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power” (this Review, March 1987) Kenneth Shepsle and Barry Weingast made the case that congressional committees are powerful not so much because of members' deference to them as because of the committees' ex post veto, a potential negative committees might deliver, say, at the conference committee stage of lawmaking. But Keith Krehbiel argues that congressional committees have, in fact, never possessed an uncircumventable ex post veto and are very much constrained by their parent chambers. In response, Shepsle and Weingast defend their model of the foundations of committee power.

Type
Controversies
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 929 - 945
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

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