Committee Jurisdiction, Congressional Behavior and Policy Outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why a) senior members and young members in safe districts are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point in order to obtain jurisdiction; c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress. I would like to thank David King, Romain Wacziarg, and seminar participants at Stanford, MIT and the Berkeley Franco-American Conference on the History, Economics and Law of Intellectual Property Protection for helpful comments. Daniel Braga and Karen Freeman provided excellent for research assistance