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Dissertation Information for Bruce A. Bimber

NAME:
- Bruce A. Bimber

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Political Science

SCHOOL:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) (1992)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Institutions and information: The politics of expertise in Congress

Abstract: "This study examines the circumstances under which expert information about policy problems is useful to members of Congress, demonstrating links between uncertainty, information, the demands of electoral coalitions, and institutional structure in Congress. Members' interaction with the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional support agency offering expert advice across the policy spectrum, provides a window into these issues. Members use information from OTA chiefly in two ways, labelled ""informatively"" and ""persuasively."" These types of uses are correlated with stages in the legislative process, and are interpreted through a conceptual model derived from information theory.

Members' individual desires for information are aggregated into collective congressional demands for policy advice that are profoundly shaped by institutional arrangements in Congress. The legislature's decentralized, two-party internal structure produces heterogeneous demands for information that have driven OTA to develop strategies of neutrality in the provision of advice. Congress' interaction with the executive branch in the system of separation of powers is also a crucial determinant of members' demands for information from this agency. Congress's interaction with OTA, seen from an institutional perspective that is based on a model of the utility of information, sheds light on the politics of expertise in the legislature."

MPACT Scores for Bruce A. Bimber

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:30:47

Advisors and Advisees Graph