“‘Do This! Do That!’ and Nothing Will Happen”

Kennedy, Joshua B.

doi:10.1177/1532673x14534062

Cited by 35 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Furthermore, there may be additional costs to revoking orders, given the possibility of intensifying political opposition (Warber ). Additionally, issuing executive orders often involves a lengthy bargaining process within the executive branch (Kennedy ; Rudalevige ). With these assumptions, I turn to developing a theory of executive order duration based on both executive order characteristics and the changing political environment.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

Thrower

2017

American J Political Sci

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Though many scholars study the formation of policy, less attention is given to its endurance. In this article, I seek to determine what contributes to the longevity of policy by examining the case of presidential unilateralism. While scholars widely recognize presidents' ability to unilaterally make policy with executive orders, they largely do not account for how these same orders can be easily changed by subsequent administrations. To address this deficiency, I develop a theory of executive order duration based on both time-invariant characteristics of the order and time-variant changes in the political climate it faces. Using survival analysis to examine all orders revoked between 1937 and 2013, I find support for the theory. This study has implications for understanding the endurance of executive orders and other policy instruments as part of the law as well as understanding the strategic actions of policy makers given the transient nature of these tools.

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Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

Thrower

2017

American J Political Sci

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“…For example, a question that has received surprisingly little attention in the literature on presidential unilateral action is the implementation of such actions by bureaucratic agents. One exception is Kennedy (2015), who found that orders are not always fully implemented. One drawback of Kennedy's approach is that he focused on rulemaking as an indication of whether the order was implemented.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The administrative politics of unilateral action: Measuring delegation and discretion in the executive branch

Benn

2023

Pres Stud Q

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Political scientists typically view unilateral action as the president “going it alone” in opposition to Congress. However, there is increasing recognition that, while such action may be unilateral with respect to Congress, its implementation relies on the cooperation of administrative agencies. In this article, unilateral action is considered an act of administrative delegation: in issuing a unilateral directive, a president is both authorizing an agency to act and indicating a discretionary window for such action. The article introduces the Administrative Delegation Dataset, which provides delegation and discretion scores for 1,641 presidential unilateral directives issued between 1936 and 2021. The scores are based on novel measures developed for the executive‐branch context, and the reliability and validity of the measures are discussed. I then use the dataset to show that the extent of delegation and discretion granted to administrative agents has shifted across modalities (executive orders, memoranda, proclamations) over time: the proportion of high‐scoring executive orders has been increasing, but that increase is offset by a corresponding decrease in high‐scoring memos. Additionally, I find that presidents use less administrative delegation in foreign policy than in domestic policy, which is consistent with existing literature on centralization of executive‐branch policymaking.

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“…Of looming significance is whether governors engaging in unilateral actions ‐ the issuance of an executive order ‐ can reach their desired policy outcome. While much of the related scholarship is focused on the presidential level, it is increasingly clear that executive orders are not self‐executing even among government agencies (Kennedy, 2015) and that public support is an important precondition of use (Christenson & Kriner, 2019). Coupled with the findings detailed here, executive authorities appear to be increasingly constrained in their ability to act unilaterally and achieve policy success; such a finding is particularly acute when policy directives, like mask mandates, require large‐scale acceptance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective communication in times of crisis: The case of face mask mandates in the United States

Downey,

Myers

2023

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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We evaluate communication policies related to COVID‐19 adopted by governors in the United States and explore how communication and policy directives are impacted by hyper‐polarised situations, namely the presence of a divided government. This work sheds light on the challenges of crisis communication and executive leadership. Using a combination of robust regression and text and sentiment analyses, we compare the timing of and the language used by governors who imposed state‐wide facemask mandates in 2020. We find that racially diverse states with Democratic governors acted more quickly than states with comparably older populations, had more people living in one household, and without health insurance. Further, we find that Democratic governors were slower to act when their decision could be checked by a Republican legislature highlighting the restrictive nature that executives face in crises.

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“‘Do This! Do That!’ and Nothing Will Happen”

Cited by 35 publications

References 30 publications

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

The administrative politics of unilateral action: Measuring delegation and discretion in the executive branch

Effective communication in times of crisis: The case of face mask mandates in the United States

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