Agency Oversight and Public Opinion: Representation and Reality

• In Event: Public Perceptions of Bureaucratic Programs and Agencies

Abstract

In the contest for control of U.S. federal agencies between the legislative and executive branch, oversight remains one of the potentially powerful tools available to Congress. A common argument in the public administration literature is that oversight will also produce an electoral benefit to members of Congress. Yet, recent literature in political behavior has emphasized the extent voters think as members of partisan teams; voters may not recognize efforts at oversight. While there are other reasons to engage in such activities, this paper examines the direct connection between voters and House members on oversight.

This paper draws on a unique survey of approximately 5000 U.S. registered voters from June of 2019 asking directly about voter satisfaction with House member oversight. The outcome is not only satisfaction with oversight generally, but also specifically oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and defense and intelligence agencies. This data is then paired with data on actual oversight activities by House members as well as their communications on the same subjects on Twitter. The analysis is also supplemented with election data and further survey data from the common content of the CCES. The research is motivated by a simple question: does anything beyond partisanship matter, and do the evaluations appear to be based at all in actual activities of legislators?

Our findings go beyond the obvious partisan relationship. There is a great deal of uncertainty among voters about the quality of the oversight of legislators of both parties, and voters sharing a party with their legislators often express dissatisfaction. While the expected partisan relationships appear, there is variation within party and between oversight types. We also find that other attitudes about trust in parties and public managers influence the assessment voters make. In addition, self-identified independents behave differently than both parties, and may be critical audiences for oversight activity. We assess the consequences of our findings in the context of the literature on public administration.

Author

• John Andrew Sinclair, Claremont McKenna College