Intercameral Bargaining and Intracameral Organization in Legislatures

We argue that chambers have an incentive to create committees unrepresentative of themselves. In a bicameral setting, a committee within a chamber has two roles: as policy advisor for the parent chamber, and an additional role, less often recognized in the literature, as an agent for bargaining with the other chamber. In the former role, sound advice requires that the committee be representative of the chamber's preferences. In the latter role, a committee can be an effective bargaining agent if it is willing to reject proposals that the chamber cannot commit to reject. But this requires the committee to be unrepresentative of the chamber. Optimal committee design reflects a tension between the chamber's desire for a trustworthy (and therefore representative) advisor and a "tough" (and therefore unrepresentative) bargaining agent. Thus intercameral interactions can affect optimal intracameral arrangements; therefore, unicameral theories of legislative organization may overlook important factors.