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Intended Consequences: Jurisdictional Reform and Issue Control In the U.S. House of Representatives
Author(s) -
ADLER E. SCOTT,
WILKERSON JOHN D.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.3162/036298008783743318
Subject(s) - legislature , house of representatives , political science , public administration , power sharing , power (physics) , control (management) , set (abstract data type) , law and economics , law , sociology , economics , management , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
The power of congressional committees rests in large part on their ability to set the legislative agenda in particular issue areas. But how do committees acquire their issue jurisdictions? Existing research points to informal committee turf wars— not collective reforms—as the roots of jurisdictional allocations (King 1994, 1997). Yet the House of Representatives has made nearly 150 formal changes to its committees' jurisdictions since 1973. We investigated the effects of one prominent instance of extensive jurisdictional changes, the Bolling‐Hansen reforms of 1975, and found that this body of reforms advanced collective goals of improved policy coordination and enhanced information sharing.