Why are Congressional Committees Powerful?

In “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power” (this Review, March 1987) Kenneth Shepsle and Barry Weingast made the case that congressional committees are powerful not so much because of members' deference to them as because of the committees' ex post veto, a potential negative committees might deliver, say, at the conference committee stage of lawmaking. But Keith Krehbiel argues that congressional committees have, in fact, never possessed an uncircumventable ex post veto and are very much constrained by their parent chambers. In response, Shepsle and Weingast defend their model of the foundations of committee power.