![]() | Watchdogs on the Hill: The Decline of Congressional Oversight of U.S. Foreign Relations Subjects: Legislative oversight -- United States; International relations; United States -- Foreign relations; United States -- Politics and government; An essential responsibility of the U.S. Congress is holding the president accountable for the conduct of foreign policy. In this in-depth look at formal oversight hearings by the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Linda Fowler evaluates how the legislature's most visible and important watchdogs performed from the mid-twentieth century to the present. She finds a noticeable reduction in public and secret hearings since the mid-1990s and establishes that American foreign policy frequently violated basic conditions for democratic accountability. Committee scrutiny of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she notes, fell below levels of oversight in prior major conflicts. Linda L. Fowler is professor of government and the Frank J. Reagan Chair in Policy Studies, Emerita, at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Candidates, Congress, and the American Democracy and coauthor of Political Ambition . |
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