Congressional oversight and electoral accountability

Austin Bussing and Michael Pomirchy
Additional contact information
Austin Bussing: Department of Political Science, 4038Sam Houston State University
Michael Pomirchy: Department of Politics, 6740Princeton University

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2022, vol. 34, issue 1, 35-58

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 corrective 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 conduct 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 oversight is increasing in the probability that the incumbent is partisan and the probability that the challenger 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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09516298211061516 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:34:y:2022:i:1:p:35-58

DOI: 10.1177/09516298211061516

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().