Changing Institutional Capacity

How has congressional hearings activity changed over time? Does congress hold more hearings now than they did at the end of World War II? Was there a period where hearings activity peaked? Are more hearings devoted specifically to referred bills or has there been an increase in the number of hearings not related to specific bills?

This scenario presents an example of how to explore these questions using the Graph Examples and Data Tools resources.

Graph Examples

The two charts below show the changing patterns of hearings activity over time.

Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger picture in a new window.

	The chart to the left displays the number of all House, Senate, and Joint hearings over time. Many scholars have argued that the reforms of the 1970s (marked by the Legislative Reorganization Act) have changed the legislative process (Rohde 1991; Sinclair 2000). These reforms increased the resources of legislators and committees. These changes may have contributed to the increase in hearings activity.
	The chart to the left compares the number of legislative (referred) and non-legislative (non-referred) hearings over time. Legislative hearings are those hearings related to a specific bill. Non-legislative hearings are those hearings that are not related to a specific bill.

Legislative and non-legislative hearings can provide insight into legislative behavior.

1. First, non-legislative hearings may be investigatory or oversight activity, and may signal issues that are important to constituents.
2. Second, studying legislative and non-legislative hearings activity can provide insights into committee "turf wars".

King (1997) has argued that committees will often try to develop expertise in a policy area in order to justify having related bills referred to them. Talbert, Jones, and Baumgartner (1995) have shown that non-legislative hearings activity enables committees to frame or alter the definition of policy issues outside of their jurisdiction. Hardin (2003) has taken this argument further, to show that nonlegislative hearings contribute to an increase of jurisdictional overlap, and affects the topics, target groups, and witness types involved in the policy process.

Studying the dynamics of this jurisdictional overlap can improve understandings of the dynamics of the policy process.

(For more information on Committee Jurisdictions and Jurisdictional Overlap, see the discussion about Committee Jurisdictional Clarity and Herfindahl Analyses.

The charts above show that hearings activity has increased substantially after the 92nd Congress. The number of hearings peaks in the 101st Congress, where nearly 4000 hearings were held across chambers; the House was responsible for more than half of these hearings. Non-referred hearings activity plays a big role in the hearings activity increases.

To explore shifting issue attention in more detail, go to the Data Tools to conduct a customized search. Examples of additional analyses are below.

Data Tools: Using the Analysis Tool for Additional Research

The analysis tool allows you to look at data not only about policy attention trends, but also institutional capacity. This section provides examples looking at legislative (hearings and laws) activity.

Exercises using the analysis tool:

1. Replicate the hearings activity across chambers
   Follow a detailed example or Do the exercise yourself
2. Replicate and explore legislative and nonlegislative hearings activity
   Follow a detailed example or Do the exercise yourself

Download the Complete Datasets

With the complete datasets you can pursue these questions in more detail, including:

• looking at specific committee hearings activity
• which topics committees attend to the most
• which topics are referred to which committees
• on which topics do committees hold nonlegislative versus legislative hearings most often

These are just a few suggestions for additional research. The datasets provide a great deal of information, which enables users to develop and research a variety of questions.

• Hardin, John W. 2003. "Multiple Topics, Multiple Targets, Multiple Goals, and Multiple Decision Makers: Congressional Consideration of Comprehensive Health Care Reform." In Policy Dynamics, ed. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• King, David C. 1997. Turf Wars: How Congressional Committees Claim Jurisdiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Sinclair, Barbara. 2000. Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
• Talbert, Jeffery C., Bryan D. Jones, and Frank R. Baumgartner. 1995. "Nonlegislative Hearings and Policy Change in Congress." American Journal of Political Science, 39: 383-405.