Who Gives Evidence to Parliamentary Committees? A Comparative Investigation of Parliamentary Committees and their Constituencies
Date
2015
Authors
Pedersen, Helene
Halpin, Darren
Rasmussen, Anne
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Publisher
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Abstract
This article focuses on the interaction between parliamentary committees and external
actors. How is the interaction organised, and how does it influence which interests are
voiced? The authors show that institutional variation in procedures for calling witnesses
and variation in committee agendas influence both the composition of actors and the concentration
of evidence. By composition of actors, they refer to the set of different actor
types involved. By evidence concentration, they refer to the extent to which evidence is
provided by a relatively small share of active actors. The study is based on a new data
set of all contacts between parliamentary committees and external actors in one year
across three countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands. Interestingly,
the findings show that procedures of invitation rather than open calls increase the diversity
of actor composition and decrease the concentration of actor evidence. This, however,
comes at a cost, since the overall volume of contacts is reduced.
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Source
Journal of Legislative Studies
Type
Journal article
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2037-12-31
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