Common Ground: Committee Politics in the U.S. House of
Representatives. By John Baughman. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2006. 272p. $50.00.
A handful of scholars have devoted attention in recent years to the
dynamics of standing committee jurisdictions in the U.S. Congress. This is
an important focus because congressional rules and procedures give
committees a central role in the legislative process and because the
increasingly complex policy environment of recent decades has made clear
demarcations of subject matter jurisdiction more difficult. How Congress
resolves overlapping committee jurisdictions can affect both the
deliberative quality and the substantive outcomes of policymaking. This is
an important point of departure for reading John Baughman's new
book.