Resumen de Booster seats: new committee chairs and legislative effectiveness

Jonathan Lewallen

• Recent years have seen increased attention to legislative capacity and performance, including the development of individual Legislative Effectiveness (LE) scores for the US Congress. In comparing new committee chairs' scores to their scores prior to becoming chair I find significant variation in the ‘boost’ that committees impart to their chairs' LE, including several committees that do not significantly boost their chairs' LE scores at all. This study advances an organisational explanation for legislative effectiveness (at least as measured by LE scores) in contrast to previous work that emphasises member-level characteristics. Variation in committee tasks, roles, and member turnover significantly affect a committee chair's LE boost, often moreso than individual characteristics or shifts in party status. The LE boost a committee chair receives does not endure but disappears once the member is no longer chair, which challenges our understanding of the connections between experience, learning, and skill in the legislative process.