Parliamentary committees in european democracies

Parliamentary committees are among the most important features of legislative organisation in contemporary democracies. This analysis identifies three perspectives on committees in the neo‐institutional rational choice literature on legislative organisation, in which committees are viewed as vehicles for gains from trade, information acquisition and partisan co‐ordination, respectively. Guided by these perspectives, the article then surveys the structure, procedures and powers of legislative committees in 18 western European democracies from 1990. The data are drawn from a cross‐national collaborative research project directed by Herbert Döring (1995).