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strongest committee systems in the sample. In fact, the three countries with the strongest
committee structures in the sample (Japan, Austria, and Slovakia) had coalition governments
during most of this period. Model 1 shows that the relationship between the structure of the
electoral system and the committee structure is positive but statistically insignificant. Each of
the control variables introduced in his model, Lijphart’s degree of consensus, the size of the
legislature and the rate of minority to majority governments are statistically insignificant at
conventional levels. Model 1a reports the same relationships, but switches the measure of
government form from percent coalition to current government type, providing a better
temporal match between the data on committees and government form. As predicted, current
government is positively related to committee structure. Again, the electoral system is
positively related to committee strength although this relationship is not statistically
significant. In this model Lijphart performs better than in Model 1, but the relationship is only
significant at the 10 per cent level.
<table 2 around here>
Model 2 presents results of the same data but reports the non-weighted version of my
measure of committee system strength. The results are broadly similar to those described
above although in model 2 and model 2a the relationship between the rate of coalition
government and committee structures is statistically significant at the 1 per cent level. This is
particularly encouraging given the relatively small sample size. Using raw scores of
committee strength electoral system continues to perform poorly, showing a positive but not
statistically significant relationship. Again, the size of the legislature and the distinction
between majority and minority government are found to have no impact on committee
structure. However, in model 2 Lijphart’s degree of consensus is positively related to
committee structure at conventional levels and in model 2a the relationship is positive at the 6
Convention