Who Speaks in Committees? Legislative Speech Beyond the Floor

Research on legislative speeches has focused predominantly on floor debates, where party leaders strategically allocate speaking opportunities. Yet we know little about speeches in legislative committees, despite their central role in policy-making and intra-party bargaining. This paper addresses this gap by shifting attention to committees, where legislators enjoy greater freedom to intervene. We theorise that the lower visibility of committees leads speeches to serve a different function compared to the floor. Rather than serving an electoral function and being outward-looking, speeches in committees serve a policy function and are oriented toward an internal audience. We test this argument employing original data from the Italian lower house between 2013 and 2022. Consistent with our expectations, we find that legislators who are less aligned with party leadership, more electorally secure, and possess substantive expertise in the policy domain under discussion are more likely to intervene in committees than on the floor. This study contributes both theoretically and empirically to the literature on the functions of parliamentary speech.