We experimentally investigate the informational theory of legislativecommittees (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1989). Two committee members provide policy-relevantinformation to a legislature under alternative legislative rules.Under the open rule, the legislature is free to make any decision;under the closed rule, the legislature chooses between a member’sproposal and a status quo. We find that even in thepresence of biases, the committee members improve the legislature’sdecision by providing useful information. We obtain evidence for twoadditional predictions: the outlier principle,according to which more extreme biases reduce the extent ofinformation transmission; and the distributionalprinciple, according to which the open rule is moredistributionally efficient than the closed rule. When biases areless extreme, we find that the distributional principle dominatesthe restrictive-rule principle, according towhich the closed rule is more informationally efficient. Overall,our findings provide experimental support for Gilligan andKrehbiel’s informational theory.
