ABSTRACT
Modern parliaments have many functions, only one of which is to legislate. Yet, when parliaments legislate (as indeed when they perform many of their other key functions), they typically do a significant part of their deliberation within parliamentary committees. Indeed, committees are widely recognized as important arenas of legislative deliberation. In his classic and often-quoted study, Woodrow Wilson (1885) equated congressional government with committee government. Wilson, of course, was referring to the federal institutions of the United States, and students of politics have long recognized that American-style presidential government enhances the power of legislatures and legislative committees. Yet, legislative committee power is by no means strictly a function of presidential government. As Laundy (1989: p.96) notes: '[a]ll Parliaments work to a greater or lesser extent through committees.' Even in many parliamentary systems, assembly committees seem to be important forums for policy making. At the same time, the literature is replete with references to the decline of parliaments and the weakness of their oversight capacity.
