Agency Involvement in Legislative Hearings: Oversight Isn't Everything!

• In Event: White House and Congressional Politics

Abstract

Agencies have been involved in the majority of congressional hearings in recent years and their involvement has taken on a number of forms. This includes the conventional conception of an oversight hearing in which Congress is overseeing existing programs and policies of agencies. But agency involvement has also entailed Congress supporting agencies in the creation of new programs and policies and Congress drawing on the expertise of agencies. This paper presents a new full-text dataset of all congressional hearings from 1999-2018 that distinguishes between different kinds of agency involvement.

Author

• Janna King Rezaee, University of Southern California