ABSTRACT
The next three chapters deal with the committee system in the Scottish Parliament. They are based on in-depth interviews with all 17 convenors of the Scottish committees, which were conducted in April-May 2002. Details of the names and party affiliation of the convenors, together with the date they took up their post, are presented in Table 4.1. The interviews, which lasted about one hour each, were taped and transcribed. As a preamble to the questions, the convenor was informed that the primary aim of the series of interviews was to explore the internal dynamics of the committees. Put another way, the objective was to gain a systematic 'inside insight' into how a central institution of the Scottish Parliament - its committee system - worked, or at least how those chairing the committees perceived them to work. The interview was divided into four sections. The first set of questions related to the challenges of the convenor's role and the extent of committee change. The second focused on the four main structural properties of the Scottish committees: their exceptionally small size, their specialist nature, their uniquely wide-ranging functions and the extremely open nature of their proceedings. The third group of questions invited an assessment of the committee's performance - that is, when it was felt the committees had been most and least efficient in respect of the performance of the multiple functions ascribed to them. Finally, there was a question about the nature of so-called 'new polities'. A copy of the convenors' interview is included as an appendix to this book. In addition to gaining an internal perspective on the workings of the Scottish committees, the interviews were designed to permit a preliminary testing of the contrasting hypotheses set out in the previous chapter.
