Don't Sweat the Details! Enhancing Congressional Committee Expertise Through the Use of Detailees

Mills, Richard; Selin, Jennifer L.

doi:10.1111/lsq.12171

Cited by 25 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(42 reference statements)

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“…Recent research on bureaucratic responsiveness suggests that presidents and legislatures indeed compete against each other for agency responsiveness. While bureaucratic responsiveness to presidents may increase with the latter's strategic personnel choices making use of political appointments, agencies can also choose the extent to which they respond to the legislature in the political process (Workman 2015; Mills et al 2016; Mills and Selin 2017; Workman et al 2017; Lowande 2019). In particular, rank‐and‐file careerists may be more concerned with policy‐related issues than senior civil servants who aim to get promoted through political appointments.…”

Section: Research Design: a List Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic responsiveness in times of political crisis: The case of presidential impeachment

Lee

Park

2020

Public Administration

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The question of who controls the bureaucracy has been widely debated in the political science and public administration literatures. However, to whom bureaucrats are responsive and to what extent are relatively unknown, particularly outside the US. To understand how organizational behaviour changes according to external political environments, we leverage a unique setting, that of the 2016 presidential impeachment in South Korea. We analyse original experimental data from more than 1,000 civil servants, gathered as part of a nationally representative survey, in order to estimate the degree to which civil servants chose to incorporate the president's preferences into their policy decisions before and after her impeachment. We find that presidential impeachment has a differential impact on the responsiveness of civil servants across the formal ranks of the personnel, controlling for their political views and several other individual characteristics. While bureaucrats were similarly responsive to the President before impeachment regardless of their grades, senior civil servants were significantly more responsive to the President after impeachment than were lower‐ranking bureaucrats. Our study contributes to the literature on organizational theory and public management the evidence that civil servants' attitudes are shaped by the structure of bureaucratic organizations and change with external settings involving elected principals.

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Section: Research Design: a List Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic responsiveness in times of political crisis: The case of presidential impeachment

Lee

Park

2020

Public Administration

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“…First, and generally downplayed in political science studies of oversight, is program evaluation conducted by noncommittee personnel (Aberbach, 1990). For example, legislators and staff make significant use of expertise from congressional support agencies like the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service for policy analysis and information about executive function (Feinstein, 2018; Mills & Selin, 2017; Reynolds & Gode, 2020; Tiefer, 1998). Second, members of Congress can rely on staff to review executive programs and policies.…”

Section: Defining and Operationalizing Oversightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping tabs on the executive

Selin

Moore

2023

Pres Stud Q

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Congress has long exercised its power to oversee the executive branch. Important research has examined empirical patterns in congressional investigations, finding institutional, individual, policy, and partisan incentives motivate legislative inquiry. Yet, scholars largely have overlooked one fundamental question: what is oversight? We use new quantitative and qualitative data to highlight the importance of considering oversight as a series of actions designed to serve both as a symbol and signal in the American separation of powers system. Our exploratory analysis suggests that Congress oversees the executive branch much more frequently and in more ways than previously considered by scholars.

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“…Generally, congressional committees are considered experts within their policy areas (Stewart 2012;Mills and Selin 2017). The Ethics Committee is no different.…”

Section: Ethics In Congressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amending Ethics Committee Sanction Recommendations in the House of Representatives

Straus

2022

Public Integrity

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The Constitution provides Congress with the power to punish and discipline its Members. Since the 90 th Congress (1967Congress ( -1968, the House Ethics Committee has been authorized to investigate allegations of misconduct and recommend punishments. This paper examines seven instances where the House Ethics Committee has recommended a punishment and the House has considered an amendment to increase or decrease the proposed sanction. Using a combination of case studies and a roll call vote data, this paper finds that demographic similarities between the accused and the voting Member (race, party, and state delegation), partisanship, and serving on the Ethics Committee influence whether a Member might choose to support an alternative sanction. For amendments that proposes an increased penalty, same state delegation (negative effect), co-partisanship (positive effect), race (positive effect), ideology (positive effect), and type of scandal (negative effect) matter. For decreased penalties, same state delegation (positive effect), race (positive effect), and ideology (negative effect) matter. For all amendments, being an Ethics Committee member is a strongly negative predictor. These findings imply that committee members attempt to protect the committee's recommendation, that demographic similarities matter when Members are making sanction decisions, and that ideology is a driving factor in deciding to support a change in ethics penalty.

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Don't Sweat the Details! Enhancing Congressional Committee Expertise Through the Use of Detailees

Cited by 25 publications

References 29 publications

Bureaucratic responsiveness in times of political crisis: The case of presidential impeachment

Bureaucratic responsiveness in times of political crisis: The case of presidential impeachment

Keeping tabs on the executive

Amending Ethics Committee Sanction Recommendations in the House of Representatives

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