Forrest Maltzman

Partisanship, Blame Avoidance, and the Distribution of Legislative Pork

majority party advantage in the allocation of federal resources, a relation? ship seemingly at odds with the bipartisan support often enjoyed by distributive policies and pragrams. We reconcile this disjuncture by developing a partisan blame avoidance account of the distribution of legisla? tive pork. According to this account, the majority party inoculates itself against minority party charges of wasteful spending by including the minority in pork barrel coalitions. At the same time, the majority party, mindful of the electoral benefits of

Senatorial Delay in Confirming Federal Judges, 1947-1998

presidential appointees to the lower federal bench. Here, we focus on the duration of the confirmation process for presidential appointees to the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal between 1947 and 1998 and explain the variation over time in the length of the confirmation process. With newly collected data on the fate of all appellate nominees during that period, we show how ideological incentives and institutional opportunities combine to affect the timing of Senate confirma? tion of judicial appointees.

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Political scientists have long attempted to measure and describe the modest and contingent effects of party on the behavior of members of Congress. Recent efforts have extended the debate to the more specific question of whether or not party influences are sufficiently strong to move policy outcomes away from the median position. In this article, we specify four theories of legislative behavior. One is a preference-based, or partyless, theory of behavior. This theory posits that there are no party effects independent of preferences and that equilibrium outcomes are located at the chambers median. The other theories rely on different conceptions of the foundations of party effects and yield distinctive predictions about the legislators who will support bills on final passage votes. After testing, our conclusion is that strong party influences can be found in final passage voting in the House: the partyless theory receives little support, but a model based on majority party agenda control works well. Legislative outcomes are routinely on the majority partys side of the chamber median.

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.

May It Please the Chief? Opinion Assignments in the Rehnquist Court

Theory: Majority opinion assignments made by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can be accounted for with both organizational and attitudinal models of behavior. Hypotheses: The likelihood that the Chief assigns an opinion to a justice depends upon the importance of each case, the size of the initial majority coalition, the timing of the decision, and each justices expertise, efficiency, workload, and policy preferences. Method: A discrete choice model is used to test a multivariate model of the assignments made by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Results: Chief Justice Rehnquists assignments are determined by the Courts organizational needs, rather than the Chiefs policy preferences.

The Constrained Court: Law, Politics, and the Decisions Justices Make

Preface ix Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. The Measure of Law: Estimating Preferences across Institutions and Time 17 Part I. Legal Value Constraints Chapter3. Disentangling Law and Policy Preferences 47 Chapter 4. Law Matters 64 Chapter 5. Causes and Consequences of Diverse Legal Values 80 Part II. Political Constraints Chapter 6. Separation of Powers and the Strategic Constraint 95 Chapter 7. Signals from the Executive 121 Chapter 8. Conclusion 140 Appendix. Statistical Details 156 Notes 175 References 185 Index 203

Marshalling the Court: Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court

Theory: Supreme Court opinion authors make strategic calculations about the need to craft opinions that are acceptable to their colleagues on the bench. Hypotheses: The willingness of justices to accommodate their colleagues depends upon the size and ideological makeup of the majority conference coalition and the number of suggestions and threats issued by their colleagues. These strategic considerations are important even after controlling for a series of nonstrategic factors, such as case complexity. Method: To examine the extent of accommodation in Supreme Court cases, we examine the number of draft opinions circulated by the majority opinion author. We use a Generalized Event Count model to determine whether strategic or nonstrategic efforts influence the amount of accommodation that occurs. Results: We show that accommodation is influenced strongly by strategic concerns-including the size of the majority conference coalition, the ideological distance of the author from the majority coalition, the ideological heterogeneity of the conference majority coalition, and the positions taken by majority coalition members and by nonstrategic factors, including the authors workload and the complexity of a case.

Meeting Competing Demands: Committee Performance in the Postreform House

Theory: A conditional model of committee behavior is proposed to explain variation in committee responsiveness to chamber and party principals. Hypotheses: Committee member behavior is consistent with the preferences of both the floor and the party caucuses; variation in salience explains differences in committee responsiveness to noncommittee colleagues. Methods: Committee-specific votes are scaled to produce spatial locations for committee, floor, party caucuses, and party committee delegations; a Monte Carlo simulation is used to assess the statistical significance of voting alignments. Results: Postreform House committees generally act in a manner acceptable to both the chamber and majority party; the Democratic caucus is frequently represented by extreme committee delegations; members of salient committees are more loyal agents of the chamber and majority party than are members of low salient committees.

A Conditional Model of Opinion Assignment on the Supreme Court

The chief justice’s power to assign the majority opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court provides an indispensable agenda-setting tool for the chief. Scholars disagree, however, on what factors guide the chief’s use of his assignment powers. Some suggest that the chief assigns cases with an eye to securing his ideological goals, while others contend that the chief prefers to ensure the efficient and harmonious operation of the Court. Rather than assuming that the chief is a single-minder seeker of either ideology or efficiency, we explore the possibility that the chief is motivated by multiple goals. In particular, we evaluate the effects of policy goals and organizational needs on the chief’s assignment decisions, and specify the conditions under which different goals appear to be paramount to the chief. Using a random-effects probit model, we examine the assignment decisions of Chief Justices Earl Warren, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist between the 1953 and 1990 terms, and find support for a conditional model of assignment decisions.

The American Congress Reader: Principals, Goals, Dimensionality, and Congressional Committees

We argue that committee members are best viewed as agents of multiple principals-their parent chamber and parties, as well as external constituencies. We propose improvements in measuring the relationship between the policy positions of committees, parties, and parent chambers. We find predictable variation across committees and across issues within committee jurisdictions in this relationship. We conclude by making some observations about future directions for research in this area.