Flexibility or Stability? Analyzing Proposals to Reform the Separation of Powers

Abstract

The social welfare effects of legislatures in presidential systems, such as the U.S. Congress, are frequently lamented. In response, there are proposals to reform the separation of powers system by giving presidents control of the legislative agenda and weakening rules such as the filibuster. We provide a game‐theoretic analysis of the policy and social welfare consequences of a more executive‐centric system. Integrating standard assumptions about legislative and executive incentives into a dynamic model of decision making with private investment, we show there are a variety of conditions under which stronger executives do not produce better outcomes. Moreover, we characterize how these conditions depend on factors such as the stability of the policymaking environment or investment fundamentals. Our findings are robust and consistent with empirical observations that U.S. policy outputs are not necessarily worse than those of nations with stronger executives, which more closely approximate prominent proposals by populist‐oriented reformers.

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.…”

The Reputation Politics of the Filibuster

“…Wawro and Schickler (2010) review this literature. See Reynolds (2017) and Judd and Rothenberg (2021) for recent contributions. majority must first introduce a bill and the opposition must filibuster.…”