Distributing Party and Committee Posts: A Parliamentary Theory of Distribution

Traditionally the study of committees in European parliaments has borrowed its theoretical basis from the congressional theories of legislative organisation. However, in recent year there has been a growing awareness among European parliamentary scholars that these theories do not work well in a parliamentary setting and a different take is needed. One of the major criticisms is that the existing theories rarely takes in government portfolio and party posts into account when analysing the distribution of committee posts and other parliamentary spoils. In this paper I propose a theory of parliamentary distribution of positions taking into account a) ministerial posts, b) party posts, c) committee posts and d) other legislative spoils that are not committee posts. I argue that in coalition government some parties will accept less ministerial posts and less important ministerial posts to increase their committee posts and other legislative spoils, while the intra-party allocation of posts are used to balance the power structures in the parliamentary group. I test the proposed theory on evidence from more than 30 years of data from Denmark and more than 15 years of data from Scotland and Wales. The findings suggest that the distribution of party and committee posts within a coalitional framework has some global properties allowing us to work under the auspices of a parliamentary theory of distribution.