The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens

<p>Modern scholarship tells a story of Congressional degeneration (Mann and Ornstein 2006, Connor and Oppenheimer 1993.) My thesis focuses on Congressional committees as the focal point for Congressional learning and deliberation. I ask who Congress hears from and how listening to different pe...

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Main Author: Kornberg, M
Other Authors: King, D
Format: Thesis
Published: 2019
Subjects:
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author Kornberg, M
author2 King, D
author_facet King, D
Kornberg, M
author_sort Kornberg, M
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description <p>Modern scholarship tells a story of Congressional degeneration (Mann and Ornstein 2006, Connor and Oppenheimer 1993.) My thesis focuses on Congressional committees as the focal point for Congressional learning and deliberation. I ask who Congress hears from and how listening to different perspectives affects committee members. The dissertation relies on an original dataset about committee hearings. I focused on a representative sample of four committees (Senate Foreign Relations, Senate Commerce, House Agriculture, and House Science) and used sentiment analysis and language analysis software to analyze a sample of over 700 transcripts of witness testimony from the 112th, 113th and 114th Congresses. I also constructed a dataset of the professional sectors of the witnesses who testified during this period. Finally, I conducted 53 interviews with Congresspeople, witnesses, staff, and other relevant actors. Drawing on this diverse data, I present a theory of the different types of witnesses who testify, hearings Congress holds, and the distinct effects that different hearings have on Congresspeople. My data reveals that Congress hears varied and analytical testimony and that Congressional committee hearings are in fact still educational and deliberative (under the right circumstances.)</p>
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spelling oxford-uuid:eea20b18-e9e6-4a59-9bf2-c9accf5965dd2024-08-22T07:46:46ZThe unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listensThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:eea20b18-e9e6-4a59-9bf2-c9accf5965ddUS PoliticsORA Deposit2019Kornberg, MKing, D<p>Modern scholarship tells a story of Congressional degeneration (Mann and Ornstein 2006, Connor and Oppenheimer 1993.) My thesis focuses on Congressional committees as the focal point for Congressional learning and deliberation. I ask who Congress hears from and how listening to different perspectives affects committee members. The dissertation relies on an original dataset about committee hearings. I focused on a representative sample of four committees (Senate Foreign Relations, Senate Commerce, House Agriculture, and House Science) and used sentiment analysis and language analysis software to analyze a sample of over 700 transcripts of witness testimony from the 112th, 113th and 114th Congresses. I also constructed a dataset of the professional sectors of the witnesses who testified during this period. Finally, I conducted 53 interviews with Congresspeople, witnesses, staff, and other relevant actors. Drawing on this diverse data, I present a theory of the different types of witnesses who testify, hearings Congress holds, and the distinct effects that different hearings have on Congresspeople. My data reveals that Congress hears varied and analytical testimony and that Congressional committee hearings are in fact still educational and deliberative (under the right circumstances.)</p>
spellingShingle US Politics
Kornberg, M
The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title_full The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title_fullStr The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title_full_unstemmed The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title_short The unbroken branch: who Congress hears and how it listens
title_sort unbroken branch who congress hears and how it listens
topic US Politics
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