CAREER: Preserving Democratic Governance, Representation, and Accountability Within an Evolving Policymaking Environment

Although processes are available for participating in policy implementation, citizen participation is rare because of the complexity and obscurity of administrative procedures performed by federal agencies. This CAREER research and teaching agenda aims to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their governing institutions. The investigator will conduct a series of town hall events that will provide the foundation for deliberative, interactive discussion between legislators and citizens that educates and informs constituents and their representatives about how agencies are implementing policies, the impact of these policies on constituencies, and how administrative processes work. This project will achieve the following objectives: (1) examine how legislators interact with federal agencies to influence policy and represent their constituencies outside of their formal legislative functions, (2) conduct a series of congressional town hall events to ascertain how they might be used to strengthen constituents’ understanding of agency regulatory processes, their trust in government, and their participation in policy implementation, (3) determine whether legislators’ participation in the town halls facilitates their ability to intervene with agencies to advocate on behalf of their constituents on related issues. This study will integrate unique sources of observational data with large-scale field experiments to bridge the study of institutions and citizen behavior and trace the linkages between citizens, legislators, and agencies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.