Energy versus safety: unilateral action, voter welfare, and executive accountability

Abstract

Does increasing executive power necessarily decrease accountability? To answer this question, I develop a two-period signaling model comparing voter welfare in two separation-of-powers settings. In one, the executive works with a median legislator to change policy; in the other, the executive chooses between legislation or unilateral action. Both politicians may have preferences that diverge from the voter's, yet I find that increasing executive power may increase accountability and welfare, even in some cases when the legislator is more likely to share the voter's preferences than the executive. Unilateral power allows a congruent executive to overcome gridlock, implement the voter's preferred policy, and reveal information about the politicians’ types—which can outweigh the risks of a divergent executive wielding power for partisan ends.

Presidential Leadership and Legislative Polarization

“…Our contribution is less focused on legislative polarization per se, and instead focused on the addition of a strategic executive who can raise the salience of an issue before the preference shock is revealed, which further perturbs legislative preferences. This setup is related to a growing formal literature on presidential unilateral policymaking (e.g., Chiou and Rothenberg 2017;Foster 2022;Howell 2003;Judd 2017;Judd and Rothenberg 2020;Noble 2021;Turner 2020), which highlights presidents' first-and second-mover advantages. Although presidential power is weaker in our model than in models of unilateral action, the ability to raise issue salience grants the president a first-mover advantage and is a powerful tool that can help presidents achieve more favorable outcomes.…”