Christopher J. Deering

The Politics of Executive Orders: Legislative Constraints on Presidential Power

Conventional wisdom suggests that Presidents use executive orders, sometimes characterized as presidential legislation, when legislation is too difficult to pass (in the face of an opposition Congress, for example) or when executive departments or agencies tend to embrace their congressional patrons, rather than the White House. According to this model, executive orders are strategic instruments used by a President to circumvent the constitutionally prescribed policymaking process. Recently studies have found little systematic evidence that executive orders are used to circumvent a hostile Congress. We argue that strategic Presidents do use executive orders to circumvent a hostile Congress, but not if they are likely to be overtumed by Congress. In other words, the use of executive orders reflects both their ability to achieve and to maintain preferred changes to the policy status quo. We test this portrait of presidential decision-making by examining determinants of the annual variation in the number of executive orders issued during the post-World War II period.

Police Patrols and Fire Alarms: An Empirical Examination of the Legislative Preference for Oversight

Over the past several decades, the police patrol-fire alarm dichotomy, and corresponding logic that legislators generally prefer fire alarms to police patrols, has been widely circulated and debated. Despite this attention, researchers have devoted relatively little attention to (1) distinguishing these forms of oversight empirically and (2) verifying that legislators utilize fire alarms more regularly than police patrols. We take up these challenges by establishing a set of decision rules for coding hearings as either event-driven or routine, ongoing legislative activities. We then employ this empirical distinction as a means of appraising the relative prevalence of police patrols and fire alarms in the United States Congress, both as a general matter as well as across chambers, committees, political parties, and election cycles. Our central finding is that hearing activity is predominantly police-patrol in orientation. Although this result suggests that legislators do not have a systematic preference for fire alarms over police patrols, such a conclusion can be stated only in the context of hearings, an undeniably important form of oversight.

Congress, the President, and Military Policy

This article examines the changing role of Congress and the president in military policy. The argument is that the basic contours of the debate about executive versus legislative control of military policy have changed very little in 200 years, that, nonetheless, the balance of power in that relationship has shifted in favor of the executive, and that that shift is attributable largely to the substantial increase in the size of the standing military establishment under the direct command of the president. As a result, contemporary presidents, regardless of their inclinations, are in a substantially different position from that of their predecessors during the 200-year history of the Constitution.

S alience, complexity and state resistance to federal mandates

Professor of Political Science, 1998The George Washington University Courses include: Legislative Politics, Introduction to American Government, American Political Process, Interest-Group Politics, Executive-Legislative Relations, Positive Theories of American Government, Domestic Public Policy, Congress and Foreign Policy, Congress and National Security Policy, Positive Theories of American Political Institutions, Systematic Inquiry/Research Design, Methods of Political Analysis.

Constitutional choices: Uncertainty and institutional design in democratising nations

Why do democratising nations make the constitutional choices they do? Conceiving democratic transition as a critical juncture, we propose a theory of constitutional choice. We place the degree of uncertainty at the centre of our theorising efforts to explain the relationship between constitutional bargains among competing political groups and the type of executive–legislative relations adopted during democratisation. We posit that parliamentarism is more likely to be adopted under high-uncertainty conditions, while presidentialism is more likely under low-uncertainty conditions. Identifying four factors that affect the level of uncertainty in the transition process, we examine how the choices of executive–legislative relations are made under strong influences of historical and geographic factors.

Congress and Foreign Policy: Toward a More Functional Analysis

Crabb, Cecil V., Jr., and Pat Holt, eds. Invitation to Struggle: Congress, The President and Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1980. Pp. xii, 234.

Committees in Congress

9.75, paper. Franck, Thomas M. and Edward Weisband. Foreign Policy by Congress. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. ix, 357.

State Opposition to REAL ID

15.95, hardbound. Spanier, John, and Joseph Nogee, eds. Congress, The Presidency and American Foreign Policy. New York: Pergamon Press, 1981. Pp. xxxii, 211.

Changing Motives for Committee Preferences of New Members of the U. S. House

30.00, hardbound;

Subcommittee Government in the U. S. House: An Analysis of Bill Management

10.95, paper. Whalen, Charles W., Jr. The House and Foreign Policy: The Irony of Congressional Reform. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Pp. x, 207.