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The Legislative Matching Game: Committee Matching and Effective Legislating in the States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Clint S. Swift Open the ORCID record for Clint S. Swift [Opens in a new window]
Clint S. Swift*
Affiliation:
The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA
*
Clint S. Swift, The University of the South, 735 University Avenue, Sewanee, TN 37383-1000, USA. Email: csswift@sewanee.edu
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Abstract

I argue that the value of a particular set of committee assignments for a legislator is dependent on that legislator's policy interests. By this, I mean that “good” assignments will match committee policy jurisdictions with member policy priorities. I develop this concept of committee-agenda matching and present a measure of this match for legislators in 12 state lower chambers. After some brief measure validation, I present a substantive application, demonstrating that this match poses serious consequences for individual legislator's ability to shepherd their bills through the legislative process.

Keywords

parties in legislaturesparties and interest groupslegislative politicslegislative behaviorlegislator preferenceslegislative committees
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 234 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019

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