The Logic of Collective Inaction: Senatorial Delay in Executive Nominations

Abstract

While most executive nominees are successfully confirmed, this success masks wide variation in how long it takes the Senate to decide. Delay of critical nominees influences the character and effectiveness of agencies while hampering the policy ambitions of presidents. The exact logic of which nominees are targeted for delay and why, however, remains difficult to uncover. Building on prior literature, this project suggests that delay can be used to protect allied agencies from presidential politicization. Using a data set of several thousand executive nominations from 1987 to 2012, the ideological predisposition of an agency relative to the president is demonstrated to influence senatorial delay. Ultimately, these findings help explain why some nominees are delayed while other, seemingly similar, nominees are not.

Appointments and attrition: time and executive disadvantage in the appointments process

“…Additionally, appointments to the highestranking positions (Tier One) are more likely ideologically close to the President than are those to other positions, all else equal. This finding is in line with previous research suggesting that Senators are reluctant to engage in confirmation battles over high-profile nominations, and Presidents both place great premiums on having allies in these positions and are far less able to "go public" in favour of lower-level appointments (Chiou and Rothenberg 2014;Ostrander 2016).…”

“…Finally, to capture any residual department-or area-specific influences, we include dummy variables for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice Higher-tier positions are generally seen as higher-profile and associated with more policymaking authority. In support of the three-part categorization, Ostrander (2016) found that middle-tier appointees suffered the longest delays, and attributed this to them being sufficiently important for recalcitrant Senates to delay, but not so high-profile that Presidents can successfully "go public" to rally confirmation support.…”

Prioritizing Judicial Nominations after Presidential Transitions

“…Much of the research on the time that it takes to fill court vacancies focuses on the time between a presidential nomination and eventual Senate confirmation. Deliberate delay of executive nominations in the Senate has been well documented in all manner of judicial (Bell 2002;Binder and Maltzman 2002;2009;Hendershot 2010;Martinek, Kemper, and Van Winkle 2002;Nelson and Ostrander 2016) as well as bureaucratic (Bond, Fleisher, and Krutz 2009;McCarty and Razaghian 1999;O'Connell 2009;Ostrander 2016) appointments. Pure delay may seem innocuous, but it can often lead to failure (Bond, Fleisher, and Krutz 2009) while at the same time exacerbating "emergency vacancies" in courts in which there are too few judges on the bench to reasonably meet the demand of filings (Wheeler and Binder 2011).…”

Loyalty–Competence Trade‐offs for Top U.S. Federal Bureaucratic Leaders in the Administrative Presidency Era

“…Finally, we evaluate whether these loyalty–competence trade‐offs vary between periods of partisan unity and conflict during the appointment process by focusing on whether the same party controls the White House and Senate. Typically, presidents are more constrained in the appointments process under divided partisan control, facing less overall success and longer delays (McCarty and Razaghian ; O’Connell ; Ostrander ). In addition, presidents select more moderate nominees when the other party holds the Senate majority (Bonica, Chen, and Johnson ).…”