ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Scottish committees at work - or perhaps more exactly the workings of the Scottish committees - as seen through the eyes of their convenors. It has primarily an 'input orientation'. The convenors were asked to assess the impact of the distinctive structural properties of the Scottish committees - their size, specialist nature etc - on aspects of their work. In so doing, it was hoped to permit an elementary inventory of the value of the contrasting hypotheses on the legislative capacity of the Scottish committees set out in chapter three. Several of the questions involved an assessment of withinputs and outputs, inter alia the ability of committees effectively to scrutinise Executive legislation and the relationship between their formal powers and their actual performance. But it is important to emphasise that this chapter is not designed systematically to gauge the legislative impact (performance) of the Scottish committees. As in the previous chapter, the aim is further to illuminate the internal dynamics of the committees - how they work.
