Legislative-Executive Relations and Legislative Oversight

Abstract

As a focus of scholarship, the subject of legislative-executive relations is both elusively broad and remarkably diverse. This essay attempts to make both the breadth and diversity of the field more comprehensible by examining and identifying: (1) attributes and characteristics of key legislative and executive players, (2) various points of intersection between legislative and executive players and their institutions, and, especially, (3) forms, conditions, and impacts of legislative supervision of the executive (oversight). Analysis of the research and scholarly literature on these topics is situated in a context of different normative perspectives toward governance.