Committee chair’s majority partisan status and its effect on information transmission via hearings

While US Congress assigns only the members of a majority party to committee chairs, some state legislatures and other legislative bodies using a proportional representation system also consider members of a minority party for the position to promote a bipartisan policy making practice. Although previous literature investigates the effects of bipartisan rules and practices exploiting such institutional variations, the informational benefit of having a minority partisan committee chair has not been explored. By extending a recent study exploring conditions under which information transmission from agents to a principal is improved, this research note theoretically examines the effect of the committee chair’s majority partisan status on information acquisition and transmission via committee hearings. Findings suggest that under some conditions, the floor can informationally benefit more from having a chair representing a minority party in the chamber with opposite bias call a hearing than with a chair representing a majority party.