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Who Gives Evidence to Parliamentary

Committees?

A Comparative Investigation of the Impact of Institutions on

External Actor Involvement in Parliamentary Committee Work

Helene Helboe Pedersen, Aarhus Universitet

Darren Halpin, Australian National University

Anne Rasmussen, Universiteit Leiden

PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE

Dansk Selskab for Statskundkab

Vejle Fjord, 24.-25. oktober 2012

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In principle, parliamentary committees may be seen to serve many functions. They improve legislative

efficiency through division of labour, they create opportunity for log-rolling and agreement formation,

and they serve to inform members of parliament both allowing members to specialize and by taking

evidence from external actors. For some, parliamentary committees are seen as the major innovative

institutional change of parliaments since the 1960s, and today it is difficult to find a parliament without

committees as a focal point of parliamentary activities and in many systems also an important forum

for policy making (Lijphart, 1999; Aldon, 1985; Longley & Davidson, 1998; Mattson & Strøm, 2004;

Arter, 2006; Krehbiel 1991; Weingast and Marshall 1987). While powers vary, committees have the

potential not only to ease the legislative process but also function as an important linkage between

state and civil society securing representation and oversight of the executive.

As one might expect, many have examined the influence of parliamentary committees (Mattson &

Strøm, 2004; Monk, 2009; Damgaard & Jensen, 2006; Cairney, 2006). In this way, most studies focus on

the direct legislative impact of these committees whereas other aspects of their work are given less

attention (Benton & Russell, 2012: 3-4; Halpin, MacLeod & McLaverty, 2012). In particular, little

scholarly attention has been given to the way committees engage with external actors and thus obtain

relevant and unbiased information (for important exceptions, see Norton, 1999; Rommetvedt, 1998). If

there is an absence of empirical work in this particular domain, there is only very vague theoretical

guidance in relation to how (or if) the composition of external actors that are in touch with these

committees varies across (as well as within) countries depending on the institutional procedures for

involving external actors in committee work.

In this paper we set out to correct this lacuna in the literature through an exploration of the

composition of external actors involved in the work of parliamentary committees - across three

national settings. We address composition in two ways. Firstly, and perhaps traditionally, we refer to

the mix of different actor types such as institutions or interest groups. Secondly, we refer to the mix of

main versus peripheral actors given evidence to parliamentary committees. Main actors are the ‘usual

suspects’ often in contact with policy makers, and we categorize actors as main or peripheral actors

depending on how frequently they have been in contact with their parliaments. As part of this process,

we also work towards establishing firmer theoretical expectations as to how we can expect the

composition of external actors to vary between countries, different instruments for involving external

stakeholder and different types of committee agendas in order to lay the ground for further

comparative research in the area.

Why does the composition of the set of external actors being involved in the work of parliamentary

committees matter? The type of external actors involved and hence the type of information

committees obtain is crucial for two reasons. First, from a democratic perspective committees can –

depending on their practices – limit or broaden the scope of interests heard which is crucial for

representation. By including different actors more interests are heard which may improve political

decisions and stimulate the involvement of a broader range of actors in the political process. Second, it

is crucial for committees to obtain high quality information from external actors in order to monitor the

executive and perhaps also initiate policy change. Committees cannot compete with the executive on

number of staff and other resources. By obtaining quality information from external actors committees

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can therefore decrease the informational bias between parliament and executive. This enables them to

perform the tasks of deliberation and monitoring more efficiently.

In the literature more scholars have spent considerable time trying to enumerate the composition of

the system of organized interests involved in public policy (see for instance Salisbury, 1984;

Binderkrantz, 2003; Halpin, MacLeod & McLaverty, 2012; Rasmussen and Carroll 2011). However, few

comparative studies have systematically explored the ways in which the inclusion of different actors

vary across countries (for an exception, see Rasmussen 2011). Moreover, beyond very general

statements deriving from pluralist or corporatist accounts, there is a lack of well-developed theories

with respect to how institutional differences may influence the composition of actors involved. There

may, of course, be good reason for this lack of comparative attention. Comparing systems is not easy,

and subtle differences in institutional design and informal norms can easily render straightforward

comparison of headline numbers dubious at best. Therefore this paper will take an explorative

character by describing the procedures for involving external actors in three countries (the Netherlands,

Denmark and the United Kingdom) which will lead to a matrix that can guide the comparisons and the

interpretation of the results on which actors are heard.

Why do committees involve external actors in their work and why do

these actors participate? It is not entirely self-evident that committees across countries would involve external actors in their

work in the same manner or for the same reasons. Sometimes members of committees have a

significant say in which issues should be investigated and how many actors should be invited to

participate in committee work, for example by giving oral evidence. This type of demand-side

management is a much understudied topic. In fact, we know of no systematic study of what guides

members in committees when they set the agenda and decide on the list of evidence givers. A small

study of clerks in the British select committees resonate with what we could expect as it indicates that

concerns of representation, information quality, and reputation of the witness is important (Jensen,

2012), when committees decide on who to take evidence from. This confirms anecdotal evidence

elsewhere in respect of the British and Danish tradition.

Representation is of obvious importance when committees decide who to involve in their work.

Committee documents are most often made public and it could bring committees, committee members

as well as the parliament as such in bad standing if committees refrain from taking evidence from main

stakeholders closely related to the topic being discussed. Main stakeholders can be membership

associations organizing the majority of people or companies concerned with a specific issue. In the case

of committees considering legislative proposals, the more likely consideration is the need to ensure

they include external groups that could in effect veto legislative activity by either refusing to assist in

implementation or to mobilise opposition in the public sphere (for example generate negative media

coverage).

Information quality is likely to be another concern when deciding who to invite (see also Bouwen,2004).

Even though committee members may favour information supporting their policy position they have an

interest in being as fully informed as possible when developing arguments or making a final decision

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about their position. Hence, we assume that committees prefer to engage with external stakeholders

who are knowledgeable about the issue and those can contribute with new knowledge or new

perspectives.

Finally, the reputation of the external actors can be of importance for two reasons. First, since the

population of potential witnesses is immense committees choose relevant witnesses from whom they

know of. These are actors with some kind of public name or reputation. Second, committees may

select actors who they know from reputation are professional giving high quality information on time

and in a comprehensible format. From this we assume that committees prefer witnesses that are

knowledgeable major stakeholders representing more sides of an issue.

However, the contact between external actors and committees is not only influenced by committee

demands but also by the external actors’ eagerness to supply information to committees and influence

their work in general. External actors come in many forms from individuals over single companies to

interest groups and public institutions. The goal of influencing public policy is common to them, but

they vary in many other important ways. Some actors are professional lobbyist possessing many

resources – money as well as political skilled employees. Others are political amateurs in the sense that

they are not used to communicate politically and have less money to support their efforts. This will

influence the behaviour of these actors.

One way to conceptualize differences among actors is to utilize Salisbury’s distinction between

‘institutions’ – individual corporations, state and local governments, universities and the like – and

‘interest groups’ – defined as membership organizations1. Interest groups and institutions are

fundamentally different because all interest groups face the problem of establishing legitimacy of their

representational claims (Salisbury, 1984: 67). Group legitimacy rest on the members and therefore

groups always need to justify their claims by reference to the members and are constantly aware of the

importance of recruiting new and maintaining old members. In contrast institutions have interests and

can make claims independently of the members. Of course institutions are vulnerable to the behaviour

of the members. Employees may quit their jobs in a company, students may flee from a university and

citizens may leave a town, but still institutions will only very seldom legitimate their claims by reference

to the interests of the employees or students (ibid.).

Since dependency on members varies, the lobbying motivations of leaders in institutions or groups may

also vary. Leaders of institutions lobby to change (or avoid changes) in public policy to the advantages

(disadvantages) of their interests. Group leaders engage for the same reason but also because this is

what they are assigned to do. Members support a group because they expect them to lobby and

express the policy position of the group. Therefore groups may not only lobby if they believe they will

have some success in terms of policy but also to represent their members in the public debate. It is

important to groups to be visible advocates in order to attract and maintain members and therefore we

may expect groups to be more active towards parliamentary committees – this is at least the finding of

Salisbury (1984).

1 This is consistent with the practice of others in the field using large data sets, see Gray and Lowery 1996; Halpin 2012

etc)

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However, Halpin et al (2012) demonstrate than in the Scottish parliament governmental actors are

dominant rather than groups. Hence, even though both studies agree that institutions dominate there

seems to be some disagreement about who dominates the parliament. Binderkrantz (2003) shows that

interest group lobbyism in the Danish parliament depends on the strength of the parliament vis a vis

the government. The stronger the parliament the more groups are attracted. These studies indicate

that variation in parliamentary importance may influence which external actors are active. Further, the

topics and amount of legislative activities initiated by the government may also influence the

mobilization of external actors in parliament. The volume of bills may directly influence the number of

actors involved, and if we assume that different actor types are mobilized by legislative and non-

legislative activities, government activity may also influence the composition of actors engaged (see

Baumgartner et al. 2011 for this style of argument).

Comparative studies of interest representation in national parliament are rare, but in a study of the

Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom, Rasmussen (2011) obtains mixed results regarding the

conventional notion that pluralist systems foster a more diverse interest representation than

corporatist systems. So, possible differences in which actors are involved may not alone relate to the

over-all state-society relations but perhaps the institutional procedures for involving external actors

that guides committees across countries. No study (as far as we know) has disentangled the

institutional procedures for involving external actors in parliamentary committees and investigated

their possible impact on the composition of external actors heard.

Procedures for involving external actors in committee work in the

Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom In this section we describe how external actors participate in the work of parliamentary committees in

three case countries: the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Even though Rasmussen

(2011) found limited evidence that overall difference in state-society structures affect the composition

of external actors represented, we use a design that allows us to control for these system level

structures. Hence, our selected countries represent a combination of a most-similar- and a most-

different-system design, since the Netherlands and Denmark are typically seen as examples of the

corporatist tradition whereas the United Kingdom represents the pluralist one (see e.g. Siaroff). By

combining a most-similar-system and a most-different-system design we are able to keep state-society

relations constant in comparisons between the Netherlands and Denmark and as such attempt to and

test their effect in comparisons between them and the United Kingdom.

The British case A large part of the work of the House of Commons and the House of Lords takes place in committees,

made up of MPs or Lords. These committees consider policy issues, scrutinize the work and expenditure

of the government, and examine proposals for primary and secondary legislation. There are basically

two forms of committees in UK: Select and bill committees. Bill committees are appointed to consider

proposed legislation in detail. The committees reflect the political makeup of the House which also

means that the government always has a majority and the purpose is to allow faster processing of bills.

Select committees resemble the departmental structure of the government and examine the spending,

policies and administration of the given department. While bill committees mainly operate by debate,

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select committees operate by an investigative process. Members of a select committee (minimum of

11) have the power to decide upon a line of inquiries and the results they obtain from taking and

debating written and oral evidence are published on the parliamentary website and the government is

obliged to respond within 60 days to the recommendations of the committee. Bill committees have the

power to take written and oral evidence in the same way as select committees. Since, practices are

rather similar we find it possible to merge evidence from both types of committees in some analyses.

However, we cannot ignore the important difference that government dominates the legislative

process and hence also the agenda of the bill committees whereas parliament is free to set the agenda

in select committees. This may influence the inclusion and mobilization of interested actors and

therefore we will take this difference into account in other analyses2.

The Danish case In Denmark the procedures for taking evidence are very different and much less formalized. The

standing committees resemble the departmental structure of the government and members are

appointed by the parliamentary party groups so that the committees also resemble the balance of

power between the parties in parliament. The work of the committees is divided into two parts called

general and specific part. In the specific part committees scrutinize parliamentary decisions - primarily

bills - while in the general part they engage in a range of other business (for instance asking questions

not related to bills to the minister and debating issues decided by the committee). In this sense Danish

committees perform the task of the British select as well as bill committees (an integrated format which

has been replicated in the Scottish Parliament). Evidence during both the general and specific parts can

be oral as well as written. In both cases the procedures are very informal. Deputations are a variant of

oral evidence, where external actors appear on their own initiative. Here, you need to be accepted

before you can appear – but almost everybody is – and you will have 15 minutes – unless the

committees decide otherwise – to make your claim. Anyone can write or visit the committees on

whatever they find important. This also means that in contrast to the British system. No evidence is

taken by invitation3 and the evidence given on the general part of the committee business does not

have to relate to any specific agenda set by the committee. This means, in contrast to the British case,

that contact between the committees and the external actors is primarily driven by the initiatives of the

external actors who strive to call attention to their concerns rather than the committees demand for

representative and high quality information.

The Dutch case Dutch standing committees also generally resemble the departmental structure of the government and

have their members appointed by the party groups. Although the committee officially resembles the

balance of power in Parliament, it rarely meets with more than 1 representative per party. As such, no

committee will take an official vote. In preparation of processing a new bill proposed, the committee

may start an investigation, consisting of rounds of written/oral questions to the submitter of the bill. If

2 It is salient that recent constitutional reform has changed the way in which Committee Chairs are selected in the

House of Commons – it is now a free vote of MPs in the Chamber of the House of Commons. The UK data

reported below precedes this particular change.

3 Committees are having expert and theme meeting but only rarely (30 meetings in the 2009/10 session) and

unsystematically. There are no formal references to these types of meetings or list of participants.

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the committee deems additional investigation necessary it may also organize meetings with

stakeholders, although this rarely happens in the context of a specific draft law. The committee can

decide to invite external actors to (1) hearings, (2) roundtables, or (3) ‘conversations’ (gesprekken). The

agenda of these meetings and the list of invitees are set by the committee. In hearings, external actors

are ‘heard’ consecutively, without much interaction between them. Though almost similar in terms of

procedure, a roundtable is more deliberative in nature, even though the committee generally takes the

lead in asking questions. Lastly, the committee can also decide to invite an actor for a gesprek; these

are usually more informal one on one conversations (no other actors), with often only a few members

of the committee attending.

External actors may also take the initiative to provide oral/written evidence to the Parliamentary

committee. Any citizen can for instance write a letter to the committee, for instance to comment on a

bill or complain or call attention to certain problems or issues in society. Actors can also submit on their

own initiative a petition to the parliamentary committee. After the submission is allowed by the

committee President, the actor receives the opportunity to submit the petition formally to the

committee in a brief meeting in Parliament. During this brief meeting with Parliament the external

actor has some time to emphasize specific points. Similar to the Danish committees Dutch committees

combine the tasks of British select and bill committees. However, similar to the British committees and

in contrast to the Danish, Dutch committees have more formal procedures for inviting external actors

to appear in front of them.

Comparative matrix The question is, then, can we meaningfully compare these three cases? From the description of the

procedures in these three countries we argue that it is possible to deduce two crucial dimensions which

vary both between and within countries. We denote these dimensions agenda and access. Agenda

refers to the differences in whether evidence is given on issues decided by the committee or on issues

chosen by the actors. In the United Kingdom, the agenda of the committee is always set and they ask

interested actors to given evidence on these specific issues (Bill committees focus only on the content

of a Bill, and Select Committes solely on a pre-determined topic of inquiry). In Denmark and the

Netherlands, evidence can both be related to issues set by the committee and to anything that the

external actors find important. This is for instance the case on the general part of the Danish committee

work, in relation to petitions in both the Danish and Dutch case and many letters in the Dutch system.

Further, access refers to invited versus open calls for evidence. In Denmark no evidence is taken by

invitation (at least not as a formal procedure) in the Netherlands as well as in United Kingdom oral

evidence is primarily taken by invitation. The two dimensions and the ordering of the different

procedures according to these dimensions are illustrated in table 14.

4 It should be emphasized that the distinction between legislative and the non-legislative committee business is

somewhat harder to establish empirically in the Dutch case than in the two other systems. Hence, there is not a clear distinction between legislative and non-legislative business on the committee agenda and many of the tool for including external actors (such as letter and different types of meetings) are used in regard to both legislative and non-legislative business. As will be evident below, we still attempt to make this distinction for the Dutch data by categorizing using more grouping specific types of letters and meetings into these broader categories.

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Table 1: Matrix of procedural dimensions in taking evidence in parliamentary committees

Agenda set by committee Agenda open Open access (no or very inclusive invitations)

DK: Letters and deputations on specific part NL: Letters related to specific agenda UK: Written evidence to bill and select committees

DK: Letters and deputations on general part NL: Petitions and letters not related to committee set issues UK: Not existing

Closed access (exclusive invitations)

DK: Expert meetings (no data yet) NL: Hearings/roundtables and gesprekken UK: Oral evidence to bill and select committees

Not possible

What to expect? As argued above the literature offers little guidance as what to expect regarding the impact of these

differences. Most country comparative studies have been based on the common knowledge that over-

all state-society relations may explain differences in the inclusion of external actors (see e.g. Rasmussen

2011; Eising 2007). However, political reformists would also emphasize that institutions - not just at the

state but also at the parliamentary level - matter. For instance the new Scottish committees were

designed to enhance the role of civil society in the legislative process and to actively engage the

Scottish people – and especially traditionally excluded group – in the democratic process (Cairney et al.

2009; Halpin et al. 2012: 2). The results of these efforts are however not clear since the same ‘usual

suspects’ are still the dominate players given evidence to the committees (ibid.). Also the British Select

committees have been evaluated based on their ability to make the political process less remote and

more accessible to the citizens (Hindmoor et al, 2009: 73).

Based on the assumptions regarding the main actors: committees, institutions and interest groups, we

will try to arrive at testable hypotheses regarding the impact of procedures for involving external

interests and the composition of external actors involved. As already mentioned, we use two

dependent variables to study composition: 1) the mix of actor types involved (institutions versus

interest groups) (we plan also to investigate the different types of interest groups in the final study, but

the data is not ready yet), and 2) the mix of ‘main players’ versus ‘peripheral players’. Main players are

the ones that have been in touch with parliament on a regular basis, whereas the peripheral ones have

had a modest volume of activities with their national parliaments. More specifically, the former are

defined as groups or institutions approaching parliament five times or more in a given year. Peripheral

players are defined as groups or institutions approaching parliament less than five times. Five is an

arbitrary limit we set to be able to separate very active from rarely active actors.

First, we argue that the share of interest groups participating in open processes is likely to be higher

than that of institutions since the political activities of groups are not only motivated by changing policy

directly but also by signalling to (potential) members. Institutions have other main task besides

lobbying (making profit, producing service etc.) and will therefore especially engage when an agenda is

set that affects their interests. Imagine a cost benefit analysis of the decision to lobby or not.

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Institutions will make this decision based on an evaluation of whether or not their efforts will be

returned in form of policy influence. Interest groups not only consider policy influence when evaluating

pros and cons but also the possible impact their decisions may have on membership support.

Parliamentary committees are public venues since evidence is often made public and therefore we

expect interest groups to constitute the largest share of groups across all countries.

Besides being a public venue, parliament also constitutes an arena for opposition. Since government

dominates the legislative process parliament mainly scrutinizes and criticizes bills proposed by the

government. Often the majority behind the bill is already in place when the bill reaches the committee

and not much will possibly change. Therefore – following the logic described above – the dominance of

interest groups over institutions is expected to be especially clear in relation to evidence on bills, since

institutions might be expected to avoid expending resources on bills already decided upon.

Also relating to the mix of actor types, it is difficult to imagine that committees would prefer special

types of actors over others. Still, committee invitation may after all lead to a composition of actors in

which institutions constitute a larger share that in cases of no invitation. This – we argue – is a result of

committees - in order to save time - only invite the major stakeholders in the universe of interest group

and still insist on obtaining varied and high quality information from experts and government officers.

Hence, due to preferences of the actors we expect the share of institutions versus interest group to

increase when the evidence is invited rather than given in an open process.

To sum up, in relation to the composition of different actor types we expect 1) interest groups to

dominate the parliamentary committees, 2) the dominance of interest groups to be particularly

prominent in relation to parliamentary activities related to bills, and 3) the dominance of interest

groups to be less prominent when external actors are invited to participate by the committees.

Now, turning to the second dependent variable - the mixture of ‘main’ versus ‘peripheral’ players, we

argue that main actors are likely to be engaged in many issues and possess the needed resources to be

active in any kind of setting. These resources give them the opportunity to act as political professionals

and dominate open processes. However, we can also expect these actors to be highly involved in the

exclusive processes, where access is determined by the committees. They often represent major

stakeholder and therefore cannot be avoided out of legitimacy considerations when committees decide

who to involve in their work. However, we expect them to be less dominant in the latter since

procedures of invitations make it possible for committees to secure representation of other actors,

which possess relevant information but do not the same amount of resources. For instance a civil

servant representing a public institution may not take the time to send a letter on any given issue, but if

he is invited to give evidence, he may show up after all. Hence, 4) we expect main actors to dominate

the parliamentary arena, 5) this dominance to be especially strong in relation to non-specific agendas,

but 6) less evident when evidence is invited.

Data To explore the composition of external actor given evidence to parliamentary committees we have

compiled a data set consisting of all evidence given to parliamentary committees in one year in the

three countries. In Denmark, data is collected from the parliamentary website (www.ft.dk) which stores

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and publish5 all documents send to committees. We have registered all evidence from July 1 2009 to

June 30 2010. A printed version of the letters was coded. Instead, deputations were coded based on the

meeting agendas of the committees. This means that whereas we also have information about the

contents of the letters, information on deputations is restricted to who participated. In total, our

dataset consists of 3,181 pieces of evidence from external actors in Denmark (2,686 letters and 495

deputations).

In United Kingdom we also obtained data from the parliamentary website (www.parliament.uk).

Written and oral evidence are published electronically and easily accessible. We collected data from

August 1 2010 to July 31 2011. This period was chosen to be comparable to the Danish period and to

avoid the election in May 2010. In all we registered 8,323 pieces of evidence (please note that the UK

evidence is not finally coded and cleaned yet, meaning that more data will be added to the final

analysis) (6,277 written, 2,044 oral).

For the Netherlands we compiled a list of all letters discussed by Parliamentary committees in the year

2011 (from January 1st until December 31 2011). Although such lists are generally not published by the

Parliament, these are not confidential and are available upon request. For the entire year, we collected

a total number of 6950 letters, sent to all different Parliamentary committees. Next to written

evidence, we collected data regarding meetings by consulting the Parliament’s agenda in 2011. In total,

we have data on 183 hearings/roundtables (with 1615 external actors participating), 266 gesprekken

(with 351 actors) and 146 petitions (183 actors).

The unit of analysis in most of our analyses below is a given activity per actor (e.g. letter X sent by actor

Y). If more than one actor participated in a given activity, each actor is counted as a separate unit in the

analysis (e.g. letter X sent by actor Y and Z counts as two units in the analysis).

Who shows up? To describe the composition of actor types, we coded actor types according to the scheme developed in

the Interarena Project (www.interarena.dk). We distinguish between the 12 actor types displayed in

table 2.

The main purpose of this table is to test our first expectation that interest groups dominate the

committee agenda. Across all three countries interest groups constitute the largest part – supporting

our expectations - but especially in Denmark interest groups are dominant constituting 48.5 per cent of

all actors giving evidence (difference between interest groups and other actors is significant p<0.000).

In Britain, groups only constitute 35.9 per cent compared to institutions, which account for 33.5 per

cent (the difference is significant p=o.o19). This also indicates preliminary support for the expectation

that interest group dominate the democratic process when open procedures are used, since the Danish

Parliament has the highest share of open procedures of the three examined countries. However, we

need to take into account that there are also quite substantial differences in other aspects besides

parliamentary procedures between the three countries, such as state-society relations and the

population of potential actors. These aspects are likely to affect the composition of actors that are in

5 Few documents are not published if they contain sensitive details on personal matters

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contact with parliament, meaning that we cannot make a causal argument based on the crude

comparison here. We also see that ‘Other actors’ constitute an almost similar share in all three

countries even though the distribution within the category varies - especially regarding experts. The

British and Dutch parliaments attract a higher share of evidence from experts – defined as a person

with specialized knowledge about the issue but no institutional interests in the specific topic. The

Danish parliament obtains evidence from no experts.

Table 2 Descriptive Cross Case Description: External actors accessing the parliament. Units are

contributions from external actors1

Denmark The Netherlands1

United Kingdom

Institutions 670 (21.1) 2612 (28.7) 2371 (33.5) Governmental stakeholders 66 (2.1) 181 (2.0) 522 (6.3)

Municipal stakeholders 120 (3.8) 552 (6.1) 384 (4.6) Public stakeholders 97 (3.0) 856 (9.4) 386 (4.6) Private companies 312 (9.8) 708 (7.8) 821 (9.9) Public committees 75 (2.4) 315 (3.5) 258 (3.1)

Interest groups 1545 (48.5) 3848 (42.3) 2537 (35.9) National interest groups 1299 (40.8) 3420 (37.6) 2272 (27.3)

Local interest groups 218 (6.9) 320 (3.5) 217 (2.6) International interest groups 28 (0.9) 108 (1.2) 48 (0.6)

Other actors 966 (30.4) 2639 (29.0) 2163 (30.6) Experts 0 (0.0) 466 (5.1) 468 (5.6)

Individuals 912 (28.7) 1836 (20.2) 1090 (13.1) Political parties and politicians 9 (0.3) 131 (1.4) 165 (2.0) Various other actors (eg. Think

tanks and foundations) 37 (1.2)

108 (1.2)

385 (4.6)

Unable to determine 8 (0.3) 98 (1.1) 55 (0.6)

Total 3181 (100.0) 9099 (100.1) 7071 (100.0) 1In Denmark, data is collected for the period July 1

, 2009 to June 30, 2010, in the Netherlands from January 1,

2011 to December 31, 2011, and in United Kingdom from August 1, 2010 to July 31, 2011.

The importance of institutions on the mix of actor types Next we examine our expectation that the dominance of interest groups is particularly prominent in

parliamentary activities related to bills. In order to do so we look at the distribution between different

types of actors in the two systems in activities that have a legal and a non-legal character. We already

indicated in table 1 how these activities can be classified into these two categories. In Denmark we

compare evidence on the general part of committee activities to the specific part of committee issues,

in Britain we compare written evidence on select committees to evidence in bill committees, and finally

in the Netherlands we compare letters described as reactions or comments to specific issue to letters

providing general information or stating a complaint and petitions. As already mentioned in our

discussion of table 1, the distinction between legislative and non-legislative business is less clear cut in

this system.

As it appears from table 3 our expectations are confirmed. Across all three countries, the dominance of

interest groups is even higher when committees discuss bills rather than non-legislative activities.

Especially in Denmark, not only the overall category of institutions but all types of institutions

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constitute a smaller share of the evidence given on bill agendas compared to open agendas, and the

share of interest group evidence increases from 43.5 to 68.3 per cent (Chi-square-test shows the

difference is significant p<0.000). The share of interest groups is also higher in Britain and the

Netherlands when bills are discussed in committees but the increase is less significant (The differences

are statistically significant p<0.000). The Netherlands stands out since individuals constitute

approximately the same share across procedures, but this may be due the fact that it was harder to

establish the distinction between legislative and non-legislative matter in this system.

Table 3 Within-case-analyses: The impact of committee agenda on interest participation. Units are

contributions from external actors

Denmark The Netherlands United Kingdom

Non-legislative

Legislative Non-legislative

Legislative Non-legislative

Legislative

Evidence on general part

Evidence on specific part

Evidence not given as reaction

Letters related to specific

action

Select committees

(written evidence)

Bill committees

(written evidence)

Institutions 586 (23.3) 78 (12.1) 996 (29.1) 797 (21.4) 1413 (31.4) 249 (29.4) Governmental

stakeholders 64 (2.5) 2 (0.3)

79 (2.3) 53 (1.4) 212 (4.7) 46 (5.4)

Municipal stakeholders

10 (4.3) 12 (1.9) 259 (7.6) 180 (4.9)

254 (5.6) 71 (8.4)

Public stakeholders

93 (3.7) 4 (0.6) 268 (7.8) 250 (6.7)

280 (6.2) 23 (2.7)

Private companies

252 (10.0) 55 (8.5) 222 (6.5) 268 (7.2)

534 (11.9) 79 (9.3)

Public committees

70 (2.8) 5 (0.8) 168 (4.9) 46 (1.2)

133 (3.0) 30 (3.5)

Interest groups 1096 (43.5) 442 (68.3) 1347 (39.4) 1885 (50.9) 1585 (35.3) 379 (44.8) National interest

groups 905 (36.0) 389 (60.1)

1144 (33.4) 1702 (45.9) 1380 (30.7) 352 (41.6)

Local interest groups

168 (6.7) 48 (7.4) 154 (4.5) 148 (4.0)

169 (3.8) 25 (3.0)

International interest groups

23 (0.9) 5 (0.8) 49 (1.4) 35 (0.9)

36 (0.8) 2 (0.2)

Other actors 835 (33.2) 127 (19.6) 1078 (31.5) 1029 (27.7) 1498 (33.3) 218 (25.8) Experts 1 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 88 (2.6) 125 (3.4) 232 (5.2) 23 (2.7)

Individuals 789 (31.3) 118 (18.2) 839 (24.5) 881 (23.7) 910 (20.2) 147 (17.4) Political parties and politicians

8 (0.3) 1 (0.2) 64 (1.9) 16 (0.4)

74 (1.6) 4 (0.5)

Various other actors (eg. Think

tanks and foundations)

34 (1.4) 3 (0.5)

63 (1.8) 5 (0.1)

255 (5.7) 35 (4.1)

Unable to determine

3 (0.1) 5 (0.8) 24 (0.7) 2 (0.1)

27 (0.6) 9 (1.1)

Total 2517 (100.0) 647 (100.0) 3421 (99.9) 3711 (99.9) 4496 (100.0) 846 (100.0)

13

Furthermore, the last expectation on the composition of actor types was that the dominance of interest

groups would be less prominent when external actors are invited to participate by the committees. In

other words, we would expect to see that invitations lead to a more diverse representation of actor

types and that groups should participate with a lower frequency when evidence is invited. The

argument was that this should be the case because committees might want to obtain information from

a varied set of actors representing a broad range of societal interests, those of civil servants

implementing and administrating the policy, politicians responsible for the policy and institutions

affected by it. As already mentioned, no evidence is invited in Denmark and therefore Denmark is

excluded from this comparison. We compare oral (invited) and written (not-invited) evidence in the

United Kingdom and again letters of reactions and comments in the Netherlands to invited evidence in

gesprekken and hearings/roundtables. Table 4 shows the distribution of actor types across invited

versus not-invited evidence.

Table 4 Within-case-analyses. The impact of invitations on actor composition in British and Dutch

committees. Units are contributions from external actors

United Kingdom

The Netherlands

Uninvited Invited Uninvited Invited

Open access (written evidence)

Closed access (oral evidence)

Open access (letters of reactions)

Closed access (gesprekken, hearings,

and roundtables)

Institutions 1662 (31.1) 709 (41.0) 797 (21.4) 819 (41.7) Governmental stakeholders 258 (4.1) 264 (12.9) 53 (1.4) 49 (2.5)

Municipal stakeholders 325 (5.2) 59 (2.9) 180 (4.9) 113 (5.7) Public stakeholders 303 (4.8) 83 (4.1) 250 (6.7) 338 (17.2) Private companies 613 (9.8) 208 (10.2) 268 (7.2) 218 (11.1) Public committees 163 (2.6) 95 (4.6) 46 (1.2) 101 (5.1)

Interest groups 1964 (36.8) 573 (33.1) 1885 (50.9) 616 (31.3) National interest groups 1732 (27.6) 540 (26.4) 1702 (45.9) 574 (29.2)

Local interest groups 194 (3.1) 23 (1.1) 148 (4.0) 18 (0.9) International interest

groups 38 (0.6) 10 (0.5)

35 (1.0) 24 (1.2)

Other actors 1716 (32.1) 447 (25.9) 1029 (27.7) 531 (27.0) Experts 255 (4.1) 213 (10.4) 125 (3.4) 253 (12.9)

Individuals 1057 (16.8) 33 (1.6) 881 (23.7) 116 (8.3) Political parties and

politicians 78 (1.2) 87 (4.3)

16 (0.4) 51 (5.9)

Various other actors (eg. Think tanks and

foundations)

290 (4.6) 95 (4.6)

5 (0.1)

39 (2.0)

Unable to determine 36 (0.5) 19 (0.9) 2 (0.1) 72 (3.7)

Total 5342 (100.1) 1729 (100.1) 3711 (100.0) 1966 (99.9)

We find a similar pattern across the two countries. In Britain, institutions, interest groups and other

actors constitute approximately one third of uninvited actors each during open sessions. When actors

are invited to give evidence, institutions constitute 41 per cent of the actors (Chi-square-test shows that

the difference in the share of institutions is significant p<0.000). This trend is even stronger in the

Netherlands where the share of institutions changes from 21.4 to 41.7 per cent when the second

14

chamber moves from open to closed invitation processes (difference in the share of institutions is

significant p<0.000). Within these overall actor type categories we also notice interesting changes. Most

importantly the inclusion of experts seems to depend on procedures of invitations. Experts constitute a

far larger share of the actors when they are specifically invited by the committee rather than when they

participate in an open process. In contrast, individuals tend to be excluded from the invited process. In

Britain the increase in the share of institutions is mainly driven by governmental stakeholders whereas

private companies as well as public stakeholder seem to benefit from procedures of invitation in the

Netherlands. It is remarkable that these differences in the composition of uninvited and invited actors

that participate are stable across the two countries despite their different state-society structures.

According to our expectation, committees do try to involve a broad range of actors less active in open

processes, such as different types of institutions and experts, when they have control over who

participates.

The impact of institutions on the mix of main versus peripheral players Another important aspect of interest representation besides which type of actors are heard is to what

extent a few major players dominate the political process and to what extent institutions reinforce or

reduce this trend. Our overall expectation here was that main players would dominate both activities

where access is open and where it is based on prior invitation at the expense of peripheral actors.

However, we also hypothesized that procedures of invitations should lead to more diverse

representation in relation to the mix of main and peripheral actors compared to open processes. In this

analysis of main and peripheral players, we only include institutions and interest groups, since it would

bias the picture if we included different other actors such as individuals or experts who are unlikely to

participate in the political process several times during the same year.

In table 5 we show the distribution of main and peripheral players among unique actors as well as in

relation to the share of activities in which they have been involved. As explained above, main players

are actors active more than four times in a year. In the Netherlands main actors constitute 9.0 per cent

of all actors active and 43.7 per cent of all activities are carried out by these main actors (difference is

significant p<0.000). The situation is similar in Denmark where main players constitute about 8.2 per

cent of all institutions and groups active in parliament and account for 34.7 per cent of all activities

(difference is significant p<0.001). Lobbyism is less concentrated among main players in Britain, where

only 3.6 of the actors are main players and only 18.9 per cent of the activities are carried out by these

main players (difference is significant p<0.000), which is a small share compared to Denmark and the

Netherlands. This may leave some indirect evidence that the pluralist element of state-society relations

in Britain has found its way into the parliamentary arena. Moreover, we also see that, contrary to our

expectation, the main players do not dominate activities in any of the three systems.

15

Table 5 Composition of main and peripheral players across countries.1 Units are unique actors and

contributions

United Kingdom The Netherlands Denmark

Actors Activities Actors Activities Actors Activities

Peripheral players

3117 (96.4) 3982 (81.1) 2415 (91.0) 3634 (56.3) 966 (91.8) 1447 (65.3)

Main players 117 (3.6) 926 (18.9) 238 (9.0) 2826 (43.7) 86 (8.2) 786 (34.7)

Total 3234 (100.0) 4908 (100.0) 2653 (100.0) 6460 (100.0) 1052 (100.0) 2215 (100.0) 1This analysis only includes institutions and groups

More specifically, we expected main actors to be particularly dominant in open procedures, where we

can expect resources to be a strong driving force for contacts between external actors and the

committees. The numbers do not support our expectation. In Britain and Denmark we find no or almost

no differences across procedures. Main players account for around 35 per cent of all activities,

independently of whether the evidence is given on bills or in relation to an open agenda in Denmark

(differences not significant). Along the same lines, 17 per cent of all written evidence is provided by

main players on both select and bill committees in Britain. Finally, we see that main players are actually

behind a larger share of evidence given on closed agendas compared to open agendas in the

Netherlands (difference is significant p<0.000), which contradicts our expectation.

Table 6 Within-case-analyses. Activities of main and peripheral actors across open versus closed

agenda1

The Netherlands Denmark United Kingdom

Non-legislative2

Legislative3

Non-legislative Legislative Non-legislative Legislative

Peripheral players

1430 (61.0) 1307 (48.7) 1108 (65.9) 327 (62.9) 2489 (83.0) 521 (83.0)

Main players 913 (39.0) 1375 (51.3) 574 (34.1) 193 (37.1) 509 (17.0) 107 (17.0)

Total 2343 (100.0) 2682 (100.0) 1682 (100.0) 520 (100.0) 2998 (100.0) 628 (100.0) 1This analysis only includes institutions and groups 2Non-legislative activities refer to letters not related to specific agenda and petitions in the Netherlands, letters

and deputations on general part in Denmark, and letters to select committees in Britain 3 Legislative activities refer to letters related to specific agenda in the Netherlands, letters and deputations on

specific part in Denmark, and letters to bill committees in Britain.

Now turning to the importance of open (uninvited) versus closed (invited) access, table 7 shows the

distribution of evidence given by main versus peripheral players across procedures in which actors are

invited and procedures in which the access is open. The pattern in the Netherlands fits our

expectationand the differences are significant (Chi2=71.32, p<0.000). When access is open 51 per cent

of all evidence is given by main actors. This share decreases to 38 per cent in processes where

witnesses are invited. However, the British case contradicts our expectation. Here the share of activities

conducted by main players increases from 17 to 24 per cent when we move from open to closed access

(Chi-square-test shows that the difference is significant p<0.000). The trend is slightly stronger in the

case of bill committees (17 to 31 per cent) than in the case of select committees (17 to 22 per cent)

(numbers not shown). A possible interpretation of these diverging patterns is that the impact of

16

committee procedures on the composition of main and peripheral players is influenced by over-all

state-society- relations. In this way, procedures of invitations in a pluralistic country like Britain

functions as a filter including mainly the main players among a very diverse set of actors, whereas

invitations in a corporatist country like the Netherlands function as a venue for calling in actors not part

of the corporatist structure.

Table 7 Within-case-analyses. Activities of main versus peripheral players across open versus closed

access1

The Netherlands United Kingdom

Invited2

Not invited3

Invited Not invited

Peripheral players 897 (62.5) 1307 (48.7) 972 (75.8) 3010 (83.0) Main players 538 (37.5) 1375 (51.3) 310 (24.4) 616 (17.0)

Total 1435 (100.0) 2682 (100.0) 1282 (100.0) 3626 (100.0) 1These analyses are only based on activities from institutions and interest groups

2Invited activities refers to oral evidence related to specific agenda in the Netherlands (Hearings/roundtables and

gesprekken, and oral evidence in Britain 3Not invited evidence refers to letters related to specific agenda in the Netherlands, and written evidence in

Britain

Discussions/Conclusion This paper set out to address a weakness in the literature on legislative committees. Namely, to

develop a better empirical understanding of who gives evidence to committees – as opposed to a

narrow focus on legislative impact. At the same time, we aspired to working towards the development

of a clearer set of expectations about the composition of populations of organized interest engaging

with legislative committees form a comparative perspective. So how did we do?

At the outset, we develop a framework for making sense – in a comparative perspective – of the

evidence taking activities of legislative committees. Each national case – the Netherlands, United

Kingdom, and Denmark – manifest subtly different committee structures. While it no doubt has room

for refinement, we have found dimensions of agenda and access as a useful heuristic in exploring data

on external actor engagement with legislative committees.

With this framework in hand, we set out six theoretical expectations. By way of conclusion we review

each and report our core findings. The first three pertain to the mix of interest groups to institutions in

various elements facets of committee activity. Firstly we suggested that – in general - interest groups

dominate the parliamentary committees. Across all three countries interest groups constitute the

largest part – supporting our expectations - but especially in Denmark. Secondly, that the dominance of

interest groups to be particularly prominent in relation to parliamentary activities related to bills. Our

expectations are confirmed. Across all three countries, the dominance of interest groups is even higher

when committees discuss bills rather than non-legislative activities. Thirdly, the dominance of interest

groups was expected to be less prominent when external actors are invited to participate by the

committees. Table 4 shows the distribution of actor types across invited versus not-invited evidence.

We find a uniform patter in both British and Dutch cases to up hold our hypothesis.

17

As it happens all three were upheld. What is most salient is that they were upheld in all three national

cases. This in itself is a highly significant initial finding, suggesting that the pluralist versus corporatist

dimension has less explanatory value at least when considering legislative committee engagement with

external actors. Time will tell if this is a theme of the broader project – more similarity than difference

between these two ideal-type systems – but for now it is very suggestive.

The last three hypotheses concern the extent to which the very frequent policy actors – whom one

might surmise are also perhaps the better schooled in lobbying and more professionalised – would have

different patterns of engagement than those who were active very few times. We developed two core

hypotheses in this regard. The first was that main actors are likely to be engaged in many issues and

possess the needed resources to be active in any kind of setting. Here we find little support for our

expectations. The main players do not dominate activities in any of the three national legislative

systems. Our second core hypothesis was that open procedures would increases the dominance of

main players. Therefore we expected 1) main players to be more dominant in relation to contacts not

related to specific issues and 2) main players to be less dominant when evidence was invited by the

committee. We argue that procedures of invitations lead to more diverse representation in relation to

the mix of main and peripheral actors compared to open processes driven by the external actors

themselves. Again, we find no support for our expectation. In fact on the contrary main players make

up a larger share of evidence given on closed agendas compared to open agendas in the Netherlands;

and we obtain mized results regarding the importance of invitations where invitations tend to increase

the inclusion of main players in Britain but decrease the inclusion of main players in the Dutch case.

While we fared poorly with our hypothesis here, the analysis does show one core finding – namely,

that the vast majority of those engaged with committees are not highly policy active actors. We are not

mapping a ‘standing army’ so to speak, of policy-dedicated organisations. This ought not to surprise the

scholar of organised interests – yet it is an important reminder that systems of organised interests are

indeed diverse.

In reporting these findings, we recognize there is much more to be done. Future work will – with all

British data to hand – revisit (and hopefully confirm) the findings reported here and data on the types

of interest groups will be included as well.

18

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