Showing Off: Promise and Peril in Unilateral Policymaking

Judd, Gleason

doi:10.1561/100.00016144

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Alternatively, they might form a blue ribbon commission that studies the issue and circulates the president's position in media coverage but does not change the policy. In these cases, presidents are using their ability to act unilaterally to "show off" or "pander" rather than do what is in voters' best interests (Canes-Wrone, Herron, and Shotts 2001;Judd 2017).…”

Section: Public Response To Unilateral Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Responses to Unilateral Policymaking

Goehring,

Lowande

2024

J Exp Polit Sci

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Presidents possess vast authority over policies and outcomes. Recent studies suggest the public checks this unilateralism through expressive opinions and political participation. We reevaluate this accountability link with a preregistered panel survey that incorporates a number of design and conceptual improvements over existing experimental studies. Our findings reveal a more complex relationship between presidential actions and public opinion. We find no evidence that the public reacts negatively to unilateralism – and some evidence they react positively. Respondents, however, may punish an incumbent for failing to implement the proposed policy change. While such a result suggests that the public can hold presidents accountable, we close by discussing how a lack of information likely renders this check moot.

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Section: Public Response To Unilateral Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Responses to Unilateral Policymaking

Goehring,

Lowande

2024

J Exp Polit Sci

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“…First, elections provide incentives for presidents to behave in ways that secure their continued service in office. 4 Voters prefer presidents of a certain type on the basis of, for instance, policy expertise (Canes-Wrone 2006), policy congruence (Noble Forthcoming), or policy skill (Judd 2017). Presidents convey information about their types through their actions and thus have incentives to use unilateral action to affect voter evaluations in the next election.…”

Section: Public Priorities and Unilateral Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is also possible that presidents use unilateral power for different purposes between their terms. In their first, they could be attempting to showcase their ability(Judd 2017) while pursuing their own interests in their second terms. This account requires a different set of measures for empirical testing, however, and has ambiguous implications for the coefficient for Public salience.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the extent previous scholarship evaluates the relationship between public opinion and presidential unilateralism, it does so mostly with measures of presidential popularity (e.g., Christenson and Kriner 2020; Deering and Maltzman 1999; Ponder 2017). Because presidents can use unilateral power to set the policy agenda (Howell 2003, 14) and appeal to public audiences (e.g., Judd 2017; Kang 2020; Noble Forthcoming), it is important to investigate whether the public's issue priorities are reflected in the use of executive authority.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Public Opinion and Presidents’ Unilateral Policy Agendas

Rogowski

2023

American J Political Sci

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Unilateral power is an important source of policy change for contemporary presidents. In contrast with scholarship that examines the institutional constraints on presidents’ exercise of unilateral authority, I consider presidents’ unilateral behavior in a framework of political accountability. I argue that presidents have incentives to incorporate the public's policy priorities in their unilateral agendas. I examine this account using panel data on executive orders and public opinion across issue areas from 1954 to 2018. Across a variety of model specifications and estimation strategies, I find evidence that patterns of executive action reflect the public's policy priorities. Presidents issue greater numbers of unilateral directives on issues that gain public salience, particularly on issues that are more familiar to the public and when issuing more policy‐significant directives. These findings suggest that accountability mechanisms structure how presidents exercise unilateral power and have normative implications for considering presidential unilateralism in a separation‐of‐powers system.

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“…While unilateral action can confer policy and electoral benefits to presidents (e.g., Howell 2003; Judd 2017), it can also increase congressional scrutiny and reduce public approval (e.g., Christenson and Kriner 2020b; Cooper 2014; Reeves and Rogowski 2018). We argue that these political costs and benefits vary across types of directives and that presidents balance these incentives when creating new policies via executive action.…”

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confidence: 99%

Divided Government, Strategic Substitution, and Presidential Unilateralism

Kaufman,

Rogowski

2023

American J Political Sci

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Presidents select from a range of instruments when creating new policies through executive action. We study strategic substitution in this context and argue that presidents use less visible means of unilateral instruments when Congress is likely to scrutinize presidential action. Using data on unilateral orders issued between 1946 and 2020, we report two main findings. First, analyzing presidents’ choice of instruments, we show that presidents are more likely to substitute memoranda and other less visible instruments for executive orders and proclamations during periods of divided government. Second, after accounting for the substitution of executive orders with other instruments, we find that presidents issue greater numbers of directives during divided government than during unified government. These findings provide new evidence about the limitations of the separation of powers as a constraint on presidential unilateralism and highlight the importance of accounting for the variety of instruments through which presidents create unilateral policies.

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Showing Off: Promise and Peril in Unilateral Policymaking

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Public Responses to Unilateral Policymaking

Public Responses to Unilateral Policymaking

Public Opinion and Presidents’ Unilateral Policy Agendas

Divided Government, Strategic Substitution, and Presidential Unilateralism

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