Who gets what and why? On the politics of committee assignments in the Austrian Nationalrat

Committees are the “work horses” of legislatures that get the work done. Nevertheless, we have little solid knowledge of the committee allocation system. To fill this gap, this study on the Austrian Nationalrat (1945-2019) sets out to test distributional, informational, partisan, and gendered theories of committee formation based on a unique panel dataset including 32,202 committee and Members of Parliament (MPs) observations. The major insight gained from analyses of 31 different committees is that “who gets what” is determined, first and foremost, by committee experience: In most cases, MPs continue to serve on the same committee once they are assigned to it. Beyond this seniority principle, MPs’ policy focus and gender also have a significant impact on the intra-party calculus in allocating seats. It turns out that women are more likely than men to be appointed to low prestige committees regardless of their expertise.