Congressional Influence Research Articles

Limitation Riders and Congressional Influence over Bureaucratic Policy Decisions

Limitation riders, which allow the U.S. Congress to forbid agencies from spending money for specific uses, enable congressional majorities to exert greater influence over bureaucratic policy decisions than is appreciated by research on policy making in the United States. I develop a theory of limitation riders, explaining why they lead to policy outcomes that are preferable to a majority of legislators compared to outcomes that would occur if this tool did not exist. I assess this perspective empirically by analyzing the volume of limitation riders reported in bills from 1993 to 2002 and all limitation riders forbidding regulatory actions from 1989 to 2009. In addition to supporting the conclusion that Congress possesses more leverage over agencies’ decisions than is currently appreciated, the findings have implications for advancing theories of delegation.

Congress, the Supreme Court, and Judicial Review: Testing a Constitutional Separation of Powers Model

RecentscholarshipsuggeststhattheU.S.SupremeCourtmightbeconstrainedbyCongressinconstitutionalcases.Wesuggest two potential paths to Congressional influence on the Court’s constitutional decisions: a rational-anticipation model, in which the Court moves away from its preferences in order to avoid being overruled, and an institutional-maintenance model, in which the Court protects itself against Congressional attacks to its institutional prerogatives by scaling back its striking of laws when the distance between the Court and Congress increases. We test these models by using Common Space Scores and the original roll-call votes to estimate support in the current Congress for the original legislation and the Court’s preferences over that legislation. We find that the Court does not appear to consider the likelihood of override in Constitutional cases, but it does back away from striking laws when it is ideologically distant from Congress.

Political Control of Independent Agencies: Evidence from the FCC

We use a unique and comprehensive data set, spanning 9385 orders and 36,787 individual Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioners’ votes over 35 years to examine the factors driving commissioner voting. Employing probit and logit choice models, we find (i) split government leads both to more dissenting as well as lower order output, suggesting congressional influence over the FCC; (ii) lame duck Presidential periods are correlated with higher order output; and, (iii) commissioners appear to use dissenting strategically to influence or signal judges reviewing FCC orders because dissenting increases with the percentage of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit appointed by a President of opposite party as the FCC Chair.

Ducking Trouble: Congressionally Induced Selection Bias in the Supreme Court's Agenda

Existing studies of congressional influence on Supreme Court decision making have largely failed to recognize the fact that the Court has a discretionary docket. We model the effects of congressional preferences on the certiorari decision and find strong evidence that the Court's constitutional agenda is systematically influenced by Congress. The Court's docket is significantly less likely to contain cases wherein there are large congressionally induced deviations between what the Court would like to do, and what it can do in its final rulings. This selection bias in the Court's docket can lead to considerable uncertainty in estimating the effects of congressional constraint on the Court's final decisions, including a failure to properly reject the null hypothesis of no constraint.

The Impact of FEMA Reorganization: Implications for Policy

Prior to 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was an independent agency with direct congressional oversight. But in the wake of the September 11th attacks, FEMA was integrated into the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This merger, which severed the congressional influence over FEMA's decision making, brought about changes in how FEMA allocates disaster-relief funds.This policy comment discusses the impact and implications of FEMA's move to DHS. Understanding how this merger affected the federal government's disaster-relief decision making is important when considering future decisions to reorganize existing government agencies.

Secretaries of Pork? A New Theory of Distributive Public Policy

Scholars have focused attention toward congressional influence over distributive grant allocations, but they have less frequently examined the extent to which administrative agencies play a role in that process. We present a new theory of ideology-contingent executive decision making within a multiple-principals framework to explain the geographic distribution of policy benefits. Our theory is novel in that it locates interbranch ideological conflict and confluence at the center of bureaus’ allocational strategies. Discretionary Department of Labor (DOL) grants and Department of Defense (DOD) contracts from 1991 to 2002 are examined to provide evidence that agencies deliver more grants to senators with proximate ideologies. To measure bureaucratic ideology, we generate comparable ideology estimates for cabinet secretaries, presidents, and members of the U.S. Senate via an item-response model. Our findings suggest that ideological congruence between senators and DOL or DOD is associated with significantly larger amounts of grants or contracts, respectively. These findings are important as they recast our understanding of distributive politics into ideological terms.

Independent Agencies and the Unitary Executive Debate: An Empirical Critique

The unitary executive theory - that the Constitution gives the President complete control over the executive branch - questions the constitutionality of independent agencies. The debate surrounding this theory involves competing policy arguments. Unitarians tend to see independent agencies as partisan tools of congressional aggrandizement which sap executive energy and diminish democratic accountability. Non-unitarians see independence as enabling professionalized bureaucratic decision-making or furthering deliberative democratic goals. We test these claims using the results from a unique, comprehensive database of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voting. We find neither lock-step partisanship or vise-like Chair (or proxy presidential) control. Decision making at the FCC occurs largely by consensus with unanimous orders constituting over 91% of the 8252 in our database. When predicting the likelihood to dissent, however, commissioner's individual tendency to dissent (as measured by examining conditional probabilities derived from logistic regressions) has a greater effect than party affiliation. We interpret this finding as showing that commissioners pursue individual agendas, not the President's or Congress's as an institution. The unitarians, therefore, underestimate the extent to which independent agencies frustrate democratic accountability. Most significant, micro-institutional features determine agency outcomes and mediate any congressional or executive influence. In particular, the way commissioners are chosen and the organizational structures in which they operate strongly affect partisanship, i.e., party-line voting. The FCC produced more partisan outcomes when, in the late 1990s, the commissioner nomination and confirmation process became more partisan. When the FCC changed in 1982 from a seven to five-commissioner body, there was a decrease in commissioners' tendency to dissent

Friends in High Places: Congressional Influence on the Bureaucracy in Chile

AbstractChile presents a paradox for legislative studies. In most comparative research on the political power of presidents and assemblies in Latin America, the Chilean presidency is considered one of the most powerful in the region. The country's congress is seen, accordingly, as weak and lacking influence over public policy. Such evaluations, however, tend to be based on constitutional and legal faculties (that is, formal powers), and they overlook the substantial influence exerted by the Chilean Congress through informal political channels. This article analyzes literature on informal politics that shows the substantial influence of Chile's Congress on public policy; and, for comparison, presents an empirical study that adds several details to current accounts of congressional influence on the bureaucracy in Chile and describes two mechanisms of congressional influence not contemplated by recent research.

Checking the Federal Courts: The Impact of Congressional Statutes on Judicial Behavior

This paper examines the struggle between the legislative and judicial branches by focusing specifically on congressional influences on the behavior of federal judges. We argue that Congress may constrain individual judicial behavior by passing statutes containing detailed language. To test this thesis we borrow from the bureaucratic politics literature to introduce and test a new measure of statutory constraint. Using data from the U.S. Courts of Appeals we find that appellate court behavior is constrained significantly by statutory language, although this constraint is asymmetric across ideology. We discover substantial differences between Democratic and Republican appointees both in terms of statutory constraint and ideological voting. The data indicate judges appointed by Democratic presidents are constrained by statutory language in criminal cases. Similarly, Republican appointees are constrained by statutes in civil rights cases. Yet, neither Democrats nor Republicans are constrained in economic cases.

Presidents, Congress, and the Use of Force

Scholars have long debated the relative influence of domestic and international factors on the presidential use of force. On one matter, however, consensus reigns: the U.S. Congress is presumed irrelevant. This presumption, we demonstrate, does not hold up to empirical scrutiny. Using a variety of measures and models, we show a clear connection between the partisan composition of Congress and the quarterly frequency of major uses of force between 1945 and 2000; we do not find any congressional influence, however, on minor uses of force. We recommend that the quantitative use-of-force literature in international relations begin to take seriously theories of domestic political institutions, partisanship, and interbranch relations that have been developed within American politics.We thank the Center for American Political Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for financial support; and Doug Kriner, Matthew Scherbarth, and Kevin Warnke for research assistance. David Canon, Matt Dickinson, Ben Fordham, David Lewis, and Alastair Smith provided helpful feedback. We also benefited from seminars at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, and Emory University. Two anonymous reviewers provided excellent feedback. Standard disclaimers apply.

Regulatory Regimes, Agency Actions, and the Conditional Nature of Congressional Influence

Political bureaucracies make the overwhelming majority of public policy decisions in the United States. To examine the extent to which these agency actions are responsive to the preferences of elected officials, in particular, Congress, I develop a spatial model of oversight. The most important insight of this theory is that agencies make policy decisions within givenregimesand may be constrained by the preferences of different political actors at different times. To test the theory, I collect and analyze data on the monitoring activities of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I find that under certain conditions, the FDA is responsive to the preferences of committees and floors in Congress, but under other conditions the agency can act autonomously.

The Political Economy of FEMA Disaster Payments

We find that presidential and congressional influences affect the rate of disaster declaration and the allocation of FEMA disaster expenditures across states. States politically important to the president have a higher rate of disaster declaration by the president, and disaster expenditures are higher in states having congressional representation on FEMA oversight committees. Election year impacts are also found. Our models predict that nearly half of all disaster relief is motivated politically rather than by need. The findings reject a purely altruistic model of FEMA assistance and question the relative effectiveness of government versus private disaster relief.

Determinants of presidents’ legislative support in the House, 1949–1995

This paper has several purposes. First, it illustrates the changing nature of research on presidential–congressional relations. In general, scholarship has moved away from viewing the president as the dominant actor in the relationship, toward one of congressional influence, and ultimately toward emphasizing more equal power sharing between the two institutions. Second, we discuss our use of the most widely used measures of such relationships, presidents’ legislative support and success and our rationale for choosing the former. Third, we introduce three broad environments of presidential–congressional relations in order to explain such support from what we call a multiple perspectives approach. We find that variables from each of the three environments are important in explaining presidential support in the House. Fourth, we control for policy areas using the two presidencies typology and observe significant differences in support by domestic and foreign policy. Our multivariate two stage least squares (2SLS) analysis explains considerable variance in support across all three models. Finally, we explicate how our approach improves our understanding of this important presidential–congressional interaction.

A Positive Political Model of Supreme Court Economic Decisions

1. Introduction A stark contrast exists between the widespread application of positive political economy models in the study of the executive and legislative branches of government and the relative dearth of such work on the judiciary. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely regarded as a totally independent body whose rulings are not influenced by political or other outside pressures. Indeed, the dominant political science model of Supreme Court decision making, the attitudinal model, argues that the rules and structures of the U.S. political system allow justices to vote sincerely without constraints from Congress and/or the president (Segal and Spaeth 1993). In contrast to this dominant view, several authors have begun to analyze Supreme Court decisions guided by the positive models of bureaucratic behavior that exist in both the economics and the political science literature. Toma (1991) finds that Congress signals its opinion of the Court's direction through budgetary allocations, and that budget changes have a significant effect on Court decisions. Her more recent work (Toma 1996) focuses on the role of the chief justice as an agent of Congress who reacts to budgetary signals to bring Court decisions in line with congressional preferences. Spiller and Gely (1992) find strong evidence of congressional influence over Court decisions in industrial labor relations cases. Caporale and Winter (1998) find support for the existence of both executive and congressional influence over Supreme Court decisions in criminal procedure cases. This paper investigates possible outside influences on Supreme Court decisions in economic cases. We find that Republican presidents and more conservative leadership of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are significantly correlated with more conservative Supreme Court economic decisions. In addition, we find that conservative decisions are positively correlated with the fraction of the Court appointed by Republican presidents. This provides strong support for a presidential of appointment channel of judicial influence. Also, we find that the lagged inflation rate significantly influences the direction of the Court's economic decisions. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of our results using an alternative measure of congressional ideology. 2. Theories of Supreme Court Behavior The Traditional Legal Model Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exercised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the Law. Chief Justice John Marshall, 18241 As recent legal analysts have noted, the vast bulk of legal scholarship and content of law school training largely rests on Justice Marshall's contention.2 Explicitly or implicitly, an assumption is made that court decisions are based centrally on reasoned arguments. This view, in which judges apply neutral principles and logical reasoning to the Constitution, prior precedents, or statutes in resolving cases is labeled the legal Perhaps the clearest proponent and strongest advocate of the traditional model was Christopher Columbus Langdell, the Harvard Law School's first dean.3 For the Langdellian judge, judicial decisions are based on logical reasoning or reasoning by example. Primary importance is placed on textual interpretation and legal precedent. From this framework, decisions can be viewed as inevitable conclusions based on the analysis of earlier cases. Clearly, this model left no room for any expression of judicial individuality or personal ideology. The Attitudinal Model In contrast to the formalism of the traditional model, political scientists have developed an alternative theory of Supreme Court (and other judicial) decision making: the attitudinal model. …

Congressional Dominance and the International Trade Commission

This study examines the unfair trade decisions of the InternationalTrade Commission (ITC) and how they have been affected by Congress.It begins by identifying the means Congress can use to influenceITC decisions and then estimates both the extent to which thesemeans have been used and the extent to which they have shaped theITC's behavior. The study reaches two conclusions. First, Congresshas tried to shape the ITC's behavior, but it has not tried tomicromanage this behavior. Second, while the ITC's behavior hasbeen influenced by Congress, congressional influence is not asimportant as other factors, such as statutory criteria.

Politicians, deficits, and monetary policy in the U.S. revisited

This paper reconsiders the evidence regarding the existence of executive and congressional influences on monetary policy in the U.S. Results regarding the source of the federal deficit (cyclical or structural) provide evidence that structural deficits occurring under Democratic presidential administrations have a significant impact on money growth rates, but those occurring under their Republican counterparts may not. Although the evidence regarding cyclical deficits is statistically weaker, their more limited influence on monetary growth rates appears to be similar regardless of whether they occur under Democratic or Republican presidents. This contrasts with previous research which suggests that cyclical deficits influence monetary growth rates under Democratic administrations while structural deficits generated a similar monetary response regardless of which party held the presidency.

The War Powers Resolution: A Rationale for Congressional Inaction

Nearly three decades ago Congress overturned a veto by President Nixon and passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Supporters of the resolution took heart that Congress was, at last, challenging the increasingly unilateral exercise of presidential power in matters of war and peace. The most enthusiastic proponents of the resolution believed that it would reinvigorate a legislative branch which, through a half-century of depression, world war, and nuclear anxiety, had gradually ceded many of its constitutional prerogatives to an executive branch willing to take them on as its own. The Vietnam War had marked the nadir of congressional influence in foreign affairs. While few blamed Congress directly for involving the nation in that war, the conflict had highlighted the growing irrelevance of the first branch of government in foreign policy matters. The War Powers Resolution (also commonly called the War Powers Act) was supposed to change all that. Congress would no longer be satisfied with nipping at the heel s of the leviathan as it strode uninterrupted toward an era of the imperial presidency. It would stand as a full constitutional partner of the President and presumably ensure that future military interventions, because of the shared institutional responsibility, would be more rare, more consensual, and therefore more legitimate. After almost 30 years and dozens of instances involving the use of the US military in hostile settings, how has the War Powers Resolution fared as way to bring about collective judgment and renew the participation of Congress in matters of military conflict? Have the requirements and mechanisms of the resolution fulfilled the intent of the Constitution? What results have been brought about by this decisionmaking framework? And were these the intended results? The four requirements of the War Powers Resolution were intended to promote collective judgment when the nation was faced with issues of war or potential hostilities and to provide procedural mechanisms that would be activated in case of presidential noncompliance. [1] The resolution envisioned a sequence of events when military action was contemplated. First, a requirement for the President to consult with Congress would alert the latter that force had been used or was expected in a given context. Second, the specific reasons for the action and the justifications for it were to be provided to Congress through a report from the President. Whenever possible, the President was to make this report within 48 hours of taking any action or making a tactical decision, thus starting the clock for Congress. [2] Third, Congress would have 60 days to debate the President's action and decide on its legitimacy and legality. However, if Congress did not make any decisions or take action--even, in fact, if Congress ignor ed the issue for two months--there were still to be consequences. If no express authorization of presidential action were forthcoming, the military forces would have to be withdrawn at the end of 60 days, though the President might submit a request for a 30-day extension of this deadline. Fourth, Congress retained the power, through the passage of a concurrent resolution, to direct the President to remove military forces at any time during the 60-day period. [3] Using the text of the War Powers Resolution and three important military engagements in the 1980s and 1990s, this article will evaluate the following three areas of concern: communication, and its implications for conducting policy involving the use of force; timing, both as it touches domestic debate and foreign actions; and the representative mandate of Congress, which should be at the core of any evaluation of the law. The Persian Gulf, 1987: Procedural Mechanisms and Stubborn Realities Looking at the history that preceded the passage of the War Powers Resolution and the intent of its framers, the communication requirement of consultation and reporting envisions only two parties: Congress and the President. …

Beyond Self-Interest: Educational Interest Groups and Congressional Influence

Most research on interest groups has focused on theoretical perspectives concerning why members join these groups. Missing from this work is any connection between theories of organizational maintenance (i.e., how an organization forms) and research on influence activity (i.e., what an organization does).This article argues that a connection exists between organizational maintenance and the participation of their members in the organization's influence activities. Relying on a two-stage study of educational interest groups and the U.S. Congress, this article maintains that rational choice theories of interest group maintenance cannot account for the presence and perseverance of Washington-based education interest groups. A theory acknowledging levels of ideological commitment may be a more appropriate model for understanding educational interest groups at the national level.

Theodore Roosevelt, Congress, and the Military: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the Early Twentieth Century

Someone should kick ... Rosevelt [sic], complained one naval officer about the assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 (Davis 1898). Hunter Davis disliked Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to end the squabbling over status between the navy's line and engineering officers in the late nineteenth century. Davis's protest foreshadowed the sentiments of many officers toward Theodore Roosevelt, once he became their commander in in September 1901. Although Roosevelt was one of the best friends of the military services ever to reside in the White House, civil-military relations were not always harmonious during his presidency. In fact, he presided during a period of notable stress, uncertainty, and adjustment in civil-military affairs, and his actions--and sometimes inaction--prompted considerable debate and tension.(1) A confluence of factors at the turn of the twentieth century made Roosevelt's presidency, and those of his immediate successors, a time that tested old boundaries and established new ones in civil-military affairs. The period itself, the Progressive Era, brought transition and adjustment in American life. Reformers attacked the myriad problems associated with urbanization and industrialization; a new, post-Civil War generation assumed the mantle of political leadership; and the United States solidified its newly asserted status as a great power and protector of a modest overseas empire. During this period of rapid change, stress was inevitable, and military affairs were not immune. Tensions in military matters became especially great around the turn of the twentieth century because four elements that went straight to the heart of civil-military relations managed to converge at the same time. The new brand of overseas expansionism in American foreign policy generated an emotional political debate and questions about resources and missions for the military services. In addition, jealousy over constitutional prerogatives flared as the executive branch under Roosevelt challenged congressional influence over the organization of the War and Navy Departments and the development of military policies. Officers, for their part, split into alliances (often self-serving) with members of the executive or legislative branches. At the same time, a generational shift in both people and values complicated the picture and divided loyalties. Those Americans raised in a largely preindustrial, preurban nation--and forged into a distinct generation by the fires of the Civil War--were gradually making way for a new crop of leaders, although without a complete surrender of the older values that they represented. Finally, the press added an extra dimension to the traditional civil-military troika of president, Congress, and uniformed military in the form of mass circulation newspapers and national magazines. Participants in civil-military disputes could sometimes find a ready ally in the press, or sometimes they found it to be an independent agent that, through the force of public opinion, brought new emphasis to the civil side in civil-military relations. Theodore Roosevelt represented the principal axis around which civil-military relations turned in the first decade of the twentieth century. He assumed several roles, some official and others unofficial, that frequently made him the focus of civil-military debates. Officially, Roosevelt served, of course, as commander in and functioned, as well, as diplomat, but he also behaved as what could best be termed chief dilettante, for he frequently dabbled in detailed aspects of military technology, training, planning, and operations (Oyos 1993). His expansive view of executive authority and his talent at generating publicity also contributed to his active role in remolding the civil-military architecture. All in all, across the range of military affairs, Roosevelt helped define debates, fuel controversies, solve problems, and focus expectations, although his ideas sometimes created more difficulties and disappointment than resolution and satisfaction. …

‘At least 2001’: US security policy and exit strategy in Bosnia

This article describes and analyzes the United States’ security conduct in Bosnia since the Dayton Accords of November 1995, and its involvement in the multilateral conflict resolution and peacebuilding effort. From this analysis, the conclusion is that it will be difficult for the US to exit from its engagement in Bosnia. Various explanations are offered for the formulation of American policy: norms and values, alliance politics and the role of NATO, bureaucratic and congressional influence, as well as presidential leadership. The most important factor remains affirmation of US leadership to make the peacebuilding mission in Bosnia a successful one.