Unilateral Action and Presidential Accountability

Ansolabehere, Stephen; Rogowski, Jon C.

doi:10.1111/psq.12639

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Depending on the year, approval is originally asked on a four-or five-point scale. Following Ansolabehere and Rogowski (2020), I collapse the question to a binary indicator by marking respondents who state that they "strongly" or "somewhat" approve of their senator as approving and the rest of respondents as disapproving. 25 Accordingly, I regress constituent approval ratings on whether or not the senator traveled to or placed staff in an area.…”

Section: Local Attentiveness and Ideological Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Senators at Home: Local Attentiveness and Policy Representation in Congress

Kaslovsky

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Is local attention a substitute for policy representation? Fenno (1978) famously described how legislators develop personal ties with their constituents through periodic visits to their districts and carefully crafted communications. Existing work suggests that such interactions insulate incumbents electorally, creating less need to represent constituents’ policy preferences. Surprisingly, this important argument has never been tested systematically. In this paper, I use data on senator travel and staffing behavior along with survey data from the 2011–2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to investigate this claim. In addition to showing that areas with important campaign donors are significantly more likely to receive resources, I find that local visits may decrease approval among ideologically opposed constituents. Furthermore, I find inconsistent evidence regarding the effectiveness of local staff. These results suggest that local attention does not always cultivate goodwill in the district. Under polarized politics, home style does not effectively substitute for policy representation.

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Section: Local Attentiveness and Ideological Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Senators at Home: Local Attentiveness and Policy Representation in Congress

Kaslovsky

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Finally, a nascent literature explores issue politics in the context of unilateral action. An analysis of voters' responses to presidential unilateral action shows that presidential approval ratings are responsive to the public's level of agreement with the policies presidents have created (Ansolabehere & Rogowski 2020). This research shows that individuals' agreement with the ideological content of unilateral directives is associated with their evaluations of the president who issued them.…”

Section: Public Opinion and Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 78%

Presidential Unilateral Power

Lowande

Rogowski

2021

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Contrary to stylized accounts of policy making in democracies, it is routine for presidents, governors, and other chief executives to issue directives such as decrees and executive orders to make law on their own. This article evaluates what political scientists have learned about presidential unilateral power. In our view, while a quarter century of scholarship on the topic has yielded a variety of theoretical predictions, the empirical record offers conflicting and perhaps unreliable evidence to substantiate and adjudicate between them. We review the dominant theoretical perspectives, which focus largely on constraints related to the separation of powers and political accountability. We then evaluate the evidence supporting these arguments and conclude with recommendations for conceptual, theoretical, and empirical advancement. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 24 is May 11, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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“…Theoretical models posit that presidents have electoral incentives to respond to public opinion (Canes‐Wrone, Herron, and Shotts 2001). Empirical research provides support for the general claim, showing that issue congruence is associated with vote choice in presidential elections (Jessee 2009, 2010), presidents are responsive to public opinion when proposing budgets and signing legislation (Canes‐Wrone and Shotts 2004; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002), and voters evaluate presidents on the basis of voters' agreement with the policy content of the president's unilateral directives (Ansolabehere and Rogowski 2020). Ideological congruence is an important component of voters' presidential evaluations, which creates electoral incentives for presidents to advocate for policies with popular support (see also Rogowski 2019).…”

Section: Evaluating Presidential Words and Deedsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Unilateral Inaction: Congressional Gridlock, Interbranch Conflict, and Public Evaluations of Executive Power

Reeves

Rogowski

2021

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Presidents routinely overpromise and underdeliver, especially amid partisan polarization, narrow congressional majorities, and persistent gridlock. As Congress routinely stymies their legislative agendas, presidents consider alternative courses of action. We study public reactions to unilateral power in the context of congressional inaction. While some research suggests that presidents cannot afford to pass up opportunities to act, more recent scholarship indicates that the public holds negative views of unilateral power and disapproves of its use. Survey experiments conducted with a national sample of Americans provide evidence of the costs of unilateral power. Across three policy areas and between‐ and within‐respondent analyses, the public responds negatively when presidents exercise unilateral power rather than accept the status quo, even among individuals who share the president's policy views. Our results suggest that while legislative gridlock may increase the appeal of unilateral power, its use may come at a public cost.

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Unilateral Action and Presidential Accountability

Cited by 8 publications

References 58 publications

Senators at Home: Local Attentiveness and Policy Representation in Congress

Senators at Home: Local Attentiveness and Policy Representation in Congress

Presidential Unilateral Power

Unilateral Inaction: Congressional Gridlock, Interbranch Conflict, and Public Evaluations of Executive Power

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