Modeling reactive attention among congressional witnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic

Greer Arthur

No vak93, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Although often considered dichotomous drivers of congressional agenda activity, indicators and focusing events may exist on a continuum if indicators are capable of culminating in a singular event that focuses attention. Identifying this culmination point could help explain how anticipatory, indicator-driven threats such as COVID-19 can dominate policy agendas in a manner similar to a focusing event. This paper investigates whether the culmination point can be identified by quantifying anticipatory and reactive attention of congressional committee witnesses towards an indicator-driven threat. The findings demonstrate that peaks in congressional witness numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a transition from anticipatory to reactive attention, which was associated with rapid increases in unemployment. This demonstrates that a transition from anticipatory to reactive attention could mark the culmination point of an indicator-driven event such as COVID-19, and explain how and why some indicators are capable of focusing attention, but others are not.

Date: 2021-11-25
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:vak93

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/vak93

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