This paper, co-authored by Jennifer Dodge and Mila Gasco-Hernandez, is published in Administration & Society at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00953997251409159

Public hearings enable agencies to inform impact analyses of proposed projects. Yet, how participants present evidence during hearings is underexplored. Our study builds knowledge through an argumentative analysis of a hearing about fracking in New York. Results show that participants used three mechanisms – boundary work, practical reasoning, and professional reasoning – to contest the environmental agency’s evidentiary and normative claims and propose alternatives. These mechanisms suggest that politicization of hearings occurs when testifiers make visible and problematize an agency’s limiting assumptions on administrative decisions. Further, achieving accountability through hearings requires effort articulating that a matter deserves heightened scrutiny.