Parliamentary committees have been among the most intensely analyzed bodies in legislative studies. Scholars have sought to understand why parliamentary committees are formed, how their rules and procedures differ between legislative chambers, and what consequences strong committee systems have. Generally, legislative studies point to a strong committee system as a necessary condition for effective legislative chambers that are able to fulfil their function of policy-making. In this volume, the authors question this widespread assumption about legislative committees as central arena for policy-making and ask whether “influential parliaments (still) go hand in hand with vital committees?” (p. 2).

In their introduction and Chap. 2, the editors Siefken and Rommetvedt briefly discuss the current literature on parliamentary committees and identify central research gaps and questions this volume aims to address. The editors advocate for a deeper understanding of “… what is going on inside parliamentary committees and what substantial role they actually play in policy-making” (p. 3). The analyses presented in the country chapters focus on three different aspects. First, on committees as institutions including the types of committees, the format of the committee system, committee structure and portfolio allocation, and transparency of committees. A second aspect focuses on MPs in committees referring to the committee size and membership, committees as places of specialization and socialization, and interaction in committees. Finally, a third aspect refers to committees in the policy process including the areas of problem definition and agenda-setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation, and committees and the parliamentary functions. In total, a list of 32 questions guides the different country chapters. The volume analyzes these questions in 16 country chapters including a wide range of countries: Arab Parliaments, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, UK, and the United States of America.

The volume has many strengths. The scope beyond the US Congress and Western European parliaments undoubtedly is a strength of this volume. The reader will find recent developments in parliamentary committees not only in well researched chambers such as the UK House of Commons or the US Congress, but also on parliamentary committees in countries that have not been in the spotlight so far (such as e.g. Arab Parliaments, Ghana, or Nigeria). As the editors emphasize themselves, due to the broad country selection, the volume presents results for both “liberal democracies and systems that are in a transition, majoritarian and consociational regimes, as well as younger and older political systems” (p. 5). Furthermore, the analyses in this volume are based on an extremely rich data basis. Most chapters combine several sources of information and include for example information based on formal documents such as constitutions and rules of procedures or standing orders with data available on parliamentary websites (such as information on specific bills or the introduction of amendments) and expert surveys or interviews. The focus on expert surveys and interviews in many of the chapters allows to go beyond formal rules and to analyze informal practices as well.

On the one hand, this broad perspective, together with a relatively open research framework and the fact that cases are not systematically selected, leads to the extremely rich account of parliamentary committees in the individual chapters. On the other hand, however, this also makes it more difficult to systematically answer the presented research questions and to draw conclusions about the role of parliamentary committees in the policy process more broadly. In this regard, two aspects particularly deserve further elaboration.

First, the editors present a common research framework based on three dimensions (committee institutions, MPs in committees, and committees in the policy process) and 32 questions that guide the different country chapters (however, these questions are only presented in the appendix). Whereas this framework should allow for a uniform approach to answer the presented research questions, its extremely broad framing leads to country chapters that largely differ in their design and the degree to which they refer to different aspects of the common framework. Hence, although this common research framework clearly is a strength of the volume, its broadness is detrimental to the possibility to draw conclusions upon comparisons of different country chapters as foci selected by the chapter authors differ. The reader would benefit from a somewhat narrower framework and a reduced number of questions to guide the country chapters that, in turn, are applied to all chapters in a similar manner. For example, in only two chapters (Ghana and Ukraine) the authors have chosen to specifically focus on a small number of bills to analyze the role of committees in policy-making.

The editors clearly state the underlying research question of the volume and their focus on policy-making (“But the overarching interest of our endeavor is not to explain committees as a set of rules or a group of people—we want to discover what roles committees play in the policy-making process”, p. 9). However, many chapters extensively elaborate on the first two research dimensions (i.e. committee institutions and MPs in committees) whereas the actual aim of the volume seems to be to address the third dimension (i.e. committees in the policy process). Questions about how these first two dimensions are linked to the third one are not systematically answered. Furthermore, in the presentation in Chap. 2 it becomes evident that these three dimensions are not as clearly separated as one might think. The presented overarching framework does not address these questions.

The editors highlight that their decision to present the framework and the comparative findings both in Chap. 2 is “to avoid overlaps” (p. 5). However, the common framework might have been presented in a more straightforward way if presented in its own chapter. Similarly, a separate concluding chapter could have led to a more systematic analysis of similarities and differences and maybe pointed towards some explanations for variation across countries. The legislative studies literature includes a vast body of research dealing with the explanation of different institutional design choices of legislative rules and procedures. Even though the editors briefly mention such literature in Chap. 1 and 2, they do not systematically consider these contributions to explain country variation in the importance of committees in policy-making.

This leads to the second point deserving more detailed elaboration. This volume presents an extremely rich account of the working of legislative committees in a vast number of countries. The question that arises is: if one has such rich description at hand, should one not try to analyze how the differences across countries can be explained? This refers to two potential dimensions. Regarding a first dimension, the editors mention in their first sentence that committees “exist within most modern parliaments” (p. 1) and in very different countries such as “in political systems that are liberal democracies or not, in developed and developing countries, in presidential, semi-presidential and parliamentary systems, and in parliaments that are big or small” (p. 1). But, the volume does not present detailed analysis of these broader institutional characteristics on the role of committees in policy-making. The literature on legislative studies provides several interesting approaches for further investigation (see e.g. the literature on the mirroring principle and the influence of the electoral system on legislative rules and procedures). Except for some very brief conclusions on the effect of institutional characteristics on committee institutions (e.g. the role of the size of the legislative chamber on p. 13), there is not much systematic analysis on variation between countries.

Furthermore, on a second dimension, the data presented in this volume would allow for a detailed account on the temporal development of committee systems. This especially speaks to the first two dimensions of the presented framework (i.e. committee institutions and MPs in committees). For example, the country chapters do present information on all indicators of Størm’s index of committee strength. The reader could benefit from a systematic account of the development of committee strength across time. This seems to be an important aspect as the editors repeatedly question this widespread assumption about legislative committees as central arena for policy-making. If there has been a shift away from parliamentary committees to other arenas over time, it would be important to also point out how committees changed, either as a consequence of this shift or as an explanation for it.

In sum, this volume is a highly interesting and extremely important contribution to the literature on legislative committees. The volume analyzes the substantial role parliamentary committees play in policy-making. Thereby, it questions the widespread assumption that policies are made in parliamentary committees which is a clear strength of the contribution. The editors conclude that “committees do have an important function, but it is not the committees as actors; it is the division and specialization of work, and the subsequent increase in parliamentary capacity” (p. 32). Furthermore, the volume presents a fascinating and very rich account of the committee institutions and their role in the policy process across a wide range of countries. Thereby, the volume undoubtedly is a valuable source especially for scholars interested in specific and less widely studied countries. The data presented in this volume is of great value which, however, could be presented in an even more benefitting way if analyzed more systematically across countries.