We demonstrate that a direct “electoral connection” with voters motivates members of Congress to more vigorously investigate the executive branch during divided government. Our strategy for estimating the effect of the electoral connection is to leverage the enactment of 17th Amendment—which influenced the electoral mechanism for senators but not for members of the House of Representatives. This plausibly exogenous institutional variation allows us to isolate the effect of the electoral connection from other possible historical influences—such as the growth of the administrative state or the rise of political progressivism. We find that the 17th Amendment dramatically increased the Senate’s propensity to investigate during divided party control. Importantly, we also find little evidence of such an increase in the House. Our findings support the contemporary claim that congressional investigations are political tool motivated by the desire to discredit the opposition and reap individual electoral gains. (JEL D72, D73, D79)

中文翻译：

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国会调查与选举关系

我们证明，与选民的直接“选举联系”促使国会议员在分裂政府期间更加积极地调查行政部门。我们估算选举联系效果的策略是利用第17条修正案的制定，该修正案影响了参议员的选举机制，但对众议院议员的选举机制没有影响。这种看似外在的制度变体使我们能够将选举联系的影响与其他可能的历史影响-例如行政国家的成长或政治进步主义的崛起-隔离开来。我们发现，第17条修正案极大地提高了参议院在分党控制期间进行调查的意愿。重要的是，我们也很少发现众议院有这样的增加。我们的发现支持了当代的主张，即国会调查是出于抹黑反对派和收获个人选举收益的动机而提供的政治工具。（JEL D72，D73，D79）