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The Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress: A Model for the Future?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Rhodri Walters
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Extract

It is difficult in any pluralistic society to gauge the influence on governments or administrations of organizations which engage in policy studies even when those studies are the product of parliamentary bodies like select committees or other agencies. It is particularly difficult in the United Kingdom for example, where Parliament is, in practice if not in theory under the constitution, the unequal partner of the executive. Even where policy recommendations are followed by government there is often no way of telling whether or not they would have been pursued in any event, on the government's own initiative.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1992 , pp. 89 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1992

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Footnotes

1

This article is based on information gathered during an attachment to the Office of Technology Assessment as part of a Civil Service Nuffield and Leverhulme Travelling Fellowship in late 1989 and early 1990. My thanks go to OTA and other congressional staff for the welcome they accorded me and for their review and comments on an earlier draft.

References

2 Only the General Accounting Office can initiate studies.

3 ‘What OTA Is’, OTA, March 1989.

4 February 1991.

5 Thus in the penultimate (100th) Congress the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and its sub-committees met 273 times and of these meetings 165, or 60%, were devoted to authorization and budget, legislation and ‘mark-up’ of bills. The Energy and Commerce Committee and its sub-committees met 508 times, of which 293 meetings, or 58%, were similarly dedicated. The remainder of meeting time was spent on oversight. (Derived from: US House of Representatives, Legislative Calendar, 100th Congress, Committee on Science, Space and Technology, 31 December 1988; Summary of Activities of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, 100th Congress, 31 December 1988; and US House of Representatives, Legislative Calendar, 100th Congress, Committee on Energy and Commerce, 20 January 1989.)