Topic: Oversight (page 11)

Source: Constitution Project Mort Rosenberg spent decades at the Congressional Research Service advising staff and Members how to conduct oversight. After he retired, he published this guide —based upon… Read More

Hugh Heclo’s A Government of Strangers, published 40 years ago, described the very different worlds of high-level federal appointees and the civil-servant worker bees they purportedly manage. Today… Read More

If Congress has often been unwilling to actively control the output of the administrative state, over the years it has also become effectively unable to do so. As the… Read More

In anticipating of the new Congress, a coalition of 33 groups is urging Congress to adopt new chamber rules to strengthen its oversight of intelligence agencies and… Read More

The federal government has seen a century of growth. In 1915, the government had only a handful of departments, 400,000 employees (half of whom worked for the U.S. Postal… Read More

Congress has a big problem when it comes to oversight. The federal government has grown vastly larger over the past century, but Congress has done little to empower itself… Read More

Pundits on both sides of the aisle are criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to bomb ISIS targets without seeking congressional approval.  For example, Andrew Sullivan compares Obama’s actions to… Read More

In a recent post, I explored whether it’s possible to quantify Bill’s value to Hillary Clinton’s campaign (see here).  In other words: Do voters reward (and punish) Hillary… Read More

In presidential elections, relationships matter. For example, political scientists know that the relationship between economic conditions, the number of causalities in war, and the incumbent’s party affiliation explain the… Read More

State of the Unions.  What are they good for?  Absolutely nothing. Ok “absolutely nothing” is an oversimplification.  But as best political scientists are able to discern, presidential speeches in… Read More