Eras Congressional Oversight of the Bureaucracy

• In Event: Legislative Committees

Abstract

Using data scraped from tens of thousands of congressional hearings between 1969 and 2018, we examine effort by the U.S. Congress to monitor, and influence, policy decisions made by bureaucratic agencies. That is, we examine oversight. Although recent research has used similar data in examining the information that Congress obtains from witnesses, no work has utilized this source to document Congress’s commitment to oversight or to evaluate why Congress engages in more or less oversight. We rely on recent research (MacDonald, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, 2023) identifying how to ascertain whether a hearing involves oversight—compared to other priorities such as learning about policy challenges. In doing so, we document substantial changes in commitment to oversight that past research has missed. This descriptive work contributes important knowledge about Congress’s commitment to monitoring how the executive branch uses policy authority delegated to it. Importantly, it documents substantial changes by Congress in its effort to influence policymaking by executive agencies. Additionally, we develop an explanation for these trends by drawing on interviews with committee staff who participated in oversight at various points over the last four decades. Finally, we evaluate this explanation in models of oversight drawn from this new source of data. Most research on oversight in the past has, appropriately, focused on divided government, arguing that when the presidency and at least one chamber of Congress is controlled by different parties, Congress engages in higher levels of oversight. Although we view this explanation as correct, the trends in oversight that we describe cannot be fully understood by explaining that oversight decreases under unified government and increases under divided government. Rather, there are pronounced secular changes in oversight that occur across periods of unified and divided government. Why? Our theory and models address this question. And, within any given period of unified/divided government, there is substantial variance in oversight done across congressional committees. Why? Our theory and models address this question. In developing (and evaluating empirically) our explanation of oversight, then, we seek to enhance knowledge about how Congress pursues influence over policymaking in the separation of powers system.

Authors

• Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Bowling Green State University

• Jason A. MacDonald, West Virginia University