The structure of congressional oversight and allocative strategies in the executive branc

This research explores the relationships between oversight behavior by members of Congress and the uses of administrative discretion with respect to program implementation in those members' home districts.;I hypothesize that oversight participation is influenced by a member's institutional position as well as constituency concerns. Members are expected to participate more extensively in oversight hearings if the agency or program under review affects his or her district.;Next, this study explores the uses of administrative discretion. A "bureaucratic politics" model suggests that administrators employ their discretion to court political support, particularly among members of Congress. I hypothesize that support-seeking administrators use their discretion to reward members of Congress who are more attentive to their agencies, as evidenced through participation in oversight hearings.;I test these hypotheses by modeling the oversight behaviors of members of the House and Senate Banking Committees, as each reviewed the Urban Development Action Grant program and the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC). Then I model the discretionary decisions of the two agencies.;In the UDAG case, I find evidence that oversight participation in the House committee and administrative discretion indeed influenced one another. In the RTC case, I find no evidence that oversight participation and administrative discretion influenced one another in either chamber. The difference between the RTC and UDAG cases lies in the institutional arrangements and political atmospheres surrounding each agency. The UDAG program in HUD provided traditional pork-barrel benefits, and was managed by administrative careerists whose long-term prospects were tied to their relationships with their oversight committees. The RTC, by contrast, was charged with cleaning up after a financial and political disaster, with which members of Congress wanted no association. On an institutional level, RTC was staffed by temporary and contract employees who had no long-term interest in maintaining positive relations with members of the oversight committees.