An Appropriations Subcommittee and its Client Agencies: A Comparative Study of Supervision and Control

This paper presents an effort to adapt techniques of content analysis and measurement to the study of relations between a House appropriations subcommittee and the agencies whose budget estimates it reviews. Since Arthur Macmahon's pioneering work on the topic observers have depended on interviews and impressionistic readings of the published record for their evidence. They have identified a variety of attitudes on the part of the committee members, ranging from the obsequious to the pugnacious. And they have noted various techniques of committee control and agency compliance or evasion. They have also expressed varying opinions about the efficacy and utility of congressional oversight.The existing literature leaves at least one question partially unanswered: how does the subcommittee divide its supervisory and control efforts among the agencies within its jurisdiction? This study deals with this question, and illustrates a method that may have wider application in the systematic study of legislative-executive relations.