Executive Veto Research Articles

Analyzing arguments in executive veto messages

AbstractThe executive veto is one of the most important instruments of presidential power within the legislative arena. Because of constitutional requirements, every regular veto and many pocket vetoes are accompanied by a short letter to Congress from the president describing—often in detail—the reasoning behind the decision to veto. As such, these messages form a unique window into interbranch and partisan conflict over time. While analyses have been conducted on the broad patterns of veto use, questions remain concerning presidential motivations for vetoing as well as how these motivations have evolved over time along with changing political institutions. Using a data set of approximately 2000 unique veto messages from the first in 1792 to the last of President Trump's vetoes in 2021, we examine the content of veto messages to uncover the number and kind of arguments used by presidents when addressing Congress over vetoed legislation. Our analysis uncovers significant variation, with the evolution of arguments within veto messages mirroring broader political trends.

Public attitudes toward presidential veto powers

Previous research on presidential powers has demonstrated predictable variation in the level of support for presidential usage of those powers. However, much of this work has focused solely on unilateral powers. Here, we seek to further explore public attitudes towards constitutionally prescribed powers—namely that of the executive veto. Using original survey data, we find that public support of the president’s use of the veto is dependent on respondent partisanship as well as approval of both the president and Congress. Overall, our findings provide some support for previous research on the topic, but also offer new insights. First, we find a higher baseline level of support for presidential powers. Second, our results indicate that the president’s copartisans are more supportive of the veto even after controlling for presidential and congressional approval.

Idaho: Carefully and Cautiously Progressing

Author(s): Fredericksen, Elizabeth D.; Riggins, John | Abstract: In Idaho, the FY18 budget drew upon the usual agency requests, executive recommendation,and legislative appropriation activities. However, less business-as-usual was the judicial branchinvolvement due to the post-sine die transmittal, and subsequent veto, of a bill to eliminate thesales tax on food. Citing the implications for General Fund revenue and fiscal challenges fromextreme weather conditions in early 2017, Governor Otter vetoed the sales tax repeal sparking alegal challenge from legislators. The Idaho Supreme Court upheld the executive veto in a 4‒1decision.The robust individual income and sales tax collections reported at close of FY17 exceededthe projections used to develop the FY18 budget, prompting automatic transfers to Idaho’s “savingsaccounts.” This outcome has great significance for the FY18 budget and will almost certainlyflavor anticipated FY19 budget discussions in the 2018 legislative session due to residual frustrationover tax reforms passed, not passed, and vetoed from the 2017 session.In terms of FY18, the budget balanced without infusion from Idaho’s savings funds, basicservices continued, and modest progress continued in education, economic development, andphysical and technology infrastructure. However, the FY18 budget did not reflect important issuesincluding needed regulatory action, tax, and rate reforms intended to catalyze economic development,tax repeals advocated by certain constituencies, medical care access and affordability,and sustainable state capacity. As most of these have long-term budget implications, state government(elected and appointed) will not be able to avoid action indefinitely.

Fixing Hollingsworth: Standing in Initiative Cases

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal filed by the “Official Proponents” of California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion held that initiative sponsors lack Article III standing to defend their ballot measures even when state officials refuse to defend against constitutional challenges. As a result, Hollingsworth provides state officers with the ability to overrule laws that were intended to bypass the government establishment -- in effect, an veto of popularly-enacted initiatives.The article examines this new veto in depth. It places Hollingsworth in context, discussing the initiative process in California, and the history of the federal lawsuit challenging Proposition 8.An in-depth discussion of Hollingsworth follows. The particular issue presented by the appellants, their claim to standing based on their status as representatives of the People of California, and the Court's treatment of that issue, is scrutinized. This includes the Court's rejection of California law on the legal status of initiative proponents, and its adoption of the Restatement of Agency as the basis for Article III standing. After concluding that Hollingsworth establishes an veto over the initiative process, the article proceeds to examine the potential effect of this in California and the thirty-six other “direct democracy” states. Finally, the authors present a series of fixes to Hollingsworth’s executive veto. These could assure defense of initiatives in the future, protecting them from the fate that Proposition 8 suffered in Hollingsworth.

Veto Override Requirements and Executive Success

Presidential systems around the world vary in the proportion of legislators required to override an executive veto. We argue that the nature of the override provision affects executive influence in policymaking; as the proportion needed to override a veto increases, so should executive influence. We leverage varying override requirements across the US states to conduct a comparative study of executive influence over budgetary outcomes. Using governors’ budget requests and enacted appropriations for fiscal years 1987–2011, we provide evidence that state legislatures better accommodate budgetary requests in states with higher override requirements. Further, governors whose preferences are extreme relative to the legislature are more likely to have their budgetary goals met in states with a higher veto threshold.

Collaborative silence and some unguided prerogative utterances of Nigerian leaders

This essay attempts to demystify the silence and non-prosecution syndrome surrounding unguided prerogative utterances of Nigerian leaders as a contemporary culture, which has continued to threaten the unity and stability of the country. In doing this, the silence and withdrawal of key Nigerian agencies, such as; the judiciary, the legislature, the anti-graft agencies and civil society groups, are highlighted to make the point clear. The essay philosophically discusses the reckless prerogative utterances of Nigerian leaders, while contending that certain aspects of Nigeria’s political culture, such as; political immunity, recklessness of leaders, extra-constitutionality of political powers, abuse of executive veto, ‘sacred cows’ syndrome and the hatred of Nigerian leaders for the common man; must undergo reforms, if prerogative utterances of leaders must be prevented from destroying completely existing political institutions in the country.Keywords: unguided, prerogative, utterances, Nigerian Leaders, judiciary, legislature, anti-graft agencies, civil society groups

Black Spiders Weaving Webs: The Constitutional Implications of Executive Veto of Tribunal Determinations

In R (Evans) v Attorney General, the Supreme Court quashed the Attorney General's statutory veto of the Upper Tribunal's original determination made under freedom of information legislation. The Upper Tribunal had held that so‐called ‘advocacy’ memos should be published after a full hearing on the merits. The Supreme Court split five to two, with the lead judgment of Lord Neuberger using constitutional rather than administrative language and focusing on the rule of law. This note raises four objections to the lead judgment. First, it argues that the Upper Tribunal was acting in an executive not judicial capacity and the veto was not therefore a breach of the rule of law. Secondly it suggests the veto clause is best understood as a variant Henry VIII clause. Thirdly, it suggests Lord Neuberger's judgment is founded on a paradox. Finally, it argues that the judgment undermines parliamentary sovereignty. Future implications are then considered.

Gubernatorial Veto Powers and the Size of Legislative Coalitions

Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find consistent evidence that the presence and strength of gubernatorial veto powers affect the lawmaking behavior of state legislatures. Our analysis shows how institutional provisions condition executives' ability to affect policy outcomes in separation‐of‐powers systems.

Pivotal Politics and Initiative Use in the American States

The direct initiative process, often referred to as a gun behind the door, provides an incentive for legislators to pass legislation more in line with voters’ wishes. Concomitantly, legislative procedures such as the filibuster and executive veto often impede the ability of the legislature to pass policies. We explore the tension between these two forces by incorporating legislative procedures and initiative proposal into a spatial model of the policymaking process. We find that the ability to propose initiatives sometimes breaks legislative gridlock, but that other times pivotal players may prefer the initiative outcome and therefore prevent the legislature from preempting a ballot measure. In particular, we show that initiative use increases with the distance between pivotal actors and the median voter. An empirical analysis of initiative use in the American states provides support for this prediction.

Executive Vetoes and Economic Reform Theory and Evidence from the History of American Labor Regulation

I analyze the role of legislative institutions in policy change, particularly the role of the veto power of political executives. I study situations characterized by two key features: First, there is a status quo in place that is considered undesirable by all major legislative players. Secondly, there is variation in the political institutions, in particular the strength of the veto power of the executive, and this matters for the ability of groups with different ideal outcomes to reach a compromise. I fi rst show theoretically that endowing a political executive (here a governor) with veto power may facilitate policy change. I then use state-level variation in the enactment of workers’ compensation laws in the US to empirically examine the model’s predictions. The empirical results support the prediction that a strong executive veto, in this setting, facilitates policy change.

The Paradox of the Veto in Mexico (1917-1997)

We report work in progress. Existing explanations of veto incidence do not seem to account for the case of classic Mexico. Proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies from 1917 to 1963 report that Mexican presidents returned at least 223 bills to Congress instead of signing them into law. This level of veto incidence is puzzling from numerous theoretical perspectives. For Mexicanists hardly any executive veto should have taken place after 1936, when iron discipline to the mandates of the president was consolidated with the end of the diarquia. For similar reasons, those who explain vetoes on the mistaken evaluations of members of Congress over presidential preferences have little bite on the explanation of Mexico’s vetoes: the president was the leader of the congressional party. Those who explain vetoes as attempts to publicize politicians’ positions in contrast with those of vetoing actors would need to take into account the fact that election politics was never undertaken by campaigning against the incumbent president.

Explaining Majoritarian Modification: The Politics of Electoral Reform in the United Kingdom and British Columbia

Drawing on recent research in the United Kingdom and the Canadian province of British Columbia, this article focuses on the politics of electoral reform:the strategic maneuvering by political elites to prevent and facilitate change. Through a comparative analysis of two highly majoritarian polities in which dominant executives have, since 1997, adopted contrasting reform trajectories, the article suggests that previous analyses of this topic have underemphasized the role of political agency and ideational change. In order to demonstrate this argument, the article develops and refines a process-based approach by embedding it within a framework that recognizes the interplay between context, agency, and structure. Not only does this approach deepen our understanding of executive veto points, majoritarian modification, and aversive constitutionalism, but it also sensitizes scholars to the role and power of political cultures and dominant ideologies.

Presidential Vetoes in the Early Republic: Changing Constitutional Norms or Electoral Reform?

Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars have long debated the origins and development of the executive veto in the early United States. Some scholars argue that the power was originally conceived as quite limited. These scholars argue that until Andrew Jackson used the veto against the recharter of the Bank of the United States, the veto was limited to unconstitutional or administratively unworkable legislation. Others argue that no such norms existed and that the veto was always understood as an important legislative power of the president and that early presidents used it as such. I argue that neither account provides an adequate explanation of the development and usage of the veto in the early republic. I claim that early veto usage was quite different, not because of constraining constitutional norms, but because the electoral conditions that generate equilibrium vetoes had yet to emerge.

Conserving the Constitution? The Conservative Party and Democratic Renewal

In 2008 David Cameron declared that the Conservative party was ‘ready for government’ and suggested that ‘the change we need is not just from Labour's old policies to our new policies… It's about a change from old politics to new politics’. This ‘new politics’ narrative is something of a cliché: British constitutional history reveals a regular pattern whereby opposition parties renege upon implementing far‐reaching constitutional and democratic reforms once they win power. It is in this context that this article draws upon documentary analysis and a number of interviews to examine the Conservative party's position on constitutional reform and democratic renewal. It concludes that although the Conservative party has spent the last decade decrying the ‘destruction’ of the constitution it has undertaken little detailed preparatory work in relation to how it might seek to alter the governance of Britain. As a result the research presented in this article provides a number of insights into elite politics, strategic game‐playing and executive veto capacities within a context of growing political disengagement from politics and falling levels of trust in politics.

How the Separation of Powers Doctrine Shaped the Executive

This Article examines the debates of the Founders over the separation of powers doctrine as it relates to the executive branch. After surveying the experience in the colonies and under the post-Revolutionary state constitutions, it analyzes the relevant issues at the Constitutional Convention. Rather than focusing on abstract discussions of political theory, the article examines specific decisions and controversies in which separation of powers was a concern. The Article offers a detailed recounting of those debates. At the Convention, separation of powers arose most prominently in the arguments over nine issues: choosing the Executive, permitting the Executive to stand for second term, removing the Executive, devising the Executive veto, requiring legislative advice and consent for executive appointments, authorizing the Executive to grant reprieves and pardons, and making the Vice President the President of the Senate.The Article demonstrates that much of the discussion centered on allocating power between the Legislative and Executive branches and thus really amounted to a struggle over defining the nascent office of the Executive. It thus offers the historical background for today's debates over separation of powers. For the Founders, separation of powers served not as a rigid rule, but as a functional guide, designed to help construct a working constitution with a workable executive branch.

Executive Vetoes as Electoral Stunts: A Model with Testable Predictions

The paper modi es Romer and Rosenthal's Agenda Setter Model to treat vetoes as deliberate position-taking exercises by elected offceholders, applying it to inter-branch negotiation in presidential systems. The model changes players' motivation, giving them preferences over the signals conveyed by their actions, in addition to standard preferences over policy (as Groseclose and McCarty 2001), while leaving information complete (unlike Cameron 2000). The model explains both veto and veto-override incidence, like Cameron, unlike Groseclose and McCarty. Analysis distinguishes executive stunts (vetoes triggering overrides) from assembly stunts (these do not). Ten hypotheses are derived, including some conforming with Cameron (more vetoes with divided government) and some not (more with proximal elections and with large parties able to override vetoes). Hypotheses do not necessitate ideal-point estimatesto so can be tested across a wide array of national and sub-national presidential systems.

The Incidence of Executive Vetoes in Comparative Perspective: The Case of American State Governments, 1979-1999

The paper examines the determinants of executive vetoes in a comparative environment (49 state governments) providing finer-grained evidence than extant studies about how and why vetoes happen. Results show that divided government and approaching elections have a positive effect on vetoes, even when controlling for the features of the veto, professionalization, and the economy. Additionally, parties with enough seats to override vetoes are systematically associated with greater veto incidence. This effect had been overlooked because veto-proof majorities, common in states and other countries, are rare at the national level. In divided state governments, between 6 and 10 additional vetoes per session are attributable to approaching elections, between 4 and 7 to veto-proof majorities. I discuss implications for our understanding of the causal mechanism of the veto.

STOP US BEFORE WE SPEND AGAIN: INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING

A distributive politics model establishes that the presence of exogenously enforceable spending limits reduces spending and that the effect of executive veto authority is contingent on whether spending is capped and whether the chief executive is a liberal or conservative. Surprisingly, when spending limits are in place, governments with conservative executives spend more than those with more liberal chief executives. Limits are welfare improving, as is the executive veto when it leads to the building of override coalitions. Using 32 years of US state budget data, this paper also establishes empirically that strict balanced budget rules constrain spending and also lead to less pronounced short‐term responses to fluctuations in a state's economy. Party variables like divided government and party control of state legislatures tend to have little or no direct effect, with political institutions and economic indicators explaining much of the variation in state spending.

Judicial Redistricting and the Article I State Legislature

Article I of the Constitution commits primary responsibility for the setting of time, place, and manner of congressional elections to the “legislature” of each state, a delegation mirrored in the presidential election context of Article II. Recently, questions have arisen about the meaning of this constitutional commitment, in Bush v. Gore’s presidential election context and in the controversy over the Mississippi congressional redistricting, which the Supreme Court is hearing this term in Branch v. Smith. Ultimately, the question is whether the term “legislature” inherently delegates these powers only to the actual state legislature itself, or refers more generally to the state’s legislative power, thus admitting of such mechanisms as executive veto, popular referendum, and equitable judicial intervention to fill legislative gaps. In answering this question, this Note examines the means used to define the term “legislature” in other constitutional provisions, and derives a test to evaluate the nature of the various constitutional delegations. This approach demonstrates that in the Article I context, any exercise of ex ante lawmaking would be valid, a finding that would legitimate judicial redistricting in the legislature’s stead.

Government Spending, Legislature Size, and the Executive Veto

Recent work on the political economy of fiscal policy has asked how budgetary institutions affect fiscal outcomes. But what determines the budgetary institutions? In this paper I consider one such institution: the executive veto. A simple theoretical framework predicts that jurisdictions with more political actors spending from a common pool of tax resources will choose to empower their executives. Using an econometric framework to identify the exogenous variation in the number of districts, I present evidence from a cross-section of local governments in the United States that jurisdictions with more electoral districts are likely to have executives with veto powers.