Cabinets, Committees and Careers:
A Natural Experiment in 19th Century France∗
Alexandra Cirone
†
Brenda Van Coppenolle
‡
How do committee appointments affect political careers in a new democracy? Self-selection
and party control of appointments typically obscure this relationship. We estimate the causal
effect of committees on legislative behavior and parliamentary careers by exploiting a natural
experiment in the French Third Republic (1870-1940). Yearly lotteries divided the legislature in groups, who then nominated members to the budget committee. We use the random
composition of these groups as an instrument for individual appointment. We show that appointment increased legislative entrepreneurship concerning budget legislation, lending support
to informational theories that argue committees induce deputies to acquire specialized expertise. Committee service also led to ministerial appointment, but not to higher office that does
not require specific policy expertise, such as party or senatorial positions. Finally, deputies
were not rewarded electorally for committee service, ruling out reputational explanations. We
conclude committees aid in professional development, particularly in the absence of disciplined
parties.
∗
†
Email: [email protected], Fellow, Department of Government, London School of Economics and
Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.; Graduate Student, Columbia University
‡
Email: [email protected], Assistant Professor, Leiden University, Institute
of Political Science, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands.
1
Committees are an important feature of the legislature of any established democracy.
Committee appointments not only affect policymaking, but also the career prospects of
individual politicians. Parties usually control committee appointments and therefore also
political careers. Yet we are missing an account of the impact of committees on careers in
new democracies, characterized by weak party systems. If fledgling parties are unable to
fully support, train, or socialize a new political class, then the impact of early legislative
institutions becomes even more salient. In fact, we often see when parties are weak, committees are strong: legislative institutional procedures evolve to fill the gap and coordinate
political activities (Krehbiel 2004; Dogan 1979), and in some cases provide an institutionalized forum to gain the expertise, reputation, or resources needed for advancement (Kernel
1977). Given that the committee system can directly shape the training and experiences of
the first generations of policymakers in a democratizing regime, it is important to identify
the impact of early legislative institutions on political careers.
In this paper we provide causal evidence that committees serve as a forum in which
legislators can develop skills as a political entrepreneur, as well as a recruitment pool for
positions of higher office requiring such legislative expertise. Isolating the independent effect
of committee membership on individual behavior is difficult, however, due to concerns with
selection bias and endogeneity (Krehbiel 1993, Hedlund et al. 2011, Broockman and Butler
2012). It is likely legislators who succeed in obtaining a committee post are systematically
different than their peers, and the role of political parties in appointment further confounds
attempts to isolate the impact of a committee post on future career success.
To resolve such concerns, we take advantage of a natural experiment in the early years
of the French Third Republic (1870-1940). The lower house of the National Assembly, the
Chambre des députés, featured an egalitarian selection process with a random element that
allows us to identify the casual impact of committee service on careers in a new democracy.
Periodically, the legislature was randomly assigned into 11 groups called bureaux, and then
each group chose members to serve on the powerful budget committee. The competitiveness
of a deputy’s bureau serves as a unique instrument for nomination to the budget committee,
2
and therefore we use an instrumental variable research design to estimate the career returns
to committee membership for individual deputies. Further, the French legislature is an ideal
case because it lacked a formalized party system, and so emerging parties were not able to
control the legislative process and potentially confound any analysis of committee selection.
We first estimate the effect of committee appointment on legislative productivity, as
measured by bill sponsorship. We show that as a result of budget experience, deputies are
much more likely to sponsor future budget amendments. Importantly, the effect is only for
the budgetary legislation, the topical focus of the committee, indicating a very specific type
of ‘learning on the job.’ This result lends new, comparative support to informational theories
of legislative organization that argue committees induce members to acquire a specialized set
of expertise (Krehbiel 1991; Gillian and Krehbiel 1987). We then estimate the probability
a budget committee member will acquire higher office in the future. We find a strong and
positive effect of committee service on ministerial appointment. Further, we also show that
there is no effect of budget service on other forms of career advancement; specifically career
positions that do not rely heavily on specific policy expertise, such as party leadership or
senatorial positions. Finally, we show that there is no effect on reelection or choice to
stand for office, and our evidence suggests these results are unlikely to be due to alternative
mechanisms relating to reputation or network effects.
The contribution of our paper is twofold. First, we leverage a natural experiment to
provide causal evidence on the effect of committee experience on both legislative behavior
and political careers. In doing so, we contribute to a new literature utilizing institutional
randomizations to study the link between legislative institutions and politician behavior
(Grimmer and Powell 2013; Broockman and Butler 2011; Kellermann and Shepsle 2009).
Second, we shift focus to apply influential theories of legislative organization to a European
context, and provide new evidence for the role of committees in a newly democratized regime
with a weak party system. Prior empirical work has been grounded in the study of the twoparty US Congress, and this paper contributes to a call for micro-level studies of committee
systems and individual incentives across multiparty, parliamentary democracies and new
3
regimes (Krehbiel 1991, Zubek 2015).
This paper proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the theoretical importance of committee
service to parliamentary careers, and then review the empirical case of France, where we
test these claims. In the following section, we outline our data and research design, and
then provide evidence for a skill-based story of professional development. We also address
alternative mechanisms for our findings. Our paper concludes by discussing the contribution
of our research to the literature on legislative institutions in new democracies.
1
Career Returns to Committee Service
Scholars have long established that politicians, by their very nature, are ambitious. Such
individuals are “single-minded seekers of reelection” (Mayhew 1974), in addition to aspiring
to both legislative posts and public policy influence. Relatedly, it has been argued committee
membership is a distinct political asset with a number of electoral and legislative benefits
(Mayhew 1974; Cox and McCubbins 1993). After political parties, members of standing
committees form the second most powerful “privileged group” in a legislative setting (Strom
2005). Clearly committees can affect the career trajectory of a politician, and we argue this
is even more so when typical sources of professional development like parties are absent.
What is the mechanism driving the individual benefits to committee service? How do
committees independently affect legislative behavior, and does this experience improve future
parliamentary careers? We address two separate explanations of the effect of committee
service on early politicians, relating to skill acquisition and pursuit of higher office.
1.1
Theoretical Expectations
We first draw upon informational theories of legislative organization to argue committees
teach their members a new set of legislative skills. An influential literature in American
Politics claims that in a context of policy uncertainty, the benefits of committees stem from
their ability to make policymaking more efficient by developing specialized knowledge. As
4
a result, the committee system induces legislators to develop expertise and encourages legislative specialization (Krehbiel 1991; Gillian and Krehbiel 1987). Further, while arguably
all parliamentary experience shapes a legislator’s performance, the structure of a committee
system provides a uniquely beneficial environment for professional development. Committees
have a number of notable functions: drafting legislation, deliberation, summoning witnesses,
and gathering independent information needed for policy. These tasks are executed in small
groups, repeated over time, and a committee provides exposure to a diverse set of representatives from across the chamber. In addition, by imparting such knowledge, they give a
legislator “the capacity to understand, judge, and evaluate problems and to proposes solutions” (Dogan 1979).
Based on these arguments, we would expect that committee members are more likely
to develop a set of specialized skills, useful for their career, that they can use to achieve
their legislative goals. More specifically, here we focus on entrepreneurial activity, one of
the key functions of elected representatives. This type of activity is typically measured by
bill sponsorship (Warwo 2000), and is one of the best known measures of individual effort
and productivity in a legislature (Cox and Terry 2008). It is also an intuitive outcome that
reflects the way in which constituents and peers would measure legislative success (Anderson,
et al 2003). This is particularly informative in the context of a newly democratizing regime,
where career fortunes overly depend on such types of individual initiative in the absence of
coordinated parties.
Second, we are also interested in untangling the link between committees and career
success. Particularly in a weak party system, if parties are unable to recruit or reward a new
political class, then institutions that promote “careerist” patterns of behavior and provide
regular opportunities for advancement could be an important part of early professionalization
(Katz and Sala 1996). In this way, committees can provide a natural pool from which
parliamentary groups can recruit future leadership (Epstein et al 1997). In the case of
established democracies, it has been frequently argued that a key way to ensure a long-lasting
political career is to obtain a seat on an influential committee (Fenno 1973; Schlesinger 1966).
5
But why is this the case? While there are a variety of extraneous benefits to committee
service, such as reputation, networking, or constituency targeting, we are most interested in
the mechanism of skill. If committees help train their members to be policy entrepreneurs,
then we should see the returns to such experience reflected in their career trajectory. In
particular, we argue that the benefits of committee service should be most valuable in obtaining positions that value legislative expertise. Instead of conceptualizing committees as
static reflections of partisan preferences (Cox and McCubbins 1993), these institutions can
serve a dynamic and independent role in professional development.
1.2
Empirical Evidence
Prior research on early legislative institutions has focused primarily on the evolution or function of permanent committees and how this affects the larger political system; not individual
careers.1 Empirical work that has examined how committees affect legislator behavior, rooted
in the American context, has returned mixed results. Studies of the US Congress have found
a positive effect of holding a significant position in a committee on measures of legislative
productivity, higher office, or electoral success (Cox and Terry 2008; Schiller 1995; Grimmer
and Powell 2013). Relatedly, Wawro (2000) and Pedro i Miguel and Snyder (2008) found
that “legislative entrepreneurs” who engage in drafting, introducing, or promoting legislation
are more likely to see success in both promotion and reelection. On the other hand, Anderson et al (2003) show that the type of committee assignment does not predict members’
legislative productivity, and Berry and Fowler (2015) show that committee membership does
not influence the ability of members to target spending to their constituents.
However, these results typically fail to hold in the context of newly democratizing countries, outside the United States. Jones et al (2015) finds little evidence for informational
or distributional theories of legislative organization in Argentina, and Crisp et al (2009) ar1
For example, scholars have shown standing committees make parliament more efficient and effective as
legislative activity increases (Mezey 1979; Strom 1996); as in the case of 19th century Britain (Cox 1987)
and the United States (Gramm and Shepsle 1989). They can reduce uncertainty in coordination and can
help foster party development (Cox and McCubbins 1993; Damgaard 1996), as in the case of Italy (Currini
and Zucchini 2015) or post-Communist and post-Soviet countries (Olson 2007; Khmelko et al 2010).
6
gue the connections between committee assignments and electoral or career incentives vary
widely across countries in the less institutionalized environments of Latin America. Olson
(2007) discusses but does not empirically test the use of early committees as both a source
of expertise and recruitment tool in Slovenia and the Czech Republic, while Khmelko et al
(2007) surveyed deputies in newly independent Ukraine and found mixed results on attitudes
towards the importance of the committee system. More generally, there are very few microlevel studies of how committee appointment affects individual behavior in either multiparty
parliamentary systems or democratizing regimes (Krehbiel 1991; Uzbek, 2015).2
The main empirical challenge in identifying the causal effect of committee service on
legislative careers is distinguishing the effects of membership from selection onto committees
(Cox and McCubbins 1993; Krehbiel 1993; Berry and Fowler 2015). Legislators who succeed
in achieving a committee post might be more senior, more skilled, or more charismatic
than their peers; or legislators might be put on high profile committees because they are
effective. One significant threat to inference is that it may be these characteristics – not
the legislative office itself – that determine future success. Also, political parties often
control both committee selection and career prospects, confounding our ability to isolate the
independent effect of legislative institutions.
To resolve these empirical challenges, our paper joins a set of recent studies that have
exploited institutionalized randomizations to identify the individual benefits to committee
service. Kellerman and Shepsle (2009) use randomly assigned committee seniority to show it
has no effect on reelection or legislative success outside a member’s committee jurisdiction,
and similarly Broockman and Butler (2012) use the random ordering of seniority rankings
in Arkansas and find that state legislators with desirable committee assignments do not
gain significant electoral or legislative benefits. Yet Grimmer and Powell (2013) mediate
these findings using a displacement argument, by demonstrating newly exiled committee
members are forced to spend more time and money focusing on their constituency, to offset
the loss of the position. In addition, both Grimmer and Powell (2013) and Kellerman
and Shepsle (2009) offer evidence that committee service increases legislative productivity.
2
An excellent resource for the evolution of committee systems in Europe is Doring 1996.
7
Results from these research designs, including ours, contradict the findings of much of the
prior observational studies, demonstrating the value of utilizing natural experiments. The
next section describes how the case of the France can uniquely help us identify the impact
of early legislative institutions.
2
Budget Committee in the French Third Republic
The French Third Republic provides an ideal case in which to study the effects of a committee
system in a nascent democracy, for a number of reasons. First, from the very start of
the regime, legislative institutions were the primary focal point for political activity, and
had the potential to play an important role in the professional development of individual
deputies. Second, the absence of a formalized party system helps us to analyze the effect
of committee service without confounding partisan factors. Finally, and most importantly,
the process of committee appointment incorporated an egalitarian selection process with a
randomized element that provides a unique natural experiment with which to isolate the
effect of committee service on careers.
Our study of France focuses on the most salient and powerful committee – the budget
committee. Established in 1871, it was the only permanent standing committee in the
Chamber until 1902, and was annually and consistently appointed throughout the entire
regime (Usher 1906). The budget committee was comprised of 33 members, tasked with
reviewing the draft annual budget presented by the finance minister each October. Unlike
the more structured finance committee of the later Republics (Huber 1996), this group was
effectively an independent council outside the government, with extensive investigative and
legislative powers. Members had the ability to essentially remake the government’s budget
(Gooch 1928),and neither the president nor the cabinet could induce the committee to finish
more quickly. When compared to the short life of most ministries, it is easy to see why
committees were “effectively masters of the executive” (Chapman 1962).
Like many new democracies, the French Third Republic began with stable legislative
institutions but a fledgling and weak party system. The regime was established with a
8
bicameral parliament in 1875, and France was divided into over 600 voting districts that
under universal manhood suffrage each elected one deputy to the lower house of National
Assembly. Parties consisted of loose parliamentary groupings, existing only within the chamber. Ideologically, the multi-party Chamber was dominated by the center-left Radical party,
flanked by conservatives and center-right progressives on one side, and radical socialists and
socialists on the other. These groups provided some basis for partisan coordination, and
cabinets attempted to reflect the various strengths of parliamentary factions. However, the
most numerous party groups such as the Radicals were also the most heterogeneous, and
deputies could hold multiple affiliations in groups as late as 1906. This not only delayed the
professionalization of politics, but shielded committees from being instruments of partisan
control.
2.1
Committees and Skill Acquisition
Committee membership teaches legislators a set of specialized skills, beneficial to their career.
In France, committees certainly had the capability to endow their members with additional
legislative expertise. Members developed policy, reviewed private and government bills, conducted financial audits, negotiated with various parliamentary factions on budgetary matters,
and effectively exercised agenda control by presenting detailed recommendation reports to
the entire chamber before discussion on any budgetary matters could begin. Scholars note
that somehow French politicians became skilled political entrepreneurs, despite an absence
of disciplined parties which undermined professionalization (Kreuzer and Stephan, 2003).
We empirically test this argument by analyzing the effect of committee service on legislative entrepreneurship, as measured by career bill sponsorship. This is a measure of behavior
particularly informative in the French context, featuring a weak party system that placed
high priority on individual effort for advancement. The Third Republic was also defined
by a lack of partisan gatekeeping and unlimited powers of individual initiative: there were
no constraints on how many bills a deputy could propose. There were distinct benefits to
bill sponsorship, regardless of the bill’s outcome. Any bill presented for a roll call vote was
9
formally discussed in the Assembly, and the sponsor of the bill was guaranteed invaluable
speaking time on the legislative floor. Therefore French deputies had every incentive to draft
significant bills to achieve their legislative and constituency goals, and we analyze whether
committee membership increased their likelihood of doing so.
2.2
Committees and Higher Office
Committee service is beneficial in obtaining higher office, particularly positions that value
policymaking skills. In the French Third Republic, anecdotally it has been argued that the
committee system offered the opportunity to both rise to higher office and ensure reelection
(Zeldin 1993, Gooch 1928; Garner 1914; Chapman 1962). Serving on a high profile committee
was one way in which a deputy could display the qualities that made him suited to a long
career in politics – for example, “the general reporter of the budget is almost certainly a future
minister” (Dogan 1979). Gambetta, in particular, was known for pushing his career agenda
while president of the budget committee from 1877 to 1881 (Zeldin 1993). Furthermore, in the
absence of disciplined parties, committees were consequently important in early promotion.
“If a young deputy can induce his bureau to nominate him [to a committee], he starts on his
political career with chances similar to those enjoyed by an engineer in his profession who
has passed out of the Ecole Polytechnique with a high number” (Bodley 1898).
We empirically test this argument by estimating the probability that members of the
budget committee are more likely to ascend to higher office in the future. We examine the
positions most important for career success in the 19th century – a minister, senator, and
parliamentary group leader. During this era, it is also worth noting that deputies did not
have to sacrifice alternative career paths in order to serve in the Chamber of Deputies.3
Naturally a prominent position was that of parliamentary minister. Here we include all
classes of governmental ministers, including senior and junior ministers in the cabinet, as
well as undersecretaries. In terms of selection, while the government inevitably attempted
3
The lower house only met certain months of the year, because early in the regime the legislative calendar
had been structured to allow deputies the ability hold a local as well as a national office, called cumul-desmandats (Graham 1982). Deputies took advantage of this to simultaneously hold profit seeking occupations,
such as financier or industrial baron, or to continue to manage their agricultural estates (Dogan 1969).
10
to reflect varying strengths of parliamentary factions, parties provided no clear role in government coordination. There was frequent government turnover; cabinets lasted on average
8 months, due to the weak party system. Yet unlike the Fourth and Fifth Republics (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2004; Kam and Indridason 2009), this constant instability was
strategic. There was “an insatiable desire for cabinet office among the deputies,” and since
politicians who hadn’t at some point held a ministerial post were judged negatively by constituents (Garner 1914), this actually incentivized the frequent toppling of ministries. Yet,
while turnover was high, ministerial selection valued skilled members and prior experience
– personnel remained remarkably constant, and as many as half of the ministers would stay
on from one government to the next.
Two other high profile posts on the potential career paths of deputies at the time were
a party leadership position in the chamber, and election to the Senate. The only consistent
form of partisan organization in this era were the parliamentary governing committees. Each
faction in the Chamber was loosely headed by a yearly committee consisting of 3 to 6
members.4 Even though parties were weak, serving as a party representative was highly
desirable, for it gave deputies name recognition, both inside and outside the legislature.5
Meanwhile the Senate served as the upper house of the French parliament, consisting of 300
members, of which 225 were indirectly elected by the municipal councils of the departments.
For an ambitious deputy, a position in the Senate was desirable and a more stable career path;
for its members served nine year terms instead of five. In sum, all three positions of higher
office we examine would have been an important part of a deputy’s career advancement.
4
Depending on the group, this included some combination of a founder, president, vice president, secretary, rapporteur, or questeur. Partisan governing committees existed only in the legislature; mass electoral
organizations didn’t exist in the period of study.
5
Leaders were mentioned in the national paper, Le Matin, and listed in the public parliamentary record.
11
2.3
Bureaux Selection
The most unique aspect of the French case is that from the beginning of the regime, until
1910, there was no role for political parties in the selection of committee assignments, nor
were there institutional procedures such as seniority or tenure guiding selection. Instead,
budget committee members were selected by a lottery-based procedure. This procedure was
not fully randomized, but contained an important element of randomization.
To choose the budget committee each year, the French delegated the task to a system
of small groups assigned by lottery, called bureaux.6 Each autumn, the approximately 580
deputies of the Chamber would convene to select the 33 members of the budget committee.
First, the entire chamber was randomly assigned into the 11 bureaux. Next, deputies were
given their assignment, then met in their respective groups. Finally, and within hours, each
bureau then nominated three representatives from its ranks to serve on the budget committee.
Figure 1 graphically illustrates where the randomization occurred in the selection process.
Figure 1: Budget Committee Selection Process
6
Note, we rely on the French terminology, using bureaux for plural and bureau for singular.
12
The bureaux system was established early in the regime, in order to prevent any one
political faction from capturing control of this powerful institution. Bureaux were temporary
assignments, existing only for the budget committee selection, and were redrawn each year.
Initially they were drawn up to two weeks before the nomination procedure began, but
this was changed to hours before in 1894. This short timeframe was designed to protect
the budget committee from corruption or advance coordination by political groups (Gooch
1928). More broadly, it created a more even playing field to access the budget committee, for
an ambitious deputy seeking a committee post did not have to convince the entire legislature
but only a small, randomly selected group of his peers.
The system of bureaux existed for over 30 years, even though it could produce suboptimal
outcomes. For example, the minority in the chamber could hold the majority in the greater
number of bureaux, and thus create an unrepresentative committee. Similarly, if all deputies
with one particular skill were randomly assigned to a few bureaux, the committee could suffer
from a lack of expertise (Usher 1906). However, deputies kept the system in place because
they feared overly powerful political factions. Only in 1910, when parties had consolidated,
was the committee system reformed to give parliamentary groups control over committee
assignments.7 This novel feature of French politics allows us to use this selection process as
a natural experiment to isolate the effect of committee service on careers.
3
Research Design: Lottery-based Procedures
We make use of the random variation introduced by lottery into the selection process of the
budget committee before 1910, and exploit a deputy’s characteristics within his randomly
assigned bureau to isolate the effect of a budget committee nomination. These temporary
bureaux serve as an instrument that is correlated with budget committee selection. Conceptually, the competitiveness of the randomly assigned group acts similarly to a form of
encouragement design (Sekhon and Titiunik 2012; Imai et al 2013).
7
Instead of election via the bureaux, committee positions were allocated proportionally to political parties,
who then filled these slots using party controlled lists. A variant of this law had been passed in 1902, but
was never invoked (Usher 1906), and then reformed in 1910.
13
Our empirical strategy uses an instrumental variable research design to estimate the
effect of budget committee service on legislator careers. More specifically, we look at whether
serving on the budget committee led to changes in legislative productivity, as well as increased
probabilities of higher office and reelection. This sections detail our data, the construction
of the instrument, and the assumptions behind the instrumental variable research design.
3.1
Data
We focus on a key period of party institutionalization in France, from the regime’s inception
to WWI. The main sample for our analysis focuses on the effects of committee service from
1894 (when bureaux were drawn two hours prior to selection) to 1910 (when the randomized
selection process was eliminated). Data on individual covariates and career outcomes, however, are drawn from a dataset spanning the years 1877 to 1936. Data sources and summary
statistics for the main sample can be found in the online appendix.
The data is structured by deputy-year, and we were able to find complete budget information for 8,147 observations, or maximum 1,330 individuals. We call this sample the
lottery sample. Table 1 below presents the distribution of budget committee members over
term and year of nomination, whether they had served on the budget committee the year
before (“budget incumbent”), as well as whether they enter our lottery sample.
The dataset includes individual-level and district-level data for deputies in the Chambre
des députés, drawn from historical election results, the parliamentary records, biographical information, and census data. This information is matched to detailed lists of budget
committee members, ministers,8 bureaux assignments, and lists of party leadership. We also
collected data on yearly legislative activity, including bill sponsorship. As a result, we have
the full legislative and career trajectories of all deputies who served in the lower chamber.
8
The majority of ministers were chosen from within the Chamber (Heinberg 1931). A small proportion
of ministers were not, and aren’t included in the analysis.
14
Table 1: Budget Committees and Budget Incumbency
Term
1877
1881
1885
1889
1893
1898
1902
1906
Total
Year
All
Inc.
% Inc.
Lottery
Sample?
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
29
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
0
15
14
18
9
12
16
15
9
12
13
14
6
12
14
16
0%
45%
42%
55%
27%
36%
48%
45%
27%
36%
39%
42%
18%
36%
42%
48%
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
1,052
13
14
12
19
6
31
15
16
10
14
15
31
12
16
18
21
458
39%
42%
36%
58%
18%
94%
45%
48%
30%
42%
45%
94%
36%
48%
55%
64%
44%
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Budget incumbents (Inc.) defined as serving on budget committee the year before. No budget
committee information could be found for 1877. The lottery sample begins in 1894, when bureaux
were drawn by lottery two hours before nominating the budget committee delegates. In 1899 and
1905, the previous committee remained in place so that there is no information for selection in
the bureaux. These years do not enter the lottery sample.
15
3.2
Instrumental Variable Research Design
The instrument utilizes the randomization of legislative bureaux in the selection process,
and measures the likelihood that an individual deputy will advance from the bureaux to the
budget committee. We construct an instrument specific to each deputy i in each year t,
based on the number of deputies (j 6= i) within his randomly assigned bureau b who served
on the previous budget committee. Thus the instrument measures the number of budget
incumbents in the bureaux, excluding the deputy. This continuous instrument is a measure
of how likely the deputy would win the nomination; if many of his competitors in his bureau
served on the previous budget committee, then it was less likely that he would advance to
the budget committee (and vice versa). The instrument exploits the random assignment of
budget incumbents to bureaux, or whether there were any “free spots”, which introduced
variation in individual promotion opportunities.
OtherBudgetIncumbentsi,b,t =
X
BudgetIncumbentj,b,t
(1)
j6=i
Historical and cross-national evidence supports the use of past budget experience as the
primary criteria for selection. Lowell’s (1902) formidable study of the French committee
system argues this was the case, and historical evidence also supports the claim that those
most interested and experienced in this issue area would be put forward (Gooch 1928). While
there are no written records of the nomination process that took place within the bureaux,
we know that it happened quickly, within a single legislative session. The large legislature
with weak parliamentary groupings provided few natural foci of coordination, and the short
timing of selection made partisan bargaining virtually impossible. Prior budget experience
therefore served as an advantage.9
9
This pattern is also present in contexts beyond France – from the 1870s onwards, the US House of
Representatives documented a budget incumbency advantage in its committee system (Katz and Scala
1996). Professional expertise and seniority are also powerful determinants of committee membership, for
example, in Latin American (see Jones et al 2002 and Crisp et al 2009).
16
Our instrumental variable research design relies on the following assumptions: i) the
bureaux were truly randomly drawn; ii) the instrument is relevant, and has a non-zero causal
effect on budget committee nomination; and iii) the measure does not violate the exclusion
restriction, e.g. the number of budget committee incumbents in a deputy’s bureau had no
direct effect on our outcomes of interest. We discuss each of these in turn.
Verifying the Random Assignment
The research design relies on random variation introduced by lottery into the selection process
of the budget committee. There is no historical evidence to suggest manipulation or tampering with assignment of the bureaux. Still, we tested whether the assignment of individuals
into bureaux was likely to have been truly random following a fair lottery. Table 3 compares
a randomly drawn bureau (number 1) and any other specific bureau, within each budget
committee year. It confirms there are almost no significant differences between the groups.
The few differences that appear are not systematic: they disappear with pairwise comparison of the different bureaux using different ones as the base comparison group. Moreover,
we confirmed that the instrument cannot systematically predict outcomes or pretreatment
covariates determined before budget committee nominations (see Table 2). Still to account
for potential imbalances in pretreatment covariates of legislators across bureaux, we include
results from analyses in which we control for such potentially unbalanced characteristics.
Table 2: Pretreatment Covariates and Instrument
(1)
(2)
(3)
Electoral
Age
Other Budget Incumbents
Observations
Margin %
Electorate
(4)
(5)
(6)
Upper
Middle
Civil
Class
Class
Service
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
Parl Exp
Budget
Budget
Paris
Years
Incumbent
Exp Years
0.097
0.019
-40.257
0.004
-0.004
-0.002
0.002
0.091**
-0.001
0.010
[0.061]
[0.192]
[26.404]
[0.003]
[0.003]
[0.003]
[0.002]
[0.043]
[0.002]
[0.012]
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
Estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. All specifications include
year FE. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, *
p<0.1.
17
Table 3: Balance of Characteristics Across Bureaux
(1)
(2)
(3)
Electoral
Age
Bureau = 2
Bureau = 3
Bureau = 4
Bureau = 5
Bureau = 6
Bureau = 7
Bureau = 8
Bureau = 9
Bureau = 10
Bureau = 11
Observations
Margin %
Electorate
(4)
(5)
(6)
Upper
Middle
Civil
Class
Class
Service
(7)
Paris
(8)
(9)
(10)
Parl Exp
Budget
Budget
Years
Incumbent
Exp Years
0.263
-1.182
5.383
-0.031
0.013
-0.011
-0.002
0.171
-0.008
0.046
[0.538]
[1.100]
[184.777]
[0.022]
[0.023]
[0.017]
[0.014]
[0.309]
[0.012]
[0.070]
-0.245
-0.621
221.256
-0.031
0.025
0.007
0.020*
0.092
-0.006
0.073
[0.485]
[1.135]
[283.322]
[0.022]
[0.023]
[0.017]
[0.011]
[0.241]
[0.011]
[0.089]
-0.220
-1.845
251.972
-0.004
-0.005
-0.023
0.001
-0.509
-0.017*
-0.132*
[0.505]
[1.394]
[244.291]
[0.024]
[0.022]
[0.017]
[0.013]
[0.333]
[0.009]
[0.075]
-0.547
-2.719**
-24.451
-0.023
0.019
-0.019
0.000
-0.037
-0.013
-0.026
[0.523]
[1.340]
[230.643]
[0.022]
[0.026]
[0.019]
[0.014]
[0.263]
[0.009]
[0.084]
0.105
-2.408*
508.552*
-0.027
0.002
-0.020
0.006
0.519
0.011
0.184**
[0.538]
[1.306]
[279.366]
[0.022]
[0.019]
[0.020]
[0.014]
[0.327]
[0.012]
[0.088]
-0.274
-1.738
150.559
-0.021
-0.010
-0.026
0.009
0.073
0.008
0.085
[0.541]
[1.187]
[254.734]
[0.024]
[0.022]
[0.018]
[0.014]
[0.362]
[0.010]
[0.127]
0.094
-0.108
387.873*
-0.035
0.002
-0.032*
0.014
0.351
-0.004
0.005
[0.508]
[1.149]
[207.851]
[0.023]
[0.028]
[0.018]
[0.011]
[0.243]
[0.012]
[0.105]
0.742
-0.774
264.702
-0.023
-0.002
-0.014
0.008
0.316
-0.003
0.064
[0.569]
[1.337]
[230.973]
[0.023]
[0.023]
[0.020]
[0.012]
[0.290]
[0.011]
[0.073]
-0.226
0.442
-228.909
-0.035
0.016
0.007
0.003
-0.192
-0.015
0.021
[0.521]
[1.035]
[258.055]
[0.022]
[0.024]
[0.025]
[0.015]
[0.197]
[0.012]
[0.089]
-0.301
-0.302
106.074
-0.017
0.020
-0.009
-0.001
0.222
-0.010
-0.005
[0.537]
[1.309]
[263.677]
[0.023]
[0.021]
[0.019]
[0.012]
[0.261]
[0.010]
[0.068]
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
8,147
Characteristics of deputies serving in randomly drawn and numbered bureaux between 1894 and 1909,
excluding 1899 and 1905. All models include year dummies. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual
and bureau-year level. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
Exclusion Restriction and Instrument Relevance
This instrument is valid only if the number of other budget incumbents of a deputy’s bureau
is first correlated with budget committee membership (instrument relevance), and second
affects the legislative behavior, higher office, or reelection only via a deputy’s budget committee appointment (exclusion restriction). While a deputy’s own budget incumbency status
is endogenous and potentially related to omitted variables such as talent or skill, the budget
incumbency of other bureau members is plausibly orthogonal to a deputy’s own character-
18
istics after each new random draw. It was precisely the composition of a deputy’s bureau
that, aside from such individual factors, determined his chances of selection at any given
point in time.
First, there is significant support for instrument relevance as the strong first stage results
indicate, which are supported by correspondingly strong F-statistics, which range from 50
to over 200. Overall, the number of other budget incumbents has a statistically significant
and negative effect on being selected to the budget committee; the higher the number of
incumbent competitors in a deputy’s bureau, the less likely the deputy would advance to the
budget committee.
Second, the cornerstone of the French case is that bureaux were not only randomly assigned, but also existed temporarily and for the sole purpose of budget committee elections.
These groups ceased to exist after appointing its budget committee members, which eliminated any type of long term coordination, and it had no other legislative function. There
was no prestige or honor attached to being in a particular bureau; it was an administrative
tool, and bureaux were always redrawn before the next appointments took place. Therefore,
it is highly unlikely that the composition of a deputy’s randomly assigned bureau had an
effect on any other outcome than immediate selection to the budget committee.
3.3
Regression Specification
We estimate the following second stage least squares regression:
Yi,t = β1 Budgeti,t + β2 Xi,t + η + i,t
(2)
in which Yi,t are individual deputy career outcomes, Budgeti,t is an indicator for serving
on the budget committee in the corresponding year t, Xi,t is a vector of individual controls,
and i,t is the error term. Each specification includes η year dummies. Standard errors
are two-way clustered at both individual and bureau-year level, because individuals enter
into several yearly lotteries over the course of their career and the treatment is similar for
19
individuals within each bureau in a specific year.
The instrument employed to estimate budget committee membership in the first stage
for the model of equation 2 is Other Budget Incumbents, calculated for each i at time t as a
function of their bureau b. Correspondingly, the first stage is estimated as follows.
Budgeti,t = γ1 OtherBudgetIncumbentsi,b,t + γ2 Xi,b,t + η + νi,b,t
(3)
Our dependent variables in Equation 2 represent legislative and electoral benefits to
committee service. We measure our outcome variables in a number of ways. First, we create
a set of variables, Sponsor, to measure legislative productivity across types of bills. These
variables take a value of 1 if the deputy sponsored at least one bill within t + 5 years, and we
create separate variables for each category. Second, we define a set of dependent variables,
equal to 1 if the deputy served in a ministerial position, Minister; leadership post in a
partisan governing committee, Leader; or was elected to the Senate, Senate, for the first
time within t + 5 years. By considering the first service we can avoid reverse causality
concerns.
Finally, our measure of electoral success naturally only varies with each new term. Reelected Next Term is an indicator of whether the deputy was present the following term
(given that the deputy chose to run), and similarly Reelected Two Terms is whether the
deputy was reelected in the next two terms. We also examine whether serving on the budget
committee influenced the choice to continue a legislative career; Ran Next is an indicator
of whether the deputy chose to run in the term following the election. Since reelection varies
with each new term, and our instrument is constructed yearly, we keep only individuals in
the last year of each term in our sample, the closest year to the outcome of interest.
We consider a number of pretreatment covariates as controls. To measure wealth, we
create an indicator variable of the wealthiest occupational category: Upper Class identifies aristocratic or bourgeois landowners. Liberal Profession is a measure of professional
qualifications, and identifies bourgeoisie: doctors, lawyers, and bankers. We also create a dichotomous variable that measures whether a deputy had prior experience as a civil servant or
20
appointed government representative, called Civil Service. Other deputy characteristics
include Age and Parliamentary experience, both measured in years. As district characteristics inevitably affect a deputy’s career, we include district size to proxy for political
capital (measured by the number of registered voters, Electorate), whether the deputy
was from the capital (Paris), and competition (measured by electoral margin, Electoral
Margin).
4
Results
4.1
Committee Service and Legislative Productivity
We are first interested in the benefits to an individual legislator that accrue from committee participation. If budget committee members acquire unique expertise, this should be
positively reflected in their future legislative productivity. Therefore, we look at the policymaking activities of individual deputies, measured by the number of bills a deputy sponsored.
Deputies had the right of unlimited individual initiative, and could claim credit for a bill.10
We code bill sponsorship using the complete set of roll call votes for the years 1894-1913,
published daily in the official parliamentary record, the Journal Officiel. The sample includes
4,615 bills, and each roll call vote listed the topic of the bill, its sponsors, and the full set of
voting deputies. Approximately 50% of deputies in our roll call sample sponsored at least
one bill in their career, and only 15% of the amendments in the sample were cosponsored.
The topics of such bills are wide ranging, including agriculture, education, public works,
government, agenda setting, and economics, as well as financial matters. It is notable that
amendments to the annual budget topped the legislative agenda, followed by interpellations
(relating to votes of no confidence), and economics. Figure 2 presents the percentage of
sample bills in each category, and shows the topics that were most frequently discussed.
10
The success of a bill, in contrast, could be related to exogenous events or chamber dynamics unmeasured
in our data. Measuring a bill’s success is also difficult in the French context – some bills are proposed but
disappear from the parliamentary record, some bills are divided into separate amendments and voted on by
parts, and other bills are tabled for years, making the mapping of bills to final outcomes very imprecise. As
a result, in the French context, legislative entrepreneurship is best measured using sponsorship.
21
Figure 2: Main Categories of Sponsored Bills, 1894 -1913
We find that deputies who serve on the budget committee are more likely to sponsor
budget amendments within five years of their committee service. The detailed estimates
for amendments to the yearly budget are presented in Table 4. On average, the standard
OLS results show that deputies who served on the budget committee were only slightly more
likely to increase their budget bill sponsorship activity (columns 1 and 2), and there is no
effect if we account for individual idiosyncrasies using fixed effects (column 3).
Yet we see very different estimates when we employ the preferred IV estimation strategy.
Here, those who served on the budget committee are much more likely to sponsor a budget
amendment in the next five years, ranging from 49 to 69%. These are significant and large
effects. They could indicate that the association between budget committee service and
activity is biased downwards (columns 1 to 3), and that precisely the committee members
selected were much more likely to increase their legislative activity. These results are also not
being driven by budget committee members submitting bills the year they are also serving
on the committee – not only was this customarily rare, less than 30 bills in a large sample,
but the results remain robust to the exclusion of those deputies.
22
Table 4: Budget Committee and Future Budget Bill Sponsorship
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
OLS
OLS
OLS
2SLS
2SLS
2SLS
Budget Committee
0.062***
[0.023]
0.030
[0.019]
-0.007
[0.019]
0.644***
[0.236]
0.634***
[0.233]
0.496***
[0.182]
Observations
Individual controls
Individual FE
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
Sponsor Budget Bill
<5 Years
First Stage: Dependent Variable is Budget Committee
Instrument
Other Budget Incumbents
-0.009***
[0.001]
51.77
KP F-stat
-0.008***
[0.001]
234.01
-0.010***
[0.001]
79.91
Estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. All specifications
include year FE. Individual controls include age, district size, margin of victory, parliamentary
experience and their squares, upper class, middle class, civil service experience and budget incumbency. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. *** p<0.01,
** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
In addition, in further support of the expertise mechanism, we only find effects for bills
relating to the budget. Figure 3 demonstrates the probability of bill sponsorship within five
years across the range of bill categories – budget, interpellation, economics, government, and
social welfare. This is intuitive and lends support to the concept that deputies were learning
on the job; if deputies gained specific skills in drafting legislation as a result of committee
service, then we would expect this experience to be more likely to influence the production of
bills requiring similar knowledge. Economics or credit and finance bills, on the other hand,
don’t require similar expertise. Economic bills typically involved tariffs or trade, while credit
and finance bills were simply bills that allocated funds towards a specific project.
23
Figure 3: Estimates of Committee Service on Sponsorship by Category, 1894-1913. 2SLS
estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. Twoway clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. Dependent variable is
sponsoring bill within 5 years of committee service.
These results also address to what extent distributional theories of legislative politics
apply in the French context. While we provide evidence for informational theories, distributional theories would argue that reelection might depend heavily on whether strategic
committee members used their influence to target spending back to their district (Weingast
and Marshall 1988).To examine whether this is the case, we can look at the sponsorship
patterns of a separate class of legislation that more accurately reflects targeted pork or earmarks – credit and finance bills. These bills allocated funding or resources on an ad hoc
basis, outside the national budget chapters. For example, these bills would distribute funds
for a building project, or come in response to a unique event (like a natural disaster or a
World’s Fair). We find no effect for credit or finance bills, indicating that committee service
didn’t increase a deputy’s probability of sponsoring a targeted bill.
24
In sum, we find that committees do impact legislative productivity, but in a very specific way. These results are not only suggestive of the fact that a deputy gained expertise
concerning financial policymaking from committee service, but that this was particularly
relevant for those legislators that were lucky to have obtained those positions in the first
place (columns 4 to 6 in Table 4). This indicates that the within-legislature career value of
the committee post may act through learning and the acquisition of specialized expertise.
4.2
Committee Service and Higher Office
We now investigate the relationship between committee experience and career success. Under
what conditions does committee experience lead to higher office in a new democracy? We
examine three types of prestigious political positions: minister, partisan parliamentary group
leader, and senator. All three types of positions would have been considered beneficial and
desirable to a career politician, and would occur sequentially after parliamentary service.
We first estimate the effect of budget committee membership on the probability that a
deputy will gain one of these positions within five years of committee appointment. Table 5
presents first the OLS and then the 2SLS results estimating whether a deputy was elected
to a ministerial position.
Serving on the budget committee increases the probability of obtaining a first ministerial
position in the next five years by about 8-17 percentage points (columns 1-3). Employing
the instrument, we find similar, statistically significant results in columns 4 to 6; and the
estimates are larger. Within 5 years, the probability of obtaining a first ministerial position
as a result of budget committee selection increases to as much as 28% (columns 4 and 5).
Even after including individual fixed effects, we still find an increase of 15% in the probability
of obtaining a ministerial post in the next 5 years (column 6). In each case, the instrument
in the first stage is a strongly significant predictor of budget committee selection.
These results confirm the clear link between budget committee service and first ministerial
appointments. Obtaining a seat on the budget committee significantly improved career
prospects, in a relatively short amount of time.
25
Table 5: Budget Committee and Future Ministerial Position
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
OLS
OLS
OLS
2SLS
2SLS
2SLS
Budget Committee
0.178***
[0.027]
0.131***
[0.022]
0.083***
[0.019]
0.280***
[0.086]
0.251***
[0.088]
0.147**
[0.069]
Observations
Individual controls
Individual FE
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
Minister
<5 Years
First Stage: Dependent Variable is Budget Committee
Instrument
Other Budget Incumbents
-0.009***
[0.001]
51.77
KP F-stat
-0.008***
[0.001]
234.01
-0.010***
[0.001]
79.91
Estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. All specifications
include year FE. Individual controls include age, district size, margin of victory, parliamentary
experience and their squares, upper class, liberal profession, civil service experience and budget
incumbency. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. *** p<0.01,
** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
We also consider how budget service affected the probability of obtaining other types of
office, namely senatorial and partisan posts. Table 6 presents the estimates for obtaining a
spot on a partisan governing committee, and Table 7 for the Senate. While budget committee
membership had a positive effect on ministerial appointment, this was not the case for
partisan leadership or senatorial positions. Using our instrumental variable strategy we
find no statistically significant effect, despite a strongly predictive first stage (columns 4
to 6). Likewise, employing our preferred specification, individuals with budget committee
experience are no more likely to enter the senate than individuals without such experience.
These results show an interesting pattern – committee experience helps advance a deputy’s
career, but only in terms of the ministry. So what explains the positive effect of budget
committee service on ministerial positions, and not other types of higher office?
26
Table 6: Budget Committee and Future Party Leadership
Party Leader
<5 Years
Budget Committee
F-s
Observations
Individual controls
Individual FE
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
OLS
OLS
OLS
2SLS
2SLS
2SLS
0.063***
[0.019]
0.039***
[0.015]
0.010
[0.017]
-0.015
[0.179]
-0.023
[0.187]
0.162
[0.151]
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
First Stage: Dependent Variable is Budget Committee
Instrument
Other Budget Incumbents
-0.009***
[0.001]
51.77
KP F-stat
-0.008***
[0.001]
234.01
-0.010***
[0.001]
79.91
Estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. All specifications
include year FE. Individual controls include age, district size, margin of victory, parliamentary
experience and their squares, upper class, liberal profession, civil service experience and budget
incumbency. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. *** p<0.01,
** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
Recalling our first set of results, that committees enhance productivity through newly
gained expertise, it may be that ministerial selection was more likely to favor skilled deputies
because the role of a minister and his portfolio required enhanced skills. It is also likely that
selection for either parliamentary groups or the senate was more likely to have relied on nontechnical criteria, potentially based on characteristics external to the legislature (such as
loyalty in local party activities or the competitiveness of senatorial elections). Therefore we
argue that if the within-legislature career value of the committee post acts through learning
and the acquisition of specialized expertise, then we would expect to find a stronger effect
for higher office that would require such knowledge.
27
Table 7: Budget Committee and Future Senate Post
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
OLS
OLS
OLS
2SLS
2SLS
2SLS
Budget Committee
0.045**
[0.021]
0.025
[0.018]
0.008
[0.017]
-0.167
[0.179]
-0.198
[0.175]
-0.073
[0.139]
Observations
Individual controls
Individual FE
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
8,147
No
No
8,147
Yes
No
8,066
Yes
Yes
Senate
<5 Years
First Stage: Dependent Variable is Budget Committee
Instrument
Other Budget Incumbents
-0.009***
[0.001]
-0.008***
[0.001]
-0.010***
[0.001]
Estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1887, 1899 and 1905. All specifications include year FE. Individual controls include age, district size, margin of victory, parliamentary experience and their squares, upper class, liberal profession, civil service experience and
budget incumbency. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level. ***
p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
4.3
Alternative Explanations
Finally, we address alternative explanations for our findings. We explore a related mechanism, reputation, and test the final career outcome, reelection. We have shown that committees bestow specific legislative expertise on their members, and we argue this expertise
helps individuals obtain certain types of higher office. But an alternative hypothesis is that
committee service provides a reptuational or valence boost, or perhaps aids in political networking, and this is what explains career success. This may be the particularly the case in
a new regime, with a lack of information about the new political class and parties unable to
provide clear signals of quality.
Fortunately, the French context allows us to design an empirical test to help distinguish
between the mechanisms of skill acquisition and reputation, by looking at the outcome of
reelection. In the Third Republic, the budget committee was highly visible; it was discussed
28
daily in both national and local newspapers (Gooch 1928, Garner 1914), and deputy qualifications were frequently invoked in print in the period leading up to each national election.
However, during this era voters would be less aware of legislative activity, in terms of their
deputy’s number of bills or technical details of legislation. For these reasons, it is plausible
to assume that any effect of past budget experience on reelection would most likely operate
through the mechanism of reputation, not expertise.11
We estimate the effect of budget committee membership on electoral success. A number
of historical references mention the importance of the budget committee in the reelection
prospects of deputies (Gooch 1928; Dogan 1979; Chapman 1962), as also suggested by a large
observational literature on committee membership. We use the same empirical strategy, and
estimate in Table 8 whether committee membership results in reelection in the next electoral
cycle or in two terms, conditional on running. We also look to see whether it affects a deputy’s
choice to run for election (versus retire, or seek other employment). The same set of controls
are used, which include district characteristics and measures of competition.
If the mechanism was in any way reputational, we would expect to see a difference in
either reelection or decisions to run. However, we find no statistically significant effect of
budget service on reelection, within the same term or after the next (Table 8). Budget
service also has no impact on a deputy’s choice to run for reelection, and this is the case
even when controlling for size and competitiveness of the district.
These findings in particular echo results found by the two previously mentioned studies
that used natural experiments to isolate the causal impact of committee assignments. In
the context of US congressional and state legislators, both Kellerman and Shepsle (2009)
and Broockman and Butler (2012) find that committee service does not translate into an
measurable electoral benefit. While committees can be career enhancing, they seem to have
no electoral effect.
11
Electoral success would also rarely be a result of targeting v
 ia the budget committee. Chapters of the
national budget, while important for setting the state’s priorities, would be an extremely broad and ineffective
way in which to target individual districts. In addition, recalling earlier results, budget committee members
were no more likely to sponsor credit and finance bills, the equivalent of 19th century pork.
29
Table 8: Reelection, within the Next Two Terms
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
Two
Terms
Ran
Next
Ran
Next
Next
Term
Reelected
Next
Two
Term
Terms
Budget Committee
-0.395
[0.380]
-0.570
[0.455]
-0.157
[0.317]
-0.236
[0.401]
0.341
[0.850]
0.293
[0.923]
Observations
Individual Controls
2,014
No
2,014
Yes
2,014
No
2,014
Yes
2,528
No
2,528
Yes
First Stage: Dependent Variable is Budget Committee
Instrument
Other Budget Incumbents
-0.013***
[0.003]
-0.010***
[0.002]
-0.013***
[0.003]
-0.010***
[0.002]
-0.012**
[0.002]
-0.010***
[0.001]
Term level estimates for deputies serving between 1894 and 1910, excluding 1899 and 1905. All
specifications include year FE. Individual controls include age, district size, margin of victory,
parliamentary experience and their squares, upper class, liberal profession, civil service experience
and budget incumbency. Two-way clustered standard errors at individual and bureau-year level.
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
5
Conclusion
In this paper, we have contributed by identifying the causal impact of committee service on
long term parliamentary careers. We find that committee experience provides specialized
expertise that can increase certain types of legislative entrepreneurship. In addition, we find
a strong and positive effect of committee service on the probability of becoming a minister.
In contrast to existing studies, we also show that there is no effect of budget service on
other forms of career advancement; specifically career positions that do not rely heavily on
specific policy expertise. Finally, committee service has no electoral benefit, and therefore
we find no evidence that the returns to committee membership are due to increased valence
or reputation.
30
Our results suggest that in the absence of developed parties to vet and groom candidates
for future office, committees can provide an institutionalized forum to both develop resources
and skills needed for advancement. We have documented one channel through which committees can affect professional development, and shown that the career value of a committee
post acts through the acquisition of specialized expertise. Also by focusing on such a weakly
institutionalized environment, our paper adds to a growing literature on committees and
careers in developing democracies.
Our research has broader implications for understanding the role of legislative institutions
in the absence of a strong party system. The Third Republic was a period of democratic
consolidation not unlike that of democratizing countries today. The legislature was active but
the party system was weak, and political uncertainty was high. Still, legislative committees
played an important role in the early professionalization of individual deputies. While we
look at the case of a new democracy, our rationale could apply to any context in which
parties lack true organizational or legislative power. Instead of conceptualizing committees
as static reflections of chamber dynamics or measures of institutionalization, future work can
focus on how they contribute to the professional development of a new political class.
31
References
[1] Anderson, William; Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, and Valeria Sinclair- Chapman. 2003.
“The Keys to Legislative Success in the U.S. House of Representatives.” Legislative
Studies Quarterly, 28 (3): 357-386.
[2] Bodley, John E.C. 1898. France, Volume II, Book III: The Parliamentary System. London: MacMillan and Co.
[3] Broockman, David and Daniel Butler. 2015. “ Do Better Committee Assignments Meaningfully Benefit Legislators? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in the Arkansas
State Legislature.” Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2 (2): 152-163.
[4] Chapman, Guy. 1962. The Third Republic of France. New York: St Martin’s Press.
[5] Cox, Gary and Matthew McCubbins. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government
in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[6] Crisp, Brian F.; Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon; Bradford S. Jones; Mark P. Jones; and
Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson. 2009. “The Electoral Connection and Legislative Committees.” The Journal of Legislative Studies, 15 (1): 35-52.
[7] Curini, Luigi and Francesco Zucchini. 2015. Legislative Committees as Uncertainty Reduction Devices in Multiparty Parliamentary Democracies, West European Politics,
38:5, 1042-1061.
[8] Damgaard, Erik. 1996. “How Parties Control Committee Members,” in Parliaments and
Majority Rule in Western Europe, edited by Herbert Doring. New York: St Martin’s
Press.
[9] Doring, Herbert. 1996. Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe. New York:
St Martin’s Press.
[10] Dogan, Mattei. 1979. “How to Become a Cabinet Minister in France: Career Pathways,
1870-1978.” Comparative Politics, 12 (1): 1-25.
[11] Epstein, David, Brady, D.; Kawato, and Sharon O’Halloran. 1997. “A Comparative
Approach to Legislative Organization: Careerism and Seniority in the United States
and Japan.” American Journal of Political Science, 41 (3): 965-998.
[12] Fenno, Richard F. 1978. Home Style: House Members and Their Districts. Glenview,
IL: Scott, Foresman.
[13] Garner, James. 1914. “Cabinet Government in France.” The American Political Science
Review, 8 (3): 353-374.
32
[14] Gooch, R. K. 1928. “The French Parliamentary Committee System.” Economica, 23
(June): 147-158.
[15] Graham, James Q. 1982. “Legislative Careers in the French Chamber and U.S. House,
1871-1940.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 7 (1): 37-56.
[16] Grimmer, Justin and Eleanor Powell. 2013. “Congressmen in Exile: The Politics and
Consequences of Involuntary Committee Removal.” The Journal of Politics, 75 (4):
907-920.
[17] Groseclose, Tim, and Charles Stewart, III. 1998. “The Value of Committee Seats in the
House, 1947-1991.” American Journal of Political Science, 42 (2).
[18] Hanley, D. 2006. Party, Society, Government: Republican Democracy in France,
Berghahn.
[19] Hedlund, Ronald D., Kevin Cooms, Nancy Martorano, and Keith E. Hamm. 2011.
“Partisan Stacking on Legislative Committees.” Legislative Studies Quarterly. 34(2):
175-191.
[20] Heinberg, J. 1931. “The Personnel of French Cabinets,” 1871-1930. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1931), pp. 389-396.
[21] Huber, John. 1996. Rationalizing Parliament: Legislative Institutions and Party Politics
in France. Cambridge University Press.
[22] Huber and Martinez-Gaillardo. 2004. “Cabinet Instability and the Accumulation of Experience: The French Fourth and Fifth Republics in Comparative Perspective.” British
Journal of Political Science, 34, 27-48.
[23] Imai, Koske, Tingley, Dustin. and Yamamoto, T. 2013, “Experimental designs for identifying causal mechanisms.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics
in Society), 176: 5-51.
[24] Jones, Mark, Sebastian Saiegh, and Pablo Spiller. 2002. “Amateur Legislators – Professional Politicians: The Consequences of Party-Centered Electoral Rules in a Federal
System. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46 (3): 656-669.
[25] Kam, Christopher and Indridi Indridason. 2009. “Cabinet dynamics and ministerial
careers in the French Fifth Republic.” The Selection of Ministers in Europe: Hiring
and Firing, 41-57.
[26] Katz, Jonathan and Brian Sala. 1996. “Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the
Electoral Connection. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar.,
1996), pp. 21-33.
33
[27] Kellermann, M. and Shepsle, Kenneth. 2009. “Congressional Careers, Committee Assignments, and Seniority Randomization in the US House of Representatives.” Quarterly
Journal of Political Science, 4: 87 -101.
[28] Kernel, S. 1977. “Toward Understanding 19th Century Congressional Careers: Ambition,
Competition, and Rotation.” American Journal of Political Science, 21 (4): 669-693.
[29] Khmelko, I.S.; Wise, R. and Brown, T.L. 2010. “Committees and Legislative Strengthening: The Growing Influence of Committees in Ukraine’s Legislative Process,” The
Journal of Legislative Studies, 16:1.
[30] Krehbiel. 1993. “Where’s the party?” British Journal of Political Science, 23: 235-66.
[31] Kreuzer, Marcus. 2003. “France: Enduring Notables, Weak Parties, and Powerful Technocrats,” in The Political Class in Advanced Democracies, edited by Borchert and Zeiss,
Oxford University press.
[32] Louwerse, T. and Otjes, S. 2015. “The Impact of Parliamentary Specialisation on
Cosponsorship.” The Journal of Legislative Studies, 21 (4): 476.
[33] Martin, S. 2011. “Electoral Institutions, the Personal Vote, and Legislative Organization.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 36:3.
[34] Mattson, Ingrid and Kare Strom. 1996. “Parliamentary Committees,” in Parliaments
and Majority Rule in Western Europe, edited by Herbert Doring. New York: St Martin’s
Press.
[35] Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[36] Mezey, Michael. 1979. Comparative Legislatures. Durham, Duke University Press.
[37] Miquel, Gerard. P. I. and James M. Snyder. 2006. “Legislative Effectiveness and Legislative Careers.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 31: 347-381
[38] Schlesinger, Joseph. 1966. Ambition and politics. Chicago: Rand McNally.
[39] Sekhon, Jasjeet, and Rocio Titiunik. 2012. “When Natural Experiments are Neither
Natural nor Experiments.” American Political Science Review, 106 (1): 35-57.
[40] Strom, Kare. 1997. “Rules, reasons and routines: Legislative roles in parliamentary
democracies.” The Journal of Legislative Studies, 3 (1):155-174.
[41] Usher, Abbott Payton. 1906. “The Reform of Procedure in the French Chamber of
Deputies.” Political Science Quarterly, 21 (3): 475-497.
[42] Wawro, Greg. 2000. Legislative Entrepreneurship in the U.S. House of Representatives.
University of Michigan Press.
34