LIEPP's Evaluation of democracy research group is pleased to convene the seminar:

How Congressional Committee System Reform Affects Issue Attention

May 17th. 5pm- 6:30pm

Location: Salle du LIEPP. Sciences Po. 1 place Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris. 

Mandatory registration

Speaker: 

Sean Theriault ( University of Texas at Austin )

Abstract: 

This research project examines how the basic structure of the committee system affects the problems Congress addresses. Using data from the Comparative Agendas Project (https://www.comparativeagendas.net/), I examine how major structural changes to the committee system disrupted how members of Congress respond to the information flows into the U.S. Capitol. Using the congressional hearings database (1870s to present), this project examines how reforms effect how Congress processes information – if at all. In major committee system reforms in both 1946 (at the full committee level) and 1974 (at the subcommittee level), some committees were virtually unchanged while others were created, merged, or deleted. The degree of structural change in the policy area creates the necessary experimental and control groups in which to evaluate the dispersion of congressional hearings across major subtopics. The changes either in frequency or flow of proposals after the reforms indicates the extent to which the reforms changed the work of Congress. If the policy flows of unreformed and reformed committees look similar before and after the reform, we will have evidence that reforms do not change how Congress processes information; but if the difference between unreformed and reformed committees is pronounced, we will have evidence that reforms matter. The results from this analysis will speak to the efficacy of reform and the efficiency of the legislative committee system in processing and responding to the information that flows into Congress.