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There is an inherent connection between the party cover and policy availability theories that has been largely overlooked by the presidential use of force literature. Party cover views the president's party strength in Congress as the prominent structural source shaping presidential incentives by diffusing responsibility in foreign policy. But policy availability adds to this view by explaining how such domestic conditions shape the variety of choices (or tools) presidents have for demonstrating political leadership. Policy availability anticipates that presidential incentives to use the Constitution's Article II authority across foreign policy operations will vary depending on the president's relationship with Congress. This analysis provides insight into claims made by policy availability arguments regarding the role of Congress in explaining presidential decisions to initiate military interventions. The findings point to important differences in the effects of Congress on presidential decisions for low-risk versus high-risk military missions. We find that the president's ability to legislate decreases the likelihood of humanitarian interventions. In addition, we find that as the president's relationship with Congress becomes more legislatively productive, presidents seem significantly more drawn toward high-risk military interventions. We infer from these findings that policy availability represents a powerful motivation in the president's calculation to engage in foreign policy interventions., Recent efforts to explain the use of military force have focused extensively on political opposition leaders confront at home. If leaders prefer to stay in power, and most seemingly do, [...]

This project examines the effects of a president's coalition management decisions on associated governing costs in a multiparty system. A strategic president who is concerned about policy outcomes and about her various management functions will consider these costs in working toward an optimal strategy. The results of our empirical analyses support the argument that large and ideologically diverse coalitions and disproportional cabinets tend to be more expensive over time. Further, the results indicate that presidential choices about how to manage coalitions influence governing costs even after controlling for a variety of other factors that matter to the bargaining game. Keywords: multiparty presidency, coalition management, governing costs, executive-legislative relations, Brazil, Over the course of a few decades, political scientists and economists developed a rich collection of formal models of political coalition formation and survival in parliamentary regimes (see summaries in [...]

Divided government has become the norm in American national politics. But its pattern redivided beginning in the 1990s from one of Republican presidents and Democratic Congresses to one of Democratic presidents and Republican Congresses. Drawing on oral history interviews with campaign and administration officials from the Clinton administration, this article explains how Bill Clinton forged a winning strategy for Democratic presidential candidates while contributing to the weakening of the Democratic congressional party., Republicans emerged from the 1988 election as confident of their supremacy in presidential politics as Democrats were of their dominance of Congress. Republican vice president George Bush's 40-state, 426-electoral vote [...]

Over the past four decades, members of Congress have filed 10 lawsuits challenging military actions abroad that were ordered or sustained by presidents without prior legislative consent. In dismissing these cases, federal courts told the plaintiffs to use their legislative tools to show disapproval of the actions already in progress. Under this logic, the House and Senate must have a veto-proof supermajority to end an existing military engagement before a case can be heard on the merits. These precedents contrast with previous war powers cases initiated by private litigants, which focused on prior simple majority legislative authority for presidential action., [I]t is the exclusive province of [C]ongress to change a state of peace into a state of war. (UnitedStates v. Smith 1806, 1230) [I]t is error to suppose that every [...]

Veto override attempts offer an ideal opportunity to study the president's influence in Congress. A hill's content is identical during final passage and veto override votes, yet some members of Congress vote differently on these two roll-calls. This article focuses on those members of Congress who switch their votes to join, or defect from, the president's coalition during veto override votes. The empirical analysis investigates veto override attempts from 1973 to 2011 to determine which members of Congress are most likely to change their votes during veto overrides. I find that the president's ability to win, or keep, members' support on veto override votes is determined in part by members' electoral incentives and the president's strength in members' constituencies. In particular, the president's strength in members' constituencies makes presidential party members more likely to join the president's veto override coalition and also makes opposition party members more likely to defect from the president's veto override coalition. Accounting for the influence of constituencies and electoral incentives augments party-based and ideology-based theories of congressional behavior and thus helps build richer, more comprehensive, and more accurate theories of member behavior., President George H. W. Bush famously employed a veto strategy in the 101st and 102nd Congress to project strength and defend 'his party and his powers' (Mullins and Wildavsky 1992, [...]

President Obama's decision to seek congressional authorization for a military strike against Syria caught many political observers by surprise. However. I argue that the decision was more a gambit for political gain than a sincere reevaluation of the scope of presidential war powers. Moreover Obama's ploy reveals a larger truth about American politics: that Congress often retains considerable influence over military affairs through informal means. An original survey experiment shows that seeking authorization can bolster support for the president and his foreign policies, particularly if the decision is backed by congressional leaders. More importantly, authorization votes may pay political dividends years later by muting congressional criticism of presidential policies. A wealth of data from previous interventions in Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Lebanon suggests that members of both parties who voted to authorize the use of force are much less willing in the future to vote to curtail it or criticize it publicly than are their co-partisan peers who did not vote for an authorization., When President Barack Obama stepped into the Rose Garden to address the American people on August 31, 2013, his words caught many by surprise. The announcement of the policy decision [...]

As an essential element of republican government, Congress possesses the power of the purse. It uses that authority to control presidents and executive agencies. From the start, however, there has always been tension between the two elected branches, with presidents insisting on exercising control over departments and agencies. A major collision occurred during the I970s, when President Nixon claimed constitutional authority to refuse to spend appropriated funds (the impoundment dispute). He lost that battle in Congress and in the courts. Other issues include covert spending, Gramm-Rudman, Iran-Contra, item vetoes, legislative vetoes, and efforts in recent decades to control the national debt. (2), When the framers drafted and debated the Constitution, the powers over war and spending were considered essential to legislative prerogatives and republican government. Much of the war power has drifted [...]

In this article, we examine the linkage between presidential policy proposal messages and legislative success. Employing a data set on presidential legislative proposals that covers the years 1949-2010, we find that politics matters less than policy. Purely political messages that reference the electoral logic of mandates or appeal to a sense of bipartisanship appear to have no impact on presidential legislative success, nor does policy signaling, though highlighting the role of agency-based policy experts in crafting legislation does. From these results, we conclude that although the way presidents communicate their messages to Congress represents an important component of presidential-legislative relations, it is instead the perceived quality of the legislation that more strongly shapes congressional support of presidential policy efforts., Three days after his historic inauguration, Barack Obama communicated the following message to then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and other Republican congressional leaders on Capitol Hill: 'I won' (Calmes and [...]

This article tests two models of extremism versus moderation in presidential policy stances, a party activist theory and a congressional context theory. The party activist theory argues that, due to the electoral and nomination reforms of the mid-1970s, party activists became increasingly important and powerful in their parties. As activists tend to be more policy extreme than rank-and-file voters, and grew more extreme over the past several decades, this theory predicts presidents will also be more policy extreme in the postreform than the prereform era. The congressional context theory focuses on divided government and polarization. It argues that policy-minded presidents must moderate their policy positions during divided government because they need support from the opposition party. However, polarization erects barriers and disincentives for presidential moderation, offsetting the moderating tendencies of divided government. Using data on presidential policy positions from the 1950s through the early 2000s, I test both theories, finding support for the congressional context but not the party activist theory., For several decades the American political system has been polarizing along partisan, ideological, and issue lines at both the mass and elite levels. One implication of polarization is the disappearance [...]

This article tests two competing explanations of presidential vetoes--sequential veto bargaining (SVB) and blame game politics. According to the SVB model, vetoes are the result of uncertainty about the president's true preferences on legislation. According to the blame game model, vetoes result because Congress deliberately passes bills the president will veto as a means of communicating relative positions to outside audiences. This article implements a test of whether a veto was expected at the time a bill achieved final passage, reasoning that if a bill was seen as sure to be vetoed at the time of passage, the veto could not be the product of SVB. The evidence points toward blame game politics as a far more important cause of vetoes than SVB., Until recently there has been little scholarly consideration of why presidential vetoes occur, perhaps because the answer seemed obvious. Vetoes occur, one might reasonably conclude, because Congress passes bills the [...]

Abstract: This paper (1) examines the debate over the categorization of the Russian political system as 'semi-presidential' (as many, especially comparativists, argue) or 'super-presidential' (as perhaps the majority of Russian [...]

Congress's problematic place in contemporary separation of powers arrangements is revealed in its cycles of ambivalence. First, Congress suppresses its traditional legislative processes or delegates power to the executive branch or an independent commission, arguing that its deliberative and representative norms should not flourish at the expense of the 'national interest.' Second, after the delegated power becomes controversial or expires, members express implied or explicit regret about the loss of power in myriad ways, such as new bills to curtail or delay the delegated powers, criticism of policy outcomes in oversight hearings, and foot dragging on new executive requests for additional resources. Third, at the next opportunity to recalibrate power on the policy, Congress demurs again and delegation is renewed. Variations on the cycle of ambivalence span decades of policy on military base closures, trade, war, and appropriations, all of which saw dramatic new iterations during the George W. Bush era., Despite my misgivings, I have acquiesced in some of the administration's proposals [on the Patriot Act] because it is important to preserve national unity in this time of national crisis [...]

The article examines some of the problems of the executive-driven system of competition reinforcement from a public law perspective in the U.K.

The parliamentary decline thesis, which overstates the dominance of the executive, is examined with particular reference to Australia and New Zealand. The existence of a reforming parliament in UK during 2001-2005 in which an executive with a majority of 166 was forced to acquiesce in the introduction of a raft of reform measures in the House of Commons, UK, that were designed to shift the balance of power is suggested by drawing upon an audit of parliamentary modernization in Britain since the election of New Labor in 1997.

IT IS HARD TO FIND A NEWS ARTICLE ON Congress these days in which the word 'gridlock' does not figure prominently. After months of tense negotiations, Congress and President Barack [...]

The role of party politics and procedural factors in the executive's loss of legislative contol in Poland is illustrated. Relying on partisan controls by the executive becomes ineffective to shield bills from amendments when party discipline and coalition cooperation are in short supply as shown by the analysis of 300 bills.