Ban, Pamela and Park, Ju Yeon and You, Hye Young (2023) How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress. American Political Science Review, 117 (1). pp. 122-139. DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000405
Ban, Pamela and Park, Ju Yeon and You, Hye Young (2023) How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress. American Political Science Review, 117 (1). pp. 122-139. DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000405
Ban, Pamela and Park, Ju Yeon and You, Hye Young (2023) How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress. American Political Science Review, 117 (1). pp. 122-139. DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000405
Abstract
How are politicians informed and who do politicians seek information from? The role of information has been at the center for research on legislative organizations but there is a lack of systematic empirical work on the information that Congress seeks to acquire and consider. To examine the information flow between Congress and external groups, we construct the most comprehensive dataset to date on 74,082 congressional committee hearings and 755,540 witnesses spanning 1960-2018. We show descriptive patterns of how witness composition varies across time and committee, and how different types of witnesses provide varying levels of analytical information. We develop theoretical expectations for why committees may invite different types of witnesses based on committee intent, inter-branch relations, and congressional capacity. Our empirical evidence shows how committees' partisan considerations can affect how much committees turn to outsiders for information and from whom they seek information.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | Replication data available at Harvard Dataverse http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TKRHZU |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Congress; Committee; hearing; Witness; Testimony; Information |
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Government, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2022 08:11 |
Last Modified: | 16 May 2024 21:18 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/32693 |
Available files
Filename: APSR_FINAL.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0