Public Presidential Appeals and Congressional Floor Votes: Reassessing the Constitutional Threat

The assertion that public appeals by presidents can create electoral threats to noncompliant members of Congress is central to arguments about the value of "going public" as a legislative strategy. Although recent scholarship suggests a link between popular presidential rhetoric and the likelihood of bill passage, researchers have yet to examine the impact of public presidential appeals on individual legislators. This study examines the logic of electoral threats imposed by going public. We test whether a president's going public with increased intensity leads individual members of Congress to increase their support for presidential preferences on congressional floor votes. We employ several measures to assess the intensity of presidents' public appeals, including domestic speeches, nationally televised addresses, and speeches in legislators' home states. Several logistic regression models are tested to determine whether congressional support for presidential preferences on the floor is influenced by the interaction between members' electoral vulnerability and presidents' use of popular appeals. The findings suggest that presidential speechmaking has very little impact on the likelihood that members of Congress will support the president's position on roll call votes. We argue that this suggests a necessary revision of criticisms of the "rhetorical presidency." Public presidential appeals do not seem to present a considerable threat to a constitutional order that is predicated on congressional autonomy and deliberation.     

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.     

Assessing Effectiveness of Veto Threats in the Bush Administration (1989-1993): Preliminary Evidence from Case Studies

Presidents have many tools in the policy-making process. One of the most powerful of these is vetoing legislation. Although presidents can veto legislation at will, the use of the veto is costly as it can be perceived as a sign of weakness. Veto threats may provide the president with a bargaining tool relying on the power of the veto without incurring its costs. This article provides a framework for understanding the use and effectiveness of veto threats. First, the present understanding of the use of veto threats is discussed, including the conditions under which they are most likely to occur and to be effective. Next, we provide a conceptualization of the context in which a veto threat is issued and the result of such a threat. Finally, using the Bush administration (1989-1993), we illustrate two possible results with case studies of civil rights and child care legislation.     

Before the Honeymoon Ends: Presidential Leadership and Congressional Response

Academicians and journalists inevitably pass judgment on the progress of a president's major "honeymoon period" initiatives. Obviously, the success of those initiatives will depend on how Congress responds to new presidents. Data on aggregate congressional response to the "honeymoon" initiatives of the Carter and Reagan presidencies are presented in order to explore how members of Congress react as they evaluate and interact with a new president. Evidence suggests that, despite the conventional wisdom regarding Carter's limited political ability and inflexible nature, members of Congress were more inclined to emphasize organizational deficiencies. Conversely, while Reagan was perceived to be almost as inflexible as Carter, he received superlative marks for organizational efficiency and for providing access to Congress. The analysis then considers the importance of organization to future presidential effectiveness, and the importance of organizational concerns with respect to personal characteristics for overall presidential success.     

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.     

Legislative Coalitions and Presidential Signing Statements

We examine how the congressional coalition in favor of a law affects the probability of the president appending a positive or negative signing statement to it. Our results show that coalitions matter—presidents consider the power and status of a law's sponsor and the composition of its cosponsorship coalition when deciding whether to offer praise or raise concerns. Moreover, the factors driving praise and criticism differ from one another in important ways. These analyses demonstrate the value of assessing the valence of a signing statement rather than just its presence, and of extending the focus of research on signing statements beyond aggregate factors to investigate how the context surrounding a particular law shapes the president's reaction to it.     

The Pendulum of Congressional Power: Agenda Change,Partisanship and the Demise of the Post-World War II Foreign Policy Consensus

Many scholars contend that Congress rarely matters in the realm of foreign policy. The source of this collective impotence is often explained by the weaknesses in congressional institutions vis-a-vis the president, as well as a general inability to respond effectively to a dynamic international political environment. We contend that the debate over congressional activism has not adequately addressed the role of agenda change. We analyze all roll call votes in the House of Representatives relating to the international affairs agenda between 1953 and 1998. We find that presidents have become significantly more likely to stake out positions on economic and trade issues as compared to other international issues. We also observe that presidential positions in the realm of foreign policy are increasingly characterized by interparty and interinstitutional conflict. While this increased conflict has dramatically decreased the president's ability to successfully pass executive priorities in foreign affairs more generally, presidential success on economic and trade issues has witnessed a significantly greater decline. We infer from these results that changes to the foreign policy issue agenda represent one important factor that has affected not only the incentives for political parties to participate actively, but also the willingness of Congress to challenge the president in the foreign policy debate.Asked one day whether it was true that the navy yard in his district was too small to accommodate the latest battleships. Henry Stimson (chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee early in the century) replied, 'That is true, and that is the reason I have always been in favor of small ships.'1Carriers have been, are and will be for the foreseeable future an absolutely essential part of our deterrence force…2John Warner, senator from Virginia, home state of Newport News Shipbuilding     

An Item Veto for the President?

In their efforts to reduce federal deficits, national political leaders sometimes have embraced bold constitutional and statutory “reform” measures. President Reagan, for example, has campaigned for a constitutional amendment to permit the President to veto subsections contained within appropriations bills. This article describes the history and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of this proposed item veto. By pointing out potentially undesirable consequences of the item veto, we note that unintended side-effects may weaken Congress and provide more power than an effective president needs, and more power than an imperial president should ever have. We conclude the item veto is overrated and its effects not well understood. It would not greatly reduce deficits and it would disrupt the existing system of checks and balances. More important, it is an example of escapism from the basic tasks of statecraft and political decisionmaking that should be center stage in the legislative and executive branches.     

The Politics of Credit in Presidential Signing Statements

The separation of powers often makes it difficult to understand who is responsible for legislative outcomes. Both members of Congress and presidents seek to shape perceptions of policy responsibility to their advantage. Yet, the relative size of the president's rhetorical stage gives him disproportionate influence in molding these discussions at critical moments. Given these circumstances, how, when, and why, do presidents claim credit for themselves and attribute credit to members of Congress for legislation? Using an original dataset based upon a content analysis of all presidential signing statements from 1985–2008, we find that presidential strategies to claim and attribute credit for laws are greatly impacted by both political context (approval, divided government, midterm elections, and party power) and bill-specific attributes (appropriations, salience, and veto threats). The theory and results highlight the importance of taking multiple institutions into account when thinking about credit.     

The Presidency and Political Equality

When black Americans and white Americans want the president to do different things, who wins? When low-income earners prefer different government action than do middle and high-income earners, whose preferences are reflected in presidential behavior? Recent studies show that congressional behavior often most closely follows the preferences of the white and the wealthy, but we know relatively little about presidential behavior. Since the president and Congress make policy together, it is important to understand the extent of political equality in presidential behavior. We examine the degree to which presidents have provided equal representation to these groups over the past four decades. We compare the preferences of these groups for federal spending in various budget domains to presidents’ subsequent budget proposals in those domains from 1974 to 2010. Over this period, presidents’ proposals aligned more with the preferences of whites and high-income earners. However, Republican presidents are driving this overall pattern. Democratic presidents represent racial and income groups equally, but Republicans’ proposals are much more consistent with the spending preferences of whites and high-income earners. This pattern of representation reflects the composition of the president's party coalition and the spending preferences of groups within the party coalition.     

Cock-ups and slap-downs: A quantitative analysis of conspiracy rhetoric in the British Parliament 1916–20151

In view of the negative connotations associated with conspiracy theories, what have been the effects of the term's entry into popular vocabulary in the second half of the twentieth century? Has the ascendancy of the term “conspiracy theory” been correlated with a reluctance to allege conspiracy? In this article, the authors use Hansard, the record of British parliamentary debates, as a source of empirical data in demonstrating a significant and steady reduction in the number of conspiracy claims advanced in parliament; a pattern consistent with the broader marginalization of conspiracy rhetoric. This trend was reinforced by a trope that established itself in the 1980s and juxtaposed “conspiracies” with “cock-ups.” The British expression “cock-up” denotes a blunder or act of incompetence. In the second part of this article, the authors argue that the preference for “cock-up theories” over “conspiracy theories” reflects how a policy geared towards privatization and deregulation tended to characterize government action in terms of incompetence, and not of malfeasance.     

A Tale of Three Variables: Exploring the Impact of Alternative Measures of Presidential Approval On Congressional Voting

This study explores the impact of three distinct measures of public approval on congressional voting. Specifically, we test for the relative impact of a president's national approval, his partisan approval, and his district- (or state-) level approval on congressional support, measured at the level of individual members of Congress. Though we remain consistent with other arguments that hold presidential approval is likely to act as a background variable rather than a determinant of congressional voting, we maintain that theoretically more meaningful relationships between public opinion and congressional voting can be developed. Specifically, we argue that a more relevant test can be made which includes opinion measured closest to where that opinion is likely to matter to members, namely among electoral copartisans and district-level constituencies. We estimate various models (bivariate and integrated multivariate), and find strong support for our hypotheses that, to the extent members of Congress use public approval as a voting cue, they do in fact pay far more attention to partisan and constituency interests than they do to national opinion.     

WHERE NEUROSCIENCE GETS THINGS WRONG (AND RIGHT)

Alex Rosenberg's book How History Gets Things Wrong holds that our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long evolutionary pedigree and a genetic basis, but this vehicle involves a defective theory of human nature because it involves a defective theory of the brain as shown by neuroscience. Reviewing his arguments, I argue that our attachment (if any) to history as a vehicle of understanding is not an inherited characteristic as evolutionary theory, if relevant, would require, but is developed culturally. I also argue that an evolutionary basis for a cognitive capacity does not undermine its reliability as a vehicle of knowledge or understanding. Moreover, evolutionary theory and neuroscience are separable theories, and neuroscience is misused and misunderstood by Rosenberg. Rosenberg holds that neuroscience provides a better theory of mind than does the “theory of mind” used by historians (as he understands them), where the latter is assumed by him to involve explaining by reference to beliefs and desires. However, Rosenberg illegitimately adopts what philosophers of mind call “theory‐theory” to characterize historians' assumptions and does not recognize that neuroscience need not be conceived as a rival theory of explanation of action. He wrongly supposes that historical narratives are essentially explanations of individual action. A better use of neuroscience is to learn that “imagining the past” and “imagining the future” use the same brain processes, and just as imagining the future has no causal chain linking the relevant brain states directly to reality, so we have no reason to think that “imagining the past” does. Getting our imaginings correct requires sound historiographical expertise.     

Deterrence dogma? Challenging the relevance of British nuclear weapons

In December 2006 the British government released a White Paper announcing its intention to begin the process of replacing its current Trident nuclear weapons system, thereby allowing it to retain nuclear weapons well into the 2050s. In March 2008 the government released its National Security Strategy that stressed the long‐term complexity, diversity and interdependence of threats to British security with a clear focus on human rights, justice and freedom. This article asks how the threat to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people with British nuclear weapons fits into the National Security Strategy's world view and questions the relevance of an instrument of such devastating bluntness to threats defined by complexity and interdependence. It argues that the government's case for replacing the current Trident system based on the logic of nuclear deterrence is flawed. First, Britain faces no strategic nuclear threats and the long‐term post‐Cold War trend in relations with Russia and China—the two nuclear‐armed major powers that could conceivably threaten the UK with nuclear attack—is positive, despite current tensions with Moscow over Georgia. Second, the credibility and legitimacy of threatening nuclear destruction in response to the use of WMD by ‘rogue’ states is highly questionable and British nuclear threats offer no ‘insurance’ or guarantee of protection against future ‘rogue’ nuclear threats. Third, nuclear weapons have no role to play in deterring acts of nuclear terrorism whether state‐sponsored or not. Fourth, British nuclear threats will be useless in dealing with complex future conflicts characterized by ‘hybrid’ wars and diverse and interdependent sources of insecurity. The article concludes by arguing that the government's fall‐back position that it must keep nuclear weapons ‘just in case’ because the future security environment appears so uncertain, makes no sense if British nuclear threats offer no solution to the causes and symptoms of that uncertainty.     

Sounding Presidential: Frame Creation in the Obama Administration

Among the often-cited powers of the presidency is the power of the pulpit. Presidents attempt to influence Congress directly and indirectly through their rhetoric and its influence on national policy debates. This includes the power to shape debates through the use of frames. While much is known about framing, no past study has attempted to document all frames utilized by a policy entrepreneur in his attempt to shape the policy debate. Comprehensive understanding of frame creation is necessary to understand what frames persist and how frames are used in policymaking. This study identifies how one president, Barack Obama, framed domestic policy issues in speeches early in his administration. Identifying frames the president uses provides insights into this president's attempts to set the public agenda. The findings of this study suggest that Obama's use of specific frames is highly idiosyncratic, but that these idiosyncratic frames coalesce around identifiable policy areas, particularly macroeconomic policy. This study provides insight into how one president attempts to both frame and set his domestic policy agenda.     

Does It Even Work? A Theoretical and Practical Evaluation of the War Powers Resolution

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 represents a policy that attempts to fill a procedural gap in the Constitution, that is, a clear process by which the use of military force is authorized. Based on what is arguably a misinterpretation of the Constitution, it fails to achieve its objective: to constrain the president's discretion in employing military force unilaterally.

This article addresses the WPR in four sections. First, it examines the law's theoretical underpinnings. Next, it summarizes the law's provisions, its application, and several direct and indirect approaches that have been applied in studying the use of military force and the WPR. Third, using quantitative analysis, the article seeks to answer three basic questions: 1) Has the WPR had any effect on the U.S. president's decision to employ military force?

2) Has the WPR had any effect on the magnitude of force employed in a conflict?

3) Has the WPR had any effect on the duration of conflicts in which the president has employed military force?

Findings indicate that the War Powers Resolution is not a significant factor in presidents' decisions to use military force. Once the president decides to employ force in a given scenario, it also fails to be a significant factor in affecting the magnitude of force that is used. It appears that the law may have an effect on the duration of conflicts involving the U.S. military, but weaknesses in the statistical model leave this question open to further research to confirm or deny this verdict.     

Whose Approval Matters? Reelection,Constituency Approval,and Senate Support for President George W. Bush

Debate exists concerning the impact of presidential approval on congressional support for the president. One source of this debate is that while theory specifies an electoral connection, suggesting that legislators will be responsive to approval within their reelection constituency, most research employs national approval measures. Lack of constituency-level data has forced studies to use national measures of approval, but in as much as national and district level approval differ, national approval will not provide quality estimates of district opinion on the president. This article uses SurveyUSA data from 2005–2006, which provide state-level estimates for approval as well as breakdowns by partisanship (Democrats, Republicans, Independent). Analysis finds that, with controls, state-level approval has a statistically significant, albeit marginal, impact on senator support for the president. Stronger effects on support are found for approval from the senators’ reelection constituency, defined as voters of the senators’ party. These findings suggest directions for future research.     

Priestly Despotism: The Problem of Unruly Clerics in Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis1

This article explores how Marsilius's theory of “priestly despotism” underpins his understanding of the civic body's secular authority and autonomy. Marsilius defends this autonomy not only with respect to truly secular matters but also with respect to the citizens' future in the afterlife; consequently, it affects the outlook of the entire commonwealth. In Marsilius's view, though he never doubts the need for the priesthood in the commonwealth, priests represent a fundamental threat to the stability and well‐being of the community. Marsilius redefines the position of priesthood to ensure the political stability of the commonwealth by minimizing the danger of internal turmoil. The topic of “priestly despotism” also reveals the internal consistency and logic of Defensor Pacis's first and second discourse by demonstrating how arguments introduced and developed in the first discourse are consistently applied in the second discourse.     

THE REFLEXIVE TEST OF HAYDEN WHITE'S METAHISTORY

This paper assesses Hayden White's Metahistory through the test of reflexivity; that is, it asks whether the book's “general theory of the structure of that mode of thought which is called ‘historical”’ applies, as it should, to its own history of nineteenth‐century “historical consciousness.” Most components of the theoretical apparatus—the various concepts invoked in the “theory of the historical work” and in the “theory of tropes”—fail the reflexivity test; further, it emerges that those same components are also seriously flawed on other grounds. The sole and partial exception is the concept of emplotment, which passes the reflexivity test, albeit with qualifications, but more particularly has the virtue of illuminating the traditional history of history against which Metahistory's own story was pitched; and this result provides an ironic and unexpected vindication of Metahistory's underlying vision. Thus the book's fundamental insight—that the form of historical writing is epistemologically consequential—can be retained, even though its two theories should now be set aside.     

On the vulnerability of the ancient Maya society to natural threats

The concepts of disaster, vulnerability and societal vulnerability as well as natural threats that are relevant to the Maya area are discussed. Ancient Maya societies were vulnerable to natural threats, such as droughts, diseases and volcanic eruptions. Some of the factors that may be considered as having influenced Maya vulnerability are discussed, and a method is proposed for ascribing a numerical value to the vulnerability of a given society to a specific threat at a particular time. To apply the method, it is necessary to choose a set of relevant parameters and to assign them numerical values. The weight of each of these parameters in the overall vulnerability also needs to be assessed. The numerical value of the vulnerability is defined as a relatively simple combination of these values. Since there are no precise means for measuring parameters such as “water scarcity” or “external threats”, the proposed method is based on estimates. Simplistic examples are presented to illustrate the use of this method for a presumed threat of a severe three years drought. Using a concise set of parameters and subjective estimates of their values and their weights, the average vulnerability to the presumed threat of Maya society as a whole, at the onset of the “Hiatus” (ca. AD 540) is estimated to be ∼40% higher than that in the Late Pre-Classic (AD 100–250). Toward the end of the Late Classic (AD 800–900), it is estimated to be ∼80% higher. The method can also be used to assess numerical values for the vulnerability of specific sites to a given threat, relative to a specific reference, and El Mirador at the Late Pre-classic transition is used as an example.