Congressional oversight and electoral accountability
| Author | Michael Pomirchy,Austin Bussing |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09516298211061516 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Congressional oversight and
electoral accountability
Austin Bussing
Department of Political Science, Sam Houston State University
Michael Pomirchy
Department of Politics, Princeton University
Abstract
Legislative oversight allows Congress to investigate potential wrongdoing by executive branch
actors. We present a model in which an incumbent exercises oversight and chooses to take cor-
rective action against the executive before going up for reelection. We show that partisan types
who prefer to take corrective action regardless of the probability of wrongdoing will always con-
duct oversight, but sincere types who only want to correct legitimate wrongdoing will exercise
restraint to avoid appearing too partisan and losing reelection. The model also shows that over-
sight is increasing in the probability that the incumbent is partisan and the probability that the chal-
lenger is sincere. Finally, we present two case studies, the Elián González custody case and the
attack on the Benghazi embassy, to illustrate our theory.
Keywords
Oversight, accountability, Congress, elections
Oversight is one of many tools that Congress utilizes as a check on the executive branch.
Congressional committees often hold hearings, subpoena key witnesses, and request
information pertaining to government officials and federal agencies working for the pre-
sident. As such, these checks are often exploited for partisan purposes. Presidential
administrations, in particular those that face divided governments, often experience
Corresponding author:
Michael Pomirchy, Department of Politics, Princeton University.
Email:pomirchy@princeton.edu
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2022, Vol. 34(1) 35–58
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09516298211061516
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
heavy scrutiny by the legislative branch and sometimes lose public approval as a result of
high-profile scandals (e.g., Watergate or Iran-Contra).
However, when witnessing such investigations by Congress, voters do not know
whether the intent of Congress is “sincere”or “partisan.”On the one hand, members of
Congress like Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the chair of the House
Oversight Committee during the first half of the 116th Congress, emphasized the need
for “fact-based investigations and investigations that hopefully will lead to better govern-
ment”(DePuyt 2018). On the other hand, members of Congress have occasionally been
somewhat transparent about using oversight specifically to embarrass the opposite party
and hurt their nominees for office. In a FOX News interview, Representative Kevin
McCarthy (R-CA) remarked that the Benghazi select committee that House Republicans
put together had caused Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers to drop. McCarthy claimed that
Clinton was “untrustable”and “no one would have known any of that had happened
had we not fought and made that happen”(Moe and Dann 2015). McCarthy’scolleague
Richard Hanna (R-NY) further confirmed that the hearings were a partisan effort to hurt
the Democratic party’s likely presidential nominee, saying “a big part of this investigation
[···] was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton”(Merica 2015).
We propose a model of oversight during divided government that focuses on electoral
considerationsas a key driver of variation in oversight activity. Ourfocus on these electoral
considerations—namely whether oversight activity will be perceived by voters as partisan
—contrasts withextant explanations for variationin congressional oversight thatfocus pri-
marily on strategic resource allocation (Scher 1963; Aberbach 1990; McCubbins and
Schwartz 1984) or interbranch struggles over policy implementation (McGrath 2013;
MacDonald and McGrath 2016). We consider a two-period accountability model of con-
gressional oversight, which suggests that members of Congress hold back on conducting
investigations because oversight may be construed as partisan posturing. The key tradeoff
is that while members of Congress may have genuine desires to unearth details about
executive wrongdoing, doing so may present the wrong impression to voters about their
level of partisanship and their willingness to choose the right policy in future periods.
In our formal model, the incumbent has the power to conduct oversight of the execu-
tive.
1
Conducting oversight allows the incumbent to uncover potential agency wrong-
doing with some positive probability. Specifically, the incumbent receives a signal of
the state of the world, through congressional hearings and activities like subpoenas or
lawsuits, and chooses whether or not to take corrective action (i.e., appropriation
riders, impeachment, etc.) against the executive.
To represent the voter’s uncertainty, we assume that there are two types of incumbents
—a“partisan”type and a “sincere”type—and that the type is unknown to voters. The
partisan type views oversight hearings as opportunities to embarrass the opposition
and therefore wants to conduct oversight, but she does not always wish to act on the infor-
mation revealed by an investigation. This is partially because the partisan type is moti-
vated to achieve a particular outcome through corrective action, regardless of whether
that action is warranted by information gained from oversight. The sincere type, on the
other hand, seeks to conduct oversight judiciously and only wants to hold hearings to
the extent that there is some probability that actual wrongdoing will be uncovered. As
we will demonstrate formally below, voters prefer to be represented by the sincere type.
36 Journal of Theoretical Politics 34(1)
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