President's Party Research Articles

Analysis of the evolution of environmental laws in Puerto Rico (1897–2021): A new classification system, trends, and political influences

This paper aims to present a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of environmental law in Puerto Rico from 1897 to 2021. The study identifies significant legislative developments, with a surge in federal and local laws post-1960, correlating with heightened environmental awareness. Political dynamics, notably party affiliations, significantly influence the level of legal protection afforded to the environment. A new classification system is introduced to analyze laws based on ecosystem and resource protection. Distinct periods of legislative activity are identified, with federal laws predominant from 1960 to 1990 and state laws from 1990 to 2021, revealing a unique pattern of legislative "pulses." Federal laws primarily address coastal ecosystems and pollution mitigation, while state laws focus on land ecosystems, reserves, and resource management. The study establishes a statistically significant correlation between the passage of time and the number of enacted laws, indicating an upward trend in environmental legislation. Additionally, it highlights the impact of political parties on lawmaking, with variations in legislative output observed under different party control scenarios. The study found that the legislative output in both the US and Puerto Rico was affected by party control. Specifically, when the Republican Party or the local Popular Democratic Party controls the House of Representatives or the Senate, the output of environmental legislation decreases. On the other hand, the study suggests that the US President's party identity has a lesser effect on enacting environmental laws. The study underscores the intricate relationship between politics and environmental policy, emphasizing the significance of political dynamics in shaping environmental law. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers, environmentalists, and stakeholders, aiding in developing more effective strategies for sustainable development and conservation in Puerto Rico. Recommendations include utilizing the comprehensive table of environmental regulations to detect agency overlaps and investigate the correlation between legal protection and ecosystem health.

The role of Macrosocial Structures, Political Institutions, and Elites in the Process of Autocratization in the 21st Century

Objective: To explore the causal factors of democratic decline in Ecuador during the period 1996-2019, with a focus from 2007 onwards, paying attention to the levels of social reality: structures, institutions, and political actors. Methods: Based on the political sociology approach, the multivariate techniques of Co-inertia and Statis were applied, using three tables with sets of variables from each level of social reality. Their joint variance was analyzed. The observation units were each year of democratic regime governance, aggregated into the country-year unit. Results: Both Co-inertia and Statis give greater explanatory weight to the variables of political actors in the process of democratic decline, distinguishing three sets of variables that explain three different government periods of the decline. Discussion: The electoral variety of democracy contradicts the egalitarian variety in the Ecuadorian case. Statis has a greater capacity to represent the variance of the variable tables. Conclusions: Statis and Co-inertia highlight the influence of actors. There is a critical juncture in 2007-2008 related to electoral democratic decline and an increase in egalitarian variety. Radical parliamentary elites and most of the president's party influence the decline, while the radicalism of parliamentary elites is related to an increase in equality and the Human Development Index, especially in 2009-2012.

Information and Confrontation in Legislative Oversight

Committees can use oversight hearings to collect and communicate the information Congress needs to oversee the bureaucracy, but many worry that members instead focus on scoring political points by lambasting witnesses. We leverage the collective judgment of congressional staff to measure how exchanges between legislators and witnesses vary on two separable dimensions: information and confrontation. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that confrontation crowds out information, we show that members of the president's party engage in less confrontational oversight and reveal no more or less information than their peers.

Divert when it does not hurt: The initiation of economic sanctions by US presidents from 1989 to 2015

AbstractA dominant argument in the literature is that leaders tend to initiate military disputes in periods plagued by economic distress. This article revisits the diversionary theory and adapts it to the use of economic sanctions in the United States, contending that their use follows a similar diversionary logic. Using a novel dataset on US sanctions from 1989 to 2015, I find that presidents are more likely to use sanctions when unemployment is high and the president's party power in Congress is weak. I show that when doing so presidents opt for sanctions that inflict little harm on the US economy.

Radicalization and the Origins of Populist Narratives about the Courts: The Argentinian Case, 2007–2015

In Latin America, presidents from different ideological backgrounds have systematically attacked the judiciary in order to implement their preferred public policies. In many cases, the leaders who control the executive branch have shown an early normative opposition to the power of courts to engage in the process of judicial review. For this article, I conducted a case study of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 under President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner that showed a different pattern and dynamic. After judges started to block public policies, she challenged the conception that liberal democracies require an independent judiciary with the constitutional ability to limit the scope of action of the executive and legislative branches. This view challenged the traditional liberal-democratic conception of the judiciary as a counter-majoritarian branch. The presidential party characterized judges as an aristocratic caste who ruled against the popular will in order to protect corporations’ economic interests. Consequently, the president proposed a “democratized judiciary” in which judges rule following the “people’s will,” which meant whatever the president elected by a circumstantial electoral majority decided.

CAN THE «VERTICAL» GIVE WAY TO THE «HORIZONTAL»?

The dualistic parliamentary-presidential character of the political regime of the Fifth Republic in France is analyzed, which is characterized by the broad powers of the president and the lack of a balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government. The election cycle of 2022 has changed the configuration of the political space, the role of political parties © Лапина Наталия Юрьевна – д.полит.н., г.н.с., и.о. зав. Отделом глобальных проблем ИНИОН РАН. Научно-аналитический вестник ИЕ РАН, 2022, №6 Наталия Лапина Научно-аналитический вестник ИЕ РАН, 2022, №6 166 and Parliament has increased, the presidential party did not receive a parliamentary majority and had to look for situational partners when voting bills. The systemic parties were completely pushed to the periphery of political life and a three-pole political space was formed, in which radical opposition parties operate along with the presidential party «Renaissance». In the new situation, the authorities are facing an acute question about the methods of state management.

The calming effects of conflict: The impact of partisan conflict on market volatility

In recent decades, an increasing divide in political ideologies between Republicans and Democrats has had a notable impact on financial markets. In this paper, we investigate the effect of political conflict, as measured by the partisan conflict index (PCI), on both market and industry-level volatility. We find that PCI has a significant negative impact on market volatility, robust to different regression models. We provide evidence that such impact is not driven by dramatic political events, namely wars and presidential elections, or by presidential party. When controlling for market cycles, we show that PCI reduces volatility during expansionary periods but increases volatility during recessions. Furthermore, at the industry level, we find that PCI decreases volatility overall. We also find that PCI decreases the volatility of politically-sensitive industries significantly more that it does with other industries. These results can inform government policy makers, analysts, investors, and academics alike.

When do different systems of government lead to similar power-sharing? The case of government formation

AbstractRecent studies provide evidence that the absence of a no-confidence procedure in presidential systems is crucial for understanding why the allocation of portfolios does not follow the same pattern in both parliamentary and presidential democracies. In this study, I argue that distinctions within presidential systems must be used to explain the substantial variation in the allocation of portfolios to presidential parties. I theorize that when the president is more dependent upon the legislature to make and enact policies, the balance of power in presidential cabinets is more likely to reflect the balance of power in the legislature. In this case, the presidential cabinet can resemble the proportional cabinets usually formed in parliamentary systems. With new data from 20 presidential democracies worldwide spanning more than 70 years, the results support the expectation of a greater formateur's advantage when presidents have greater institutionally-granted powers to influence the policy agenda in the legislature.

Presidential firepower: The effect of the presidential party on gun ownership, 1980–2018

AbstractObjectiveUsing theories of group threat and research on the political dynamics of gun ownership, this article examines two research questions: To what extent does the political affiliation of the president of the United States shape gun ownership? Moreover, how does the president of the United States’ political affiliation intersect with individuals’ political alignments to impact gun ownership patterns?MethodsThis study utilizes repeated cross‐sectional data from the General Social Survey (1980–2018). Specifically, it uses logistic regression to examine the intersection of the political affiliation of the U.S. president in a given survey year and respondents’ individual political identities.ResultsAlthough there is no independent effect of the president's political affiliation on gun ownership, the results indicate there is an increase in reported gun ownership among Republicans when a Democrat was in office. A similar increase is observed for Democrats when a Republican is in office.ConclusionThese results demonstrate the linked macro–micro dynamics of gun ownership, specifically for political contexts.

Wpływ zmian w systemie wyborczym w 2018 r. na pozycję polityczną partii prezydenckich w gminach powyżej 20.000 mieszkańców

The aim of the paper is to assess the impact of changes introduced in 2018 to the electoral system used in elections of the councils of municipals over 20,000 inhabitants on the political position of the parties backing selected mayors and presidents of cities. This research perspective is justified by the special role of these groups resulting from the system of the commune, in particular the method of election and irrevocability of the executive, that is forced to try to gain control over the decision-making process in the council. The study used the Shapley-Shubik strength index as that reflects the actual strength of a political party in a collegiate body better than the number of seats or participation in a mandate set. The results of the survey confirmed that the analyzed change weakened the position of the presidential parties in most of the analyzed aspects.

Political Implication of Presidential System Practice in The Jokowi-JK Government

This study focuses on the political implications of the presidential system practice in the Jokowi-JK government. Constitutionally, the Indonesian government system adheres to a presidential system. However, there is a system confusion in practice that causes the President's role and position as head of government to be not optimal because his policies are often criticized and even intervened by the DPR. The purpose of this study is to analyze the political implications of the presidential system practice run by Jokowi-JK, using a case study approach and analyzing primary and secondary data. The specification of the research is analytical descriptive with qualitative method. The theories used include presidential theory, party system, coalition, and leadership theory. The study results show that the presidential-parliamentary-style system run by Jokowi-JK has implications for less than optimal decision-making by the President in the preparation of the cabinet and disruption of relations with parliament.

Party does not matter: Unified government and midterm elections

AbstractObjectiveThis article seeks to understand the effect unified government has on seat loss in midterm elections.MethodsUsing data from the 1950 to 2018 midterm elections, I use Ordinary Least Squares regression models to determine the effect of unified government on seat loss.ResultsI find that unified government increases the number of seats a president's party loses during a midterm election. In addition, unified government reduces the number of seats saved by presidential approval and increases surge and decline effects.ConclusionUnified government explains why Democrats have traditionally performed worse during midterm elections. The results also indicate that rather than a surge and decline, midterm elections are a counter‐surge to the surge in support the president's party receives in the previous presidential election.

Us Presidential Party Switches are Mirrored in Global Maternal Mortality

Us Presidential Party Switches are Mirrored in Global Maternal Mortality

Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts

ABSTRACTPartisan perception affects the actions of professionals in the financial sector. Linking credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that analysts not affiliated with the U.S. president's party downward‐adjust corporate credit ratings more frequently. Since we compare analysts with different party affiliations covering the same firm in the same quarter, differences in firm fundamentals cannot explain the results. We also find a sharp divergence in the rating actions of Democratic and Republican analysts around the 2016 presidential election. Our results show that analysts' partisan perception has price effects and may influence firms' investment policies.

The Political Realignment of Health: How Partisan Power Shaped Infant Health in the United States, 1915-2017.

The US two-party system was transformed in the 1960s when the Democratic Party abandoned its Jim Crow protectionism to incorporate the policy agenda fostered by the civil rights movement, and the Republican Party redirected its platform toward socioeconomic and racial conservatism. The authors argue that the policy agendas promoted by the two parties through presidents and state legislatures codify a racially patterned access to resources and power detrimental to the health of all. To test the hypothesis that fluctuations in overall and race-specific infant mortality rates (IMRs) shift between the parties in power before and after the political realignment (PR), the authors apply panel data analysis methods to state-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the period 1915 through 2017. Net of trend, overall, and race-specific IMRs were not statistically different between presidential parties before the PR. This pattern, however, changed after the PR, with Republican administrations consistently underperforming Democratic ones. Net of trend, non-Southern state legislatures controlled by Republicans underperform Democratic ones in overall and racial IMRs in both periods.

Presidential power and stock returns

AbstractRecent studies highlight the positive effect of political connections on firm performance and stock returns. This paper shows that the positive effect of political connections on stock returns becomes substantially weaker in the weak presidency period, defined as the last 2 years before presidential party change or period of low job approval ratings. We consider two hypotheses—political interconnectedness and political risk—and find that both hypotheses are important in explaining the weak presidency effect on stock returns, political benefits, and research and development and capital expenditure. There is a trade‐off between direct political investment and passive political alignment. Firms with direct political investment tend to hedge political risk so that they can run their real side investment on their own schedule. Consistent with this story, we find that the weak presidency effect is more pronounced for small firms that lack the resources for direct political investment.

Occupying Paulista: Housing activism, the new right and the politics of public space during the Brazilian crisis

Brazilian society has frequently been described as polarized during the country’s recent political and economic crisis. In 2018, a wave of opposition to the centre-left Workers’ Party culminated in the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist who portrays the political left as a malevolent force in Brazilian society. In this paper I explore this polarization through drawing on ethnographic research with the Homeless Workers’ Movement ( Movimento de Trablhadores Sem-Teto, MTST), a large urban social movement that develops settlements on underutilized land in the city, and a prominent civil society opponent of Bolsonaro. More specifically, I examine a key site of socio-spatial tension in São Paulo, Paulista Avenue, as a new political right came to predominate on the city’s main thoroughfare during the campaign to impeach the Workers’ Party President, Dilma Rousseff. I show how the perceived intolerance of the mobilized right helped to establish new normative codes that regulated the political symbolism which could be displayed in public spaces. Lastly, I consider how the vilification of the MTST in particular and the political left in general by the new right is embedded in broader structures of stigmatization.

ZIMBABWE: THE ETHNICISATION OF ZANU AND THE DOWNFALL OF NDABANINGI SITHOLE (1963-2000)

"This article is an exposition of the transformation of ZANU from being, primarily, a nationalist movement into an ethnic oriented party. Since its formation in 1963, ZANU was gripped by ethnicity, resulting in factions and contestations developing among party members. These contestations developed into open conflicts along tribal lines. The paper argues that ethnicity was so acute among ZANU party members to an extent that divisions were clearly drawn along the Shona sub-ethnic groups of Manyika (easterners), Karanga (southerners), and Zezuru (northerners). The competition for leadership positions and the fighting among members of these ethnic groups resulted in the death of some members of the party and the expulsion of others from the party. It is argued in the article that the persecution of Ndabaningi Sithole and his fallout as the ZANU president was a result of the ethnicisation of ZANU and the liberation struggle. The removal of Sithole as the party president and his replacement by Robert Mugabe exhibits these contestations among the Zezuru, Karanga and Manyika ethnic groups. We argue that the deposition of Sithole from ZANU in 1975 and his castigation as a “sell-out” and “tribalist” was a ploy by Robert Mugabe and other ZANU leaders to get rid of him and to replace him along ethnic grounds. The ethnic card was deployed to serve selfish political interests. It is these ethnic contestations and fighting which also brewed conflict and enmity between Mugabe in particular and Ndabaningi Sithole, among other factors. This hatred was clearly displayed later in the struggle for supremacy between Sithole’s new party, ZANU-Ndonga and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. It is stressed in the article that this enmity also culminated in the denial of a hero status to Sithole when he died in 2000. We also argue that the deposition of Sithole from ZANU is one of the reasons why the Ndau people of Chipinge always voted for him and not Robert Mugabe in elections. Keywords: Zimbabwe, Ethnicisation, Downfall, Contestations, ZANU, Hero status."

Economic distress and voting: evidence from the subprime mortgage crisis

AbstractWe use nationwide deed-level records on home foreclosures to examine the effects of economic distress on electoral outcomes and individual voter turnout. County-level difference-in-differences estimates show that counties that suffered larger increases in foreclosures did not punish or reward members of the incumbent president's party more than less affected counties. Linking the Ohio voter file to individual foreclosures, difference-in-differences estimates show that individuals whose homes were foreclosed on were less likely to turn out, rather than being mobilized. However, in 2016 counties more exposed to foreclosures supported Trump at substantially higher rates. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the effect of local economic distress on incumbent performance is generally close to zero and only becomes substantial in unusual circumstances.

President's Legislative Programs in the United States as a Non-monopoly and Non-commanding Power

The president's programs are not monopoly and excluding, rather competitive and open to the members of congress; not commanding and abiding by, rather persuading and being persuaded; not comprehensively dominating the whole process of the Congress, rather only leading the legislative process of the Congress. The president 's programs exit in the State of the Union Address mostly. The reasons include the Constitution of the United States, the president itself and the congress itself ext.. The president's programs are based on separation, checks & balance, are different from rights-reflecting legislative plans of England and China's autonomous legislative plans. China's autonomous legislative plans include three categories mandatory plans that must be completed when conditions are ripe, guiding plans that are ready to be completed as far as possible and researching plans that continue to be studied and considered according to circumstances. The president should struggle for his (or her) legislative programs to pass and is constraint of objective, subjective and externally environmental factors. Whether the president can successfully start the legislative programs of the Congress and whether each legislative project can pass through the legislative process of the Congress can be judged objectively by the president's public opinion support rate and party support rate, and subjectively by the president's subjective efforts, negotiation ability and persuasion ability, as well as the external environment when the president competes with the Congress, such as war or peace, economic situation, etc.