Bureaucrats on Twitter: Bureaucratic Agenda-Setting and Congressional Oversight

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Political Control of the Bureaucracy

Abstract

Scholarship on congressional oversight of the bureaucracy portrays members of Congress as first movers in determining the timing and content of oversight. However, by strategically providing political information, bureaucratic agencies can direct oversight toward the issues and policies they favor. Using novel data on the universe of tweets posted by hundreds of U.S. executive agencies, we document the agenda-setting power of bureaucracies for oversight. We estimate the effect of agencies' adoption of Twitter on the frequency and content of oversight using a staggered difference-in-differences design. We find two sets of results. First, Twitter adoption preempts formal oversight by reducing the frequency with which bureaucratic witnesses appear before committees. Second, the topics discussed during oversight hearings closely track the content posted by agencies on Twitter. These findings contribute to our understanding of the active role of bureaucracies in shaping the political agenda through the strategic disseminating of policy information via social media and its impact on the dynamics of congressional oversight.

Authors

• Luca Bellodi, Stanford University

• Hye Young You, Princeton University