Why conference committees? A theory of conference use in structuring bicameral agreement

Abstract

Little scholarly literature has examined why the chambers of the US Congress use conference committees to reconcile inter-cameral legislative differences. Historically, conference committees handle the most important legislation. Why would the chambers be willing to delegate conciliation authority to a subset of the membership that is then granted wide leverage in shaping the policy choices on legislation with such broad implications for the membership? We theorize that conference committees, by way of an information advantage, offer a means of promoting bicameral agreement and avoiding the risk of failure associated with bargaining between the chambers. We develop a formal model of two-sided incomplete information and find that certain conditions on preferences and information yield the chambers, who must be complicit in the decision to go to conference, higher expected policy returns to delegating this authority to utility maximizing conferees. The results of this model suggest that centrally located conference committees, and a reduction in the chambers’ information, encourage the use of conference. We offer preliminary empirical support for these propositions.