5 - When Committees Seek Out Information for Policy Development

Summary

Chapter 5 examines the intent for a legislative hearing and how it affects a committee’s selection of witnesses. Committees, guided by the partisan goals of the committee chair, seek different types of information depending on whether they are considering specific bills in hearings. When the chair has not yet advanced a bill through the committee process, it gives the committee more political flexibility to hear from those who can provide expertise in policy development. Consistent with this argument, we show that committees turned to think tanks, universities, and bureaucrats – witnesses who can provide more analytical information – at higher rates for hearings without a bill (nonreferral hearings), when committees hearings to learn about an issue area. Committees tended to invite witnesses from mass-based groups, such as labor unions, trade associations, and membership associations, at higher rates for hearings on a specific bill (referral hearings). Different witness compositions between referral and nonreferral hearings suggest strategic choices of the identities of witnesses and thus the types of information that the committee hearing generates.