The Role of Advisory Committees in Bureaucratic Oversight: The Case of AGAC

Abstract

The inner workings of advisory commissions are opaque, which has frustrated inquiries about them. However, relying on data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request from the Department of Justice, we focus on one readily observable aspect of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys (AGAC)—its composition. Unique to studies of executive commissions, we know the population from which AGAC membership is drawn. This allows us to definitively characterize the ideological distribution of the population of potential appointees, a significant advance in the empirical study of executive appointments. While the analysis cannot speak to AGAC’s operations directly, our findings indicate that AGAC is characterized by asymmetrical political polarization. Democratic administrations are likely to politicize AGACs ideologically but Republicans are not, and we consider possible explanations for this result. In addition to its contribution toward understanding one aspect of informational commissions as an important source of policy development, the study provides the first empirical analysis of one route by which administrations interface with the nation’s prosecutorial corps.