Who Testifies Before Congress on Africa?

• In Event: International Relations in Africa

Abstract

How do members of the U.S. Congress learn about African affairs, and whose interests are represented in committee hearings? Standing congressional committees with fixed jurisdictions enable members to develop expertise and facilitate a division of labor in Congress. Through committees, Congress learns about emerging issues, drafts legislation and performs oversight functions critical to the checks and balances of a presidential system. Yet research on how committees identify external witnesses is relatively limited. The classic study finds that individual members’ goals and environmental constraints are both factors (Fenno 1973). Other research identifies trends over time, showing a rightward shift in the positions of witnesses on specific issues, such as welfare reform (Mead 2011). However, neither scholars interested in foreign affairs nor specialists in American politics have devoted much attention to the profiles of witnesses themselves. This is surprising since witnesses are required to disclose conflicts of interests, and watchdog organizations have exposed numerous loopholes, increasing members’ vulnerability to indirect foreign influence. This is also surprising given a significant shift in public expectations for diversity and inclusion. For example, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order advancing racial equity and inclusion in the executive branch on his first day in office. Yet we have little systematic information about the type of witnesses called to testify before Congress about Africa, a subject area that generates similar expectations for diversity.
To explore whose interests are represented when witnesses are called to testify before Congress, I collaborated with Temi Ibirogba of the Center for International Policy. We researched the backgrounds of 118 witnesses from 32 hearings from 2015 to 2019. We assessed whether different types of institutional affiliations affect testimony through potential biases, omissions, or under-disclosed interests. Unsurprisingly, more than half of all witnesses were either current or former US Government officials. The remaining witnesses were affiliated with think tanks, the private sector, or non-governmental organizations (either international or domestic). University-affiliated academics and journalists were in particular greatly under-represented, and in only two hearings did more than one university-affiliated scholar testify. While we were unable to systematically measure racial diversity, our analysis of different types of witness affiliations (including corporate ties) reveals that a vast majority of hearings lack categorial diversity. This increases the risk of “echo chamber” effects, similar to those documented in social media (Sunstein 2017), thus narrowing the parameters of debate and available evidence. We conclude that government expertise is generally well-balanced against non-governmental expertise and note that hearings already encourage ideological diversity with rules that allow the minority to call witnesses. However, the need for categorical diversity needs to be more consistently weighed alongside other witness traits, including affiliation and funding ties.

Author

• Carl LeVan, American University