Outlying committees in the statehouse: An examination of the prevalence ofcommittee outliers in state legislatures

Informational and partisan theories of legislative organization predict tha t most committees will be representative of their parent chamber and most c ommittee delegations representative of their parent caucus. Unfortunately, despite the universalistic claims of these theories, the preponderance of e vidence comes from only one chamber of one legislature: the U.S. House of R epresentatives. If informational and partisan theories are generalizable be yond the Congress, outlying committees should be rare in state legislatures as well as in the House of Representatives. We use a variety of measures o f member preferences (e.g., roll call measures, surveys, constituency chara cteristics) and simple difference of means tests to explore the generalizab ility of these theories by examining the prevalence of committee outliers i n the lower houses of a sample of 12 states. Consistent with expectations, outlying committees are rare in the state legislatures we sample, especiall y among important control committees. This provides evidence that informati onal and partisan models of legislative organization are applicable beyond the U.S. Congress.