The Futility of Unification and Harmonization in International ...

12they can wield in the lawmaking process; (3) information asymmetries exist between task forces andthe broader legislative body; and (4) members of the task forces tend to have a stronger preferencefor moving away from the status quo than does the median member of the larger body. Each deservessome elaboration:Absence of logrolling: Those persons who are selected for particular task forces in most caseswork exclusively on that drafting project. If they do other work, it comes at different times. As aresult, they do not have the capacity to make deals across projects.Absence of political agency: Membership in the groups and their organs depends on theindividual’s technical expertise, not his or her associations with political actors working in thebackground. The members do not form coalitions or submit to any other kind of substantial politicaldiscipline. They do not formally represent organized interests, although they may have some affinityor professional ties with particular groups.Information asymmetries: The wider body meets episodically and normally does not have manysubjects on its agenda. The members of the task forces, by virtue of their focused effort and researchas well as the initial selection process, know more about the background and anticipated effect of theproposed legislation than do the persons serving in the broader body.Preferences to alter status quo: Prominent professionals normally do not agree to spend a greatamount of time on what is typically an undercompensated consultative project unless they have eithera strong ideological commitment to some issue implicated by the project or expect to enjoy thebenefits of an enhanced reputation as a result of the project’s successful completion. Ideologicalcommitment to preserving the status quo is possible but unusual, especially within the legal academiccommunity. Similarly, few projects are seen as successful and reputation-enhancing if they concludewith a rejection of any change. The members of the broader groups that must approve the productsof task forces, by contrast, do not have the same personal investment in the legislative projects andmay have to answer to groups who prefer a known present to an uncertain future.Having postulated these characteristics, Schwartz and Scott make a prediction about the relativeinfluence of interest groups on the deliberations of private legislatures. They contend that, ceterisparibus, representatives of such groups will have greater credibility with the members of the largerbody that will approve a completed project than will the experts who form the task force thatproduces a proposal. They base this claim on three generalizations about the behavior of interestgroups, experts, and the members of the broader body: (1) unlike the members of the task force, aninterest group must bear additional costs to develop alternatives to a task force proposal; (2) interestgroups have an ongoing interest in the various projects undertaken by these organizations and in thatsense are repeat players in the game of generating proposals, while the experts employed in taskforces tend to concentrate more exclusively on the single activity in which they have a hand, whichmeans that interest groups will bear greater future costs if they are caught out in exaggeration ormisrepresentation; and (3) experts working on task forces tend to have, and are known by others tohave, a greater preference for innovation than either interest group representatives or the membersof the approving bodies.