Congressional Oversight and the Diversity of Members' Goals

Abstract

The literature on congressional oversight of the executive branch often argues that Congress fails at its mandate to oversee the bureaucracy comprehensively in large part because members of Congress receive so few political payoffs from oversight. 1 Although scholars differ on how adequate is the amount of oversight done by Congress, it is rarely, if ever, asserted that it approximates the standard of systematic and comprehensive oversight set by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Members of Congress are thought to be motivated to engage in activity that serves the reelection goal more directly than oversight, specifically, in passing legislation with particularized benefits for constituents and organized interests and in doing casework.2 Some recent studies of oversight likewise assume that legislators are motivated primarily or exclusively by the desire for reelection and, therefore, do oversight only when it serves their constituents and clientele groups. However, unlike earlier research, this more recent litera-