What happens when two biased committee members try to provide useful information to a legislature? This experiment investigates Gilligan and Krehbiel's informational theory of legislative committees. Under different legislative rules—open rule (free decision) vs. closed rule (choice between proposal and status quo)—committee members transmit policy-relevant information.
Data & Methods
This research uses experimental methods where participants represent biased committee members trying to persuade a simulated legislature about alternative policies. The study compares outcomes under two distinct legislative frameworks: the open rule system, which allows free decision-making by the legislature; and the closed rule structure, which restricts choices between an individual member's proposal and the status quo.
Key Findings
Our results confirm that committee members enhance legislative decisions even when they are biased:
- Information transmission occurs despite partisan bias
- Extreme biases limit effective information sharing according to the outlier principle
- The open rule leads to better distributional outcomes than the closed rule, following the distributional efficiency principle
Interestingly, less extreme biases lead participants to conclude that the closed rule restricts information flow—a finding contradicting the traditional restrictive-rule principle. This nuanced understanding of legislative dynamics provides strong experimental validation for Gilligan and Krehbiel's informational theory.
