The Parliamentary Committees in Portugal: Information and Expertise

Parliamentary committees are influential in what concerns policy-making outcomes (Lowi, 1964; Fenno, 1973; Wilson, 1974). Thus, it is not surprising that the way committees are structured conditions the legislative process visible in the results that they enforce. Being a major source of information (Crawford and Sobel, 1982; Austen-Smith and Riker, 1990; Gilligan and Krehbiel, 1987, 1989; Krehbiel, 1991), the way how it is acquired, via the experts, is highly dependent on the work of committees. It is with the previous in mind that I ask: It is expert's advice in parliamentary committees the basis for future legislation? and How is this advise distributed in terms of issues? In order to answer my questions, I will look to the Portuguese example, using new data from the Parliamentary Committees between the period of 1982 and 2009. The choice of my unit of analysis is based in the blurry definition of the type of system that Portugal represents. In fact, the literature is not consensual about it (this is visible in the classifications of Premier-Presidentialist by Shugart and Carey in 1992; as Semi-Presidential by Duverger in 1980, Sartori in 1994, and Elgie in 1994; and as Parliamentary by Dimond and Morlino in 2005). In the Portuguese Parliament, there are two distinct types of committees, permanent committees and eventual committees; within each, sub-committees on a specific domain can be created. Another way to access to expert information can be done in the working groups that monitor the adoption of new laws, I am also going to analyze them. Looking at committees and the way they work, especially concerning specialized information, is highly relevant to understand how in democratic societies their MP's solve a structural problem of lack of specific and deep knowledge about several issues. It is this the major contribution of this paper.