Committees are a central arena for the preliminary and the commitment of political decisions. With a recently published method of analysis for committee meetings (Nullmeier et al. 2008) these processes of usually face-toface interaction which aim to establish binding decisions are captured by a detailed micro-level analysis. Our paper uses this approach and focuses on the role of deviations from the pure type of a formalised decision. Nonverbal forms of expression are of special importance for these ways of decision making. Empirical examples come from committee meetings at the local and regional level. The central question of this paper is: How do committee members compensate the missing ritual of formalised voting - for example with hand signals - when the decision is taken in more informal ways. Further we ask about the consequences of the absence of such explicitly regulated procedures for the participation of all committee members in a decision. With four model cases of different voting practices we show that such structural gaps are filled and formed predominantly by nonverbal communication. Secondly we point out that informal ways of decisionmaking open up specific possibilities to push personal preferences. Our paper thus is also meant to contribute to a methodology of microanalysis of power relations in political committees.

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Committees,Decision-making practice,Group interaction,Micro-level analysis,Nonverbal communication,Participation,Video analysis

• Ciências Políticas - Ciências Sociais