Informative Committees and Legislative Performance in the American States

The information theory of legislative organization suggests that legislative committees are designed to provide their parent chamber with necessary information to legislate. Despite empirical evidence for various aspects of the theory, we have limited knowledge of committees’ influence on legislative outputs. I argue that informative committees are more than information providers, that they also substantively impact legislative outcomes. With supportive evidence from the US state legislatures, this article shows that the presence of an informative committee system not only lowers the number of bills introduced to the legislature but also enhances the chamber's efficiency in transforming legislative proposals into laws.