Congressional Oversight Revisited: Politics and Procedure in Agency Rulemaking

Abstract

Scholars have long acknowledged that legislators strategically employ procedure to advance policy preferences. But evidence for this view is confined to the lawmaking process, omitting an essential function of elected representatives: oversight of executive policy making. We argue that ex post procedural oversight is also driven by policy disagreement. We demonstrate this by analyzing congressional participation in US Environmental Protection Agency rulemaking from 2007 to 2017. Using the content of public comments and commenters’ political contributions, our study is the first to locate the spatial position of rulemaking proposals. We find that the more ideologically distant the agency proposal, the more likely a request for documents, additional hearings, or more time for public participation. Moreover, these requests are likely to parallel substantive criticisms and be concentrated among members with experienced staff. These findings imply that—beyond setting the baseline rules of bureaucratic policy making—well-resourced elected officials leverage procedure during policy implementation.