Structure and Opportunity: Committee Jurisdiction and Issue Attention in Congress

This article explores how the congressional committee system shapes the dynamics of issue attention. Consisting of what is referred to as a congressional opportunity structure, it describes how committee jurisdictions provide an important institutional context for the attention paid to new issues in congressional hearings. This is illustrated through an examination of congressional attention to biotechnology over a 30-year period. This article finds that committees with broader jurisdictions were more active in biotechnology than committees with a narrow policy remit. However, these institutional effects varied widely, even within a single policy domain. This variation suggests that issue attention depends on the degree of fit between issue characteristics and the congressional opportunity structure. More broadly, the findings here illustrate the virtues of public policy research in studies of Congress.