The Power of Subcommittees

Since the reforms of the 1970s, congressional scholars and critics have widely acknowledged the political importance of subcommittees, suggesting that the modern Congress has been transformed to a state of "subcommittee government." In this essay, we investigate the phenomenon of subcommittee power in four parts. We argue first that the empirical evidence so often cited on this subject is inappropriate to the task of measuring subcommittee power. We then present an alternative approach based on staff interviews and previously unexamined markup data. In the second and third sections, we employ this approach to test the subcommittee government hypothesis for a sample of 56 bills from three House committees. In general, our analysis supports the hypothesis, but it also reveals theoretically important differences across committees and, more importantly, across bills. The final section examines the implications of our findings for theoretical work on committee power. In particular, we argue that institutional foundations are insufficient to explain subcommittee power, and we briefly suggest what a more complete explanation should include.