Three Essays on Congressional Power under Political and Informational Constraints Open Access
Kinnard, Benjamin (Summer 2026)
Abstract
This dissertation is composed of three papers that explore how the United States Congress asserts its power in an era where legislative gridlock, declining congressional capacity and executive overreach have diminished Congress's perceived influence vis-a-vis the other branches of government. This project contributes novel theories and empirical evidence that reshape the field's understanding of how and when Congress can be a co-equal political force to the executive and judicial branches in spite of Congress's political and informational constraints.
In the first paper, I examine the incongruence between the importance of the House Committee on Rules to the control of the legislative agenda by majority party leadership in the House of Representatives and the committee's seeming decline in value to members of Congress. I find evidence that party leaders promote party loyalists to serve on the Rules Committee, reducing the likelihood of a committee rebellion. Further, party leaders have increasingly provided `side-payments', such as prestigious committee assignments and selective access to the legislative agenda, to members on the Rules Committee as the opportunity cost of serving on the Rules Committee has risen.
In the second paper, I argue that non-political and political oversight of the executive branch can actually be complementary to one another instead of separate strategies pursued in separate venues. I examine congressional control of Inspectors General and find that Congress refrains from politicizing the oversight agendas of Inspectors General, preserving the credibility of Inspectors General. Congress then leverages this credibility for political gains by selectively inviting Inspectors General to testify in committee hearings when it is politically conducive.
In the third paper, I examine congressional participation in notice-and-comment rulemaking. Utilizing a dataset of congressional comments on Securities and Exchange Commission rules from 2010 to 2022, I find that congressional participation in notice-and-comment rulemaking is widespread across party and committee lines. Further, I analyze the citations of these comments and find evidence that the Securities and Exchange Commission does not respond to the institutional status that certain members of Congress have, such as committee chairs and majority party members, with the commission only responding to comment length and quality.
Table of Contents
1: Introduction (1)
2: Hiring and Buying Loyalty: How Party Leaders Control the House Committee on Rules (10)
2.1: Introduction (10)
2.2: The House Rules Committee in the Modern House of Representatives (13)
2.2.1: Agenda Control, Centralization, and the Rules Committee (13)
2.2.2: Rules: Prestigious No More (15)
2.3: Ex-Ante Selection of Loyalists (22)
2.4: Ex-Post Distribution of Individualized Benefits (27)
2.4.1: Prestigious Committee Assignments (28)
2.4.2: Access to the Legislative Agenda through Special Rules (32)
2.5: Discussion (38)
3: Targeting Political Opponents with Non-Political Information in Congressional Oversight (41)
3.1: Introduction (41)
3.2: Congressional Oversight (44)
3.3: Congress and Offices of Inspector General (47)
3.4: Congress and OIG Oversight (52)
3.4.1: Political Motivations for Non-Political Oversight (52)
3.4.2: Mechanisms for Congressional Control of OIG Oversight (55)
3.5: OIG Budgets (58)
3.6: OIG Directives (63)
3.7: OIG Staff in Congressional Hearings (69)
3.8: Discussion (72)
3.9: Conclusion (75)
4: Why Comment? Congressional Oversight and Agency Responsiveness in Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking (76)
4.1: Introduction (76)
4.2: Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking (78)
4.3: Inequality and Responsiveness in Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking (80)
4.4: Congressional Participation in Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking (82)
4.5: Data & Empirics (87)
4.5.1: SEC Rules (88)
4.5.2: Congressional Comments Data (89)
4.5.3: Citations of Congressional Comments (94)
4.6: Coalition Formation between Congress and Interest Groups (102)
4.7: Conclusion (108)
A: Appendix to Chapter 2 (110)
A.1: Pathways for House Legislation (111)
A.2: Proofs (112)
A.3: Alternative Empirical Models (115)
A.3.1: Linear Net Policy Utility on Majority Party Rules Committee Assignments (115)
A.3.2: Alternative Specifications of Effect of Rules on Prestige Committee Assignments (118)
A.3.3: Suspension of the Rules Alternative Specification (119)
B: Appendix to Chapter 3 (122)
B.1: Department of Justice OIG Report Information (122)
B.2: GAO High Risk List Coding Process & Descriptive Tables (124)
B.3: Directives Coding Process & Descriptive Tables (126)
B.4: Agencies in each empirical analysis (129)
B.5: OIG Budget Analysis Alternative Specifications (131)
B.6: Directives Analysis Alternative Specifications (138)
B.7: OIG Witness Descriptive Tables (145)
B.8: OIG Witness Analysis Alternative Specifications (148)
C: Appendix to Chapter 4 (153)
C.1: Alternative Specification for Citation Analysis (153)
C.2: Most Commonly Cited Organizations by Congressional Comment Partisanship and Regulatory Preferences (155)
Bibliography (157)
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