9511518 Hamm Every 20th century U.S. state legislative chamber has organized its work and completed its tasks by assigning members to smaller work groups--standing committees. As one would expect, this prominent role for committees in the legislative process has attracted the attention of citizen, press and academic observers. For example, writing in 1931, it was demonstrated that committee action was the final action for more than 90 percent of bills introduced in the Maryland Senate and House during the 1927 legislative session. Among the themes dominating political scientists' analysis of legislative committees from a functional perspective has been their growth in specialization and use as a means for "division of labor" in a chamber. Based on earlier work and using organization theory literature, several propositions regarding specialization in legislative committees are developed in this research investigation. The purpose of the current research is to allow the investigators to: posit a model of the causes of committee specialization; complete the collection of a data base on specialization indicators for American state legislative committees; analyze the data base resulting from these efforts using regression analysis; identify study states for collecting committee performance data from this analysis; posit a model of the consequences of committee specialization for committee performance in policy and program formulation; initiate the collection of legislative performance data relevant to evaluating the effects of committee specialization; analyze the data base resulting from these efforts using path analysis; and, prepare written reports and the data base for subsequent distribution. This project promises to substantially enhance our understanding of the topic of this research. ***
