A Lab Experiment on Committee Hearings: Preferences, Power, and a Quest for Information

• Published date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12139
• Author: Ju Yeon Park
• Date: 01 February 2017

JU YEON PARK

Columbia University

A Lab Experiment on Committee

Hearings: Preferences, Power,

and a Quest for Information

In principle, committees hold hearings to gather and provide information to their

principals, but some hearings are characterized as political showcases. This article inves-

tigates conditions that moderate committee members’ incentives to hold an informative

hearing by presenting a game-theoretic model and a lab experiment. Specifically, it stud-

ies when committees hold hearings and which types of hearing they hold by varying

policy preferences of committee members and the principal and political gains from pos-

turing. Findings provide new insights to how preferences and power distribution affect

individuals’ incentives to be informed when they make decisions as members of a

committee in many contexts.

In many situations, fact-f‌inding committees must give advice to a

principal after gathering information via hearings. For example, the com-

mittees in legislatures give recommendations to the f‌loor based on

information collected from public hearings. Similar public hearing proce-

dures are also found in committees of the United Nations or the

European Union (e.g., the European Economic and Social Committee

holds public hearings to hear voices from different stakeholders in the

region and to be consulted with by the EU on economic issues).

However, previous empirical studies suggest that such hearings are

sometimes uninformative because the members choose to grandstand by

promoting their own views rather than gathering information.

1

A classic

case study by Huitt (1954) f‌inds that committee members only reinforced

their predetermined views via hearings on federal price control at the US

Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in 1946. Recent examples

include hearings at multiple congressional committees on Benghazi

terrorists’ attacks in 2012. Especially when then Secretary of State,

Hillary Clinton, was subpoenaed, committee members spent more time

asking questions in a way that their opinions were emphasized while

leaving almost no time for her to provide an answer or even not requiring

one (Hersh 2013).

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 42, 1, February 2017 3

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12139

V

C2016 Washington University in St. Louis

Some recent empirical works investigate under what conditions the

information from hearings is actually used in the legislative process.

Esterling (2004) f‌inds that the uncertainty and ambiguity in the state of

knowledge explain the variance in lawmakers’ use and nonuse of expert

information in the legislation process based on three case studies.

Kasniunas (2009) shows that testimonies from interest groups are more

likely to inf‌luence mark-up bills as they work with an ideologically mod-

erate, more bipartisan committee chaired by an inexperienced member

of Congress. Kriner and Schickler (2014) demonstrate that even the

investigative hearings where members merely grandstand can indirectly

affect political landscape by undermining the presidential approval rating

if they can secure media coverage.

2

As an extension of this line of research, this article explores addi-

tional explanations on when committee members hold informative

hearings and when they do not. I specif‌ically analyze committee chairs’

decisions to hold hearings, committee members’ selection of witnesses,

and principals’ policy choices. The factors I propose to explain these

decisions are the level of policy disagreement between committee mem-

bers, political gains from posturing in a hearing that is modeled as

inviting an advocate as a witness, the chair’s power over the selection of

witnesses, and the principal’s policy preference, which can operational-

ize the level of polarization in the f‌inal decision-making body (e.g., a

legislative f‌loor).

In order to generate testable hypotheses, I present a simple game-

theoretic model of hearings and witness selection. While rational choice

models on informational theories of committees have made much pro-

gress in explaining the information transmission between the f‌loor and

committees, the internal decision-making process and political competi-

tion within a committee have been largely understudied and extremely

simplif‌ied (Diermeier and Feddersen 2000; Gilligan and Krehbiel 1987,

1989). Thus, my model highlights the internal decision-making process

and competition within a committee.

There are three theoretical features that are distinctive from the

existing models. First, most of the previous models consider a committee

as a unitary actor rather than a composition of members with different

interests, so that internal decision-making processes within a committee

have received less attention.

3

However,Iassumeacommitteeoftwo

members with heterogeneous preferences and explicitly model political

competition within the committee over the selection of witnesses for a

hearing. Second, while previous models did not consider committee

members’ political incentive to hold a hearing, I assume that committee

members earn utility from a hearing not only by collecting information

4 JuYeonPark