Introduction

All parliaments have increased their analytical capacity andexpertise through some division of labour and specialisation bymeans of parliamentary committees (Mattson and Strøm, 1995; Strøm,1998). Even though there is large variation in their structure andfunctions, committees conduct policy analysis in parliamentarydemocracies to help parliaments perform their most basic functions:to legislate and control the executive. Before parliaments vote onlaws, committees can discuss and examine the bills and provideexpert evaluation of the pros and cons associated with policyalternatives. Regarding their oversight functions, they useknowledge and information to monitor policy implementation andscrutinise executive actions, to ensure transparency andaccountability. However, structural arrangements granting executivesspecial powers, and processes such as increasing politicalpolarisation or delegation of competences to supranationalinstitutions, have promoted a conception of parliaments asinstitutions that are mainly tasked with approving policies designedand negotiated elsewhere (Russell and Cowley, 2016: 122). In recentdecades, interest in the problem-solving capacity of legislaturesand in the functioning of committees has increased significantly(Weiss, 1989; Adler and Wilkerson, 2013). However, we still havelittle empirical information regarding their actual role as policyanalysis institutions, especially in parliamentary democracies.

This chapter contributes to filling this gap by exploring the case ofSpain. Chapter 2 in this book explored the emergence of Spanishparliamentary committees along the 19th century as early promotersof policy analysis. Here, we focus on their role in the actualdemocratic period (1982– 2019) with three main goals. First, weexplore the type of policy analysisconducted by parliamentary committees. The main question is whetherthey conduct policy analysis to buttress preset political positions,as a partisan logic would suggest, or provide independent analysisthat is separable from politics, driven by systematic and objectiveevidence, more in line with an informational logic (Gilligan andKrehbiel, 1990; Aldrich, 1995). We show that the tasks of Spanishcommittees are likely to be driven by partisan logic. However, asKrehbiel (2004) argues, the conceptualisation of these logics asmutually exclusive is to some extent artificial. Policy analysisprovides reason and persuasion to illuminate and alleviate problemsbut it is also related to a normative task referring to valuejudgement about what ought to be, and it involves a complextrade-off among competing values (Dunn, 2016).