The Politicization of Congressional Capacity

• In Event: Legislative Committees

Abstract

Scholars, observers, and members of Congress alike have become increasingly concerned with the capacity of Congress to enact complex legislation and conduct effective oversight. We argue that an important, yet often overlooked, aspect of the capacity of Congress is the growing politicization of its committees. By this, we mean that the funding and staffing of congressional committees is increasingly political, instead of being based primarily upon expertise or need. We explore these changes to committee capacity in two ways. We first examine the broader context of committee resource allocation through several decades of House and Senate disbursement reports, exploring how political considerations may influence the allocation of budget and personnel resources within Congress. Second, we compile a new dataset from House and Senate telephone directories to track the employment and movement within Congress of all House and Senate staffers from 1977 to 2023, including personal offices, committees, and leadership. Unlike most prior research, these data allow us to evaluate the politicization of congressional committees in the House of Representatives before and after the Republican Revolution of the 1990s, a time which fundamentally altered the role of congressional committees in that chamber.

Authors

• Nathan Gibson, Elizabethtown College

• Ben Hammond, Princeton University

• Leah Rosenstiel, Vanderbilt University