President Clinton and the Republican Congress, 1995-2000: Political and Policy Dimensions of Veto Politics in Divided Government

This article melds alternative theoretical perspectives on veto threats to explain President Clinton's influence over legislative outcomes in the 104th-106th Congresses (1995-2000). Formal models of executive-legislative relations–in particular the "coordination model"–yield an incomplete understanding of veto politics and executivelegislative conflict from 1995-2000. Explaining Clinton's success through veto politics requires a recognition of the unique context of legislative conflict from 1995-96. Presidential- congressional relations in the 104th Congress turned on "blame-game" politics that Clinton manipulated to his advantage. Clinton's second term heralded a return to "normal politics" during which the Republican majority's response to his veto threats coincided better with the basic tenets of the coordination model. Quantitative analysis of Clinton's public threats and secondary analysis of bill histories are brought to bear to test the theoretical framework.     

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: The Framers' "First Woman"

Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment to the Supreme Court was a historic stride in American women's slow but determined march towards full equality. At our nation's birth, Abigail Adams urged her husband and other members of the Continental Congress to "Remember the Ladies" in their new government. ¹ "We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems," John Adams replied only half jokingly. ² More than two centuries would pass before a woman donned Supreme Court robes to help interpret the United States Constitution.     

China's Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2006-2010): From "Getting Rich First" to "Common Prosperity"

China's Eleventh Five-Year Plan, which sets the directions for national development for the 2006 to 2010 period, has been described as a revolutionary plan. This paper examines the Plan's goal to build a "harmonious socialist society" by enabling disadvantaged groups and less developed regions to share the fruits of economic growth. It first describes the Plan's main principles and major quantitative targets for the five-year period. In the second half of the paper, the author argues that the emphasis on "common prosperity" can be explained by the rise in inequality over more than two decades, by a new political administration that seeks to establish its own path while endorsing ideas from past regimes, and by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao's more open and consultative style of leadership. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O20, O53, P21. 1 figure, 2 tables, 58 references.     

When leadership traits meet historic success: Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear deal of 2015

This study aims to show how dispositional characters of political leaders are affected by situational developments during the time‐in‐office. Although newly emerging literature of leadership traits demonstrate that significant events alter leaders’ traits, they mainly focus on the measurement of shocking events on dispositional features, leaving the effect of achievements underexplored. The Iranian nuclear deal of 2015 is one of the most significant successes in the last decade of world politics. Gambling his political career on nuclear talks by promising the Iranian people to solve Iran's decades‐long isolation, President Hassan Rouhani played a momentous role in negotiating the deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was globally recognized as a success of Rouhani's leadership. Using the Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA), this article will show the role of Rouhani's personality in the realization of the historic nuclear deal and measure the effect of such a success on Rouhani's leadership traits.     

The historical significance of President Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963

President John F. Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963 was the first by a serving American President. Using materials from archives in London, Dublin, and Boston, this article re-assesses the motives behind Kennedy's decision to visit Ireland and concludes that it was largely a personal journey. However, the trip was not without wider historical and political significance and was surrounded by controversy. The visit was unpopular in the United States, proved a security nightmare, and provoked much discussion amongst the political leadership in Belfast, Dublin and London over Kennedy's attitude to partition. The visit marked a major development in the history of Irish-American relations as it eased tensions over Ireland's neutrality, marked a shift towards White House activism in Irish affairs, boosted Irish tourism, and fostered increased trading and cultural links between the two countries.     

Gerald Ford,the Mayaguez Incident,and the Post-Imperial Presidency

In 1975 Gerald Ford became the first President bound by the War Powers Resolution. Enacted in 1973, members of Congress, still fuming over the revelations crystallized by the Pentagon Papers that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a sham, sought to prevent future Presidents from starting future Vietnam Wars. Though Ford voted against the measure twice as a Congressman, as President he respected the law and Congress enforcing it. This article explores Ford's efforts and actions as he complied with the law. Ford's attitude and acquiescence reflected his efforts he heal the nation.     

The Judicial Bookshelf

Millions were reminded on January 20, 2009, that the inauguration of an American President is as remarkable as it is routine. In this distinctly republican rite, the chief executive publicly subordinates himself to the fundamental law of the land. As the Constitution dictates, “[b]efore he enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: ‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’” ¹ This display of constitutional fealty was remarkable because the variety of political systems, experiences, and cultures across today's globe graphically illustrates that the seamless and peaceful transfer of authority from one political party or individual to another, as was witnessed at President Barack Obama's inauguration and at President George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001, is not always a foregone occurrence everywhere. January's event was routine in that, from the outset of government under the Constitution and with the notable and tragic exception of 1860, the defeated party or individual has accepted, if not welcomed, the verdict rendered by the electoral process. That was the outcome even in 1800, when the notion of a violence‐free shift of control in a country founded on the principle of government by the “consent of the governed” ² was first put to the test at the presidential level. The assumption of authority by Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic‐Republicans from John Adams and the Federalists marked the world's first peaceful transfer of power from the vanquished to the victors as the result of an election. ³ Given the stark national partisan differences that had crystallized in the short time since ratification of the Constitution and the fact that finalization of the election required extraordinary intervention by the House of Representatives to break an Electoral College tie, this outcome was a greater achievement than is sometimes acknowledged. “Partisanship prevailed to the bitter end and showed no signs of abating,” according to one historian who has recently revisited this critical and precedent‐setting election. “Over the campaign's course, George Washington's vision of elite consensus leadership had died, and a popular two‐party republic … was born.” ⁴     

The vertikal: power and authority in Russia

Power and authority in Russia are traditionally seen to reside with the president. Such an understanding was emphasized during the eight years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, from 2000 to 2008, as he sought to centralize power, strengthen the state and establish a strong vertical of power to implement policy. This article examines the nature of this power and authority in the light of the tandem, the ruling arrangement between current President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. While acknowledging the central importance of Vladimir Putin in Russian political life, the article argues that emphasis on his role draws too much attention away from the leadership team that he has shaped with Medvedev. This team takes shape in formal institutional structures such as the Security Council, which has become an increasingly important group as a reservoir of experience and authority. It also takes shape in an informal network that stretches across state and business boundaries. Although there are some tensions in the network, this team ensures broad policy continuity. Furthermore, the article questions Putin's success in establishing a vertical of power, and the authority of both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. The analysis explores evidence that suggests that, despite the appointment of loyal personnel in this vertical of power, presidential instructions, orders and personnel commands often remain incompletely and tardily carried out or even unfulfilled. In essence, therefore, although many have suggested a split within the leadership, particularly between Medvedev and Putin, the article suggests that the more important splits are horizontal ones between different layers of authority. Thus, a process of direct control is necessary, whereby the most senior officials are obliged personally to oversee the implementation of their instructions. The article concludes by suggesting a reconsideration of our terms of reference for Russian politics, replacing the tandem with the team, and introducing ‘manual control’.     

The President and the Environment: A Reinterpretation of Neustadt's Theory of Presidential Leadership

Neustadt's theory of presidential leadership is conventionally viewed as based on a model of the Bargaining President, in which presidents focus on twisting arms and trading favors rather than on making public appeals. However, Neustadt's theory has a deeper logic—the logic of strategic choice, in which both effective bargaining and rhetorical appeals are techniques of presidential persuasion enabled by a President's choices. This reinterpretation of Neustadt's theory is supported by an original case study of President George H.W. Bush's leadership on the 1990 Clean Air Act. The President presented an initiative in a manner that capitalized on the public mood and he made key strategic choices aimed at persuading congressional leaders to engage with his administration in a non-zero sum game to enact a law that served their mutual policy and political interests. Rhetorical appeals were few in number. Quid pro quo bargaining played a limited role.     

China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

Taiwan: Changes and Challenges

In January and March 2008, Taiwan's citizens voted primarily for domestic political reasons to oust the Democratic Progressive Party administration and promulgate the second peaceful transfer of power in Taiwan's relatively young democracy. Surveys suggest that the new administration of President Ma Ying-jeou in its first few months in office has failed to meet voter expectations. Taiwan's new international relations with the United States, Japan and China have also raised concerns both within Taiwan and overseas.

     

Determinants of National Television News Coverage of Women in the House of Representatives, 1987-1998

This study adapts Timothy Cook's 1986 analysis of news coverage of members of Congress to women legislators. The relative impact of independent variables on the amount of television news coverage received by women in the House from 1987 to 1998 was determined using Poisson regression. These included structural variables (leadership, seniority, party control of the chamber, and membership on a prestigious committee), member characteristics (racial minority status, media market size, party and attractiveness), and member activities (legislative activity, ideology, scandal, authorship of women's bills, and running for higher office). Factors that were significantly related to the amount of coverage received by a congresswoman were: authorship of women's bills, running for higher office, media market size, political party, and seniority. Leadership did not have the same payoff for women's visibility that it did for the largely male group of legislators in Cook's study. Authoring a large number of pieces of legislation did not enhance women's coverage, but authoring bills on women's issues did.     

Politics and Policy in the 103rd and 104th Congresses: Evaluating the Effects of Divided Government in the Postreform Era

The 1980 Reagan transition and the 1988 Bush transition offer important case studies for understanding the challenges of presidential transitions. Although not without its shortcomings, the 1980 transition was, at least comparably, the most successful of the transfers in power since the modern era of presidential transitions commenced with the Carter effort in 1976. 1988 offers useful lessons about "friendly takeovers": the passing of power from a president to a president-elect of the same party. The 1988 transition is also of interest because it offers the only instance of a sitting vice president elected to the presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836. The 1988 transition, moreover, marked the ascendancy of President George W. Bush's father to the office, and it was a transition in which he and several members of this administration participated, Chief of Staff Andrew Card most notably.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Unlikely Abolitionist: William Cushing and the Struggle Against Slavery

One of the striking differences between the federal Union established under the Constitution and the Confederation of States established under the Articles of Confederation is the creation under Article III of a judicial power of the United States and of a Supreme Court to exercise that power. Acting pursuant to its power to determine the structure of that Court, Congress determined that the Court should consist of one Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. The six lawyers President Washington named to the Court ¹ were leading members of the bar, yet none achieved lasting distinction by reason of his service on the Court. Chief Justice Jay, for example, is best remembered for the treaty with England which bears his name; and when he resigned in 1795 following his election as Governor of New York, local papers referred to his new office as "a promotion." ²     

Japan's Political Leadership Deficit

Analysts have long pondered the question: 'Who rules in Japan?'. Prime Ministers who have exercised strong leadership have been the exception rather than the rule. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that Japan's political leadership deficit undermines the ability of the government to act swiftly in a crisis and to exercise international leadership in trade and foreign policy, a systematic explanation for Japan's weak political executive is yet to be advanced. While historical and cultural factors cannot be ignored, more relevant in a contemporary context are institutional factors that restrict the power of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. A parliamentary Cabinet system is not incompatible with strong leadership but, in Japan's case, the inability of the political executive to exercise indisputable authority, or indeed, merely to exercise the legitimate prerogatives of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet Office, is directly attributable to the constraints imposed by a collection of informal power structures within the ruling conservative party and by an autonomous central bureaucracy, all of which have held power away from the political executive. Various institutional remedies are currently being pursued to enhance the leadership of the executive branch. They are part of a deliberately engineered shift in power from non-elected bureaucrats to elected politicians. The reforms will also help to diminish the influence of ruling party factions over personnel selections to executive office and the ascendancy of internal policy cliques within party policymaking.     

Identifying the Critical Members of the House of Representatives

This article combines the historical record of presidential-congressional relations with previous scholarly findings to develop a model that identifies the members of Congress whose support is critical to the president's ability to build enacting coalitions. It then analyzes the relationship between President Obama and the House of Representatives during the 113th Congress as a case study that demonstrates the model's utility. Conventional wisdom and political pundits suggest that presidents working in divided government will have impossible difficulty working with Congress, but history suggests otherwise. The president's ability to successfully build enacting coalitions during divided government requires him to perform two rather disparate tasks. First, the president must minimize the amount of presidential party members who cross party lines to vote against the president's position. Second, the president must entice at least some opposition party members to cross party lines and support the president's position. Using data from 1981 to 2015, I find that representatives’ behavior on presidential support votes are related to constituency-level presidential strength, electoral vulnerability, ideological moderation, and ideological extremity. I use these results to identify the critical members of the 113th Congress. When a majority of these critical members supported President Obama's positions his legislative efforts were successful. When a majority of these members opposed the president's positions, the House Republican majority defeated the president.     

Alvis,J. David,Jeremy D. Bailey,and F. Flagg Taylor,IV. The Contested Removal Power, 1789–2010.

Abstract

In this article, we use legislative correspondence to determine who gains access to key staffers in a congressional office. To evaluate our theory of the office power hierarchy, we test hypotheses using an original dataset of more than 3,000 correspondence records from the office of former member of Congress James R. Jones. Our empirical analysis is supplemented by an e-mail interview with Representative Jones. We find that key senior staffers are more likely to pay attention to powerful individuals and nonroutine matters. Letters from women and families and those dealing with routine legislation are more likely to be answered by lower-ranked staffers. These results are important because they reveal that even something as simple as constituent correspondence enters a type of power hierarchy within the legislative branch where some individuals are advantaged over others.     

The Foreign Policymaking Role of Congress in the 1990s: Remote Sensing Technology and the Future of Congressional Power

In the midst of a period of Congressional assertiveness on foreign policy, a new technology has emerged for commercial use with the potential for enhancing Congress' information-gathering processes and agenda-setting role. The effect may alter the balance of power in the relationship between Congress and the President. Congress' access to news media stories of imagery may provide an independent information source on U.S. or foreign military installations and activities. Such a source could be utilized to assess issues such as Pentagon appropriations, treaty compliance, and foreign aid funding. The thesis of this article is that when interest groups and the news media use remote sensing imagery on foreign policy issues, the foreign and national security policymaking process will be transformed by enhancing the information status and the public agendasetting role of previously excluded segments such as interest groups, the news media, and the general public. The expanded role of these groups will decentralize decisionmaking by fragmenting power and likely restructure the relationship between the Congress and the executive over these policy areas during the 1990s.     

Ethics and the Party Brand: The Case of the Office of Congressional Ethics

Dating back to its creation in 2008, the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) has faced criticism from the very members of Congress it is tasked with investigating. Despite this criticism, a majority of House members both voted to create OCE in 2008 and have ultimately backed away from any efforts to rein in the office. Why? Through an examination of both the passage of OCE in 2008 and subsequent efforts to rein in its power, this article argues that partisan considerations and pressure from party leaders played a critical role in OCE's creation and survival. The creation of the independent commission in the House thus demonstrates the power of the party valence brand in the contemporary Congress.