On Assessing Strength and Weakness in Parliamentary Committee Systems: Some Preliminary Observations on the New Scottish Parliament

The article is in three parts. The first highlights some features of the Scottish Parliament and sketches the powers and functions of its committee system. The second presents (but does not test) a series of hypotheses relating to the legislative capacity of the Scottish committees. The third considers the limitations of existing approaches to the analysis of the Scottish committees and suggests a method of analysing strength and weakness in committee systems both in Scotland and elsewhere.