We study a model that characterizes the conditions under which past misbehavior becomes the subje... more We study a model that characterizes the conditions under which past misbehavior becomes the subject of present scandal, with consequences for both the implicated politician and the parties that work with him. In the model, both authentic and fake scandals arise endogenously within a political framework involving two parties that trade off benefits of continued collaboration with a suspect politician against the possibility of reputational fallout. Rising polarization between the two parties, we show, increases the likelihood of scandal while decreasing its informational value. Scandals that are triggered by only the opposing party, we also find, are reputationally damaging to both parties and, in some instances, reputationally enhancing to the politician. The model also reveals that jurisdictions with lots of scandals are not necessarily beset by more misbehavior. Under well-defined conditions, in fact, scandals can be a sign of political piety.
We study a model of electoral competition in which politicians must decide whether to initiate th... more We study a model of electoral competition in which politicians must decide whether to initiate the provision of some public good and, afterward, how much of the public good to supply. The model illuminates how a project's implementation affects elections and, conversely, how electoral considerations influence decisions about implementation. Under well‐defined conditions, politicians will either implement projects that they do not like or delay projects that, absent electoral concerns, they would support. The model further reveals how the perceived benefits of holding office can impede the production of public goods about which there is broad consensus. And depending on facts about the program's structure and the electoral landscape, a policy's implementation can either mitigate or exacerbate political conflict.
Separated powers cannot permanently constrain individual ambitions. Concerns about a government's... more Separated powers cannot permanently constrain individual ambitions. Concerns about a government's ability to respond to contemporary and future crises, we show, invariably compromise the principled commitments one branch of government has in limiting the authority of another. We study a dynamic model in which a politician (most commonly an executive) makes authority claims that are subject to a hard constraint (administered, typically, by a court). At any period, the court is free to rule against the executive and thereby permanently halt her efforts to acquire more power. Because it appropriately cares about the executive's ability to address real-world disruptions, however, the court is always willing to affirm more authority. Neither robust electoral competition nor alternative characterizations of judicial rule fundamentally alters this state of affairs. The result, we show, is a persistent accumulation of executive authority.
Presidents routinely issue appeals to the American public. These appeals, however, are a great de... more Presidents routinely issue appeals to the American public. These appeals, however, are a great deal more than words on a page. They are embedded in public performances that are replete with symbolism and ritual. We show that such performances can systematically alter how the public views the president. Members of the public randomly encouraged to watch Trump's Inaugural Address and his first appearance before Congress were more likely to subsequently say that he fulfills the obligations, expectations, and norms of his office. Effects were particularly pronounced for people who initially reported lower thermometer ratings of Trump. We also find that the visual elements of political performances, not the content of speeches, leave the largest impressions. We find no evidence that these performances changed people's policy views. These findings point toward new ways of * For helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, we thank
With increasing frequency, U.S. presidents have orchestrated relations between federal and state ... more With increasing frequency, U.S. presidents have orchestrated relations between federal and state governments. A defining feature of this "executive federalism" is a pragmatic willingness to both borrow from and reconstitute very different types of past federalisms. A case in point is President Barack Obama's Race to the Top (RttT) initiative, which sought to stimulate the adoption of specific education reforms in state governments around the country through a series of highly prescriptive but entirely voluntary policy competitions. This paper evaluates the results of such efforts. To do so, it draws on four original data sets: a nationally representative survey of state legislators, an analysis of State of the State speeches, another of state applications to the competitions themselves, and finally, an inventory of state policymaking trends in a range of education policies that were awarded under the competition. This paper then relies upon a variety of identification strategies to gauge the influence of RttT on the nation's education policy landscape. Taken as a whole the evidence suggests that RttT, through both direct and indirect means, augmented the production of state policies that were central components of the president's education agenda. C
Scholars have largely ignored one of the most important ways in which presidents influence the ad... more Scholars have largely ignored one of the most important ways in which presidents influence the administrative state in the modern era, that is, by creating administrative agencies through executive action. Because they can act unilaterally, presidents alter the kinds of administrative agencies that are created and the control they wield over the federal bureaucracy. We analyze the 425 agencies established between 1946 and 1995 and find that agencies created by administrative action are significantly less insulated from presidential control than are agencies created through legislation. We also find that the ease of congressional legislative action is a significant predictor of the number of agencies created by executive action. We conclude that the very institutional factors that make it harder for Congress to legislate provide presidents new opportunities to create administrative agencies on their own, and to design them in ways that maximize executive control. The administrative state is the nexus of public policy making in the modern era. While Congress writes the laws, administrative agencies do the work of translating vague and often conflicting legislative provisions into concrete public policy. To understand what the federal government does, one must understand the bureaucracy-which agencies constitute it, how these agencies are structured, and who controls them. Until recently, the literature on the federal bureaucracy proceeded under the assumption that Congress created all administrative agencies or, at least, directed their creation through delegation and oversight. The congressional dominance literature, the most sophisticated body of work in political science on bureaucratic oversight, forcefully argues that Congress retains final say over which agencies are created, what functions they serve, and how they are designed (Bawn 1997; Epstein and O'Halloran 1999; Horn 1995; Macey 1992; McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1989). Recently, renewed interest has been directed toward presidents and the influence they wield over the federal bureaucracy. In particular, scholars have begun to consider how presidents appoint and remove employees, reorganize the bureaucracy, and manipulate budgets to augment their control over agencies within it (see, e.g.,
For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumben... more For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumbents' electoral prospects in national and state elections. Hundreds of thousands of elections in the United States occur at the local level and have little to do with unemployment or inflation rates. This paper focuses on the most prevalent: school boards. Specifically, it examines whether voters hold school board members accountable for the performance of their schools. The 2000 elections reveal considerable evidence that voters evaluate school board members on the basis of student learning trends. During the 2002 and 2004 school board elections, however, when media (and by extension public) attention to testing and accountability systems drifted, measures of achievement did not influence incumbents' electoral fortunes. These findings, we suggest, raise important questions about both the scope conditions of retrospective voting models and the information voters rely upon when evaluating incumbents.
In this article, the authors explore a basis for presidential power that has gone largely unappre... more In this article, the authors explore a basis for presidential power that has gone largely unappreciated to this point but that has become so pivotal to presidential leadership that it virtually defines what is distinctively modern about the modern presidency. This is the president's formal capacity to act unilaterally and thus to make law on his own. The purpose of the article is to outline a theory of this aspect of presidential power. The authors argue that the president's powers of unilateral action are a force in American politics precisely because they are not specified in the Constitution. They derive their strength and resilience from the ambiguity of the contract. The authors also argue that presidents have incentives to push this ambiguity relentlessly to expand their own powers-and that, for reasons rooted in the nature of their institutions, neither Congress nor the courts are likely to stop them. What are the foundations of presidential power? Almost forty years ago, Richard Neustadt (1960) offered an answer that transformed the study of the American presidency. Neustadt observed that presidents have very little formal power, far less than necessary to meet the enormous expectations heaped on them during the modern era. The key to strong presidential leadership, he argued, lies not in formal power, but in the skills, temperament, and experience of the man occupying the office and in his ability to put these personal qualities to use in enhancing his own reputation and prestige. The foundation of presidential power is ultimately personal.
An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate preside... more An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate presidential power. And central to this argument is a conviction that judges predictably uphold elements of presidents' policy agendas in war that would not withstand judicial scrutiny in peace. Few scholars, however, have actually subjected this claim to quantitative investigation. This article does so. Examining the universe of Supreme Court cases to which the US Government, a cabinet member, or a president was a named party over a 75-year period, and estimating a series of fixed effects and matching models, we find that during war Justices were 15 percentage points more likely to side with the government on the statutory cases that most directly implicated the president. We also document sizable effects associated with both the transitions from peace to war and from war to peace. On constitutional cases, however, null effects are consistently observed. These various estimates are robust to a wide variety of model specifications and do not appear to derive from the deep selection biases that pervade empirical studies of the courts. (JEL K0, K3, Z0). Among stimulants to presidential power, war knows no equal. On this, consensus has reigned for quite some time. Wrote James Madison in Helvidius 4, "war is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement." A century later, with the nation having fought two major wars and one catastrophic civil war, James Bryce (1995 (1888): 48-49) observed that "[Though] the direct domestic authority of the president is in time of peace very small. .. [in war] it expands with portentous speed."
Scholars have long debated the relative influence of domestic and international factors on the pr... more 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+
This review critically evaluates the largely consensual view that wars naturally and reflexively ... more This review critically evaluates the largely consensual view that wars naturally and reflexively augment presidential power. After summarizing the key arguments advanced by presidency scholars in the aftermath of World War II, this article canvasses the existing empirical basis for their claims and the theoretical microfoundations upon which they are offered. Both appear wanting. Few systematic studies yield unambiguous evidence that the adjoining branches of government reliably support elements of the president's domestic or foreign policy agendas during war that they otherwise would oppose. And no one, to date, has offered a clear theory explaining why either Congress or the courts would behave in this way. The article therefore calls for continued empirical research on the causal effects of war on presidential power, and for renewed investments in theories that might account for the ways in which war figures into congressional and judicial voting.
Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is... more Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is commonplace and seek to explain why. We develop a simple model of distributive politics, which we call "probabilistic universalism." Our theory suggests that differences in the ideological composition of coalitions between a current and an enacting Congress drive program elimination. To test the theory, we examine the durability of every federal discretionary program established between 1970 and 2004, using a new dataset that distinguishes program death from restructuring. Consistent with our predictions, we find that changes in the partisan composition of coalitions have a strong influence on program durability. We also demonstrate that these effects are asymmetric: programmatic life spans are shortened by coalition losses and lengthened by coalition gains. We thus debunk the conventional wisdom that federal programs are everlasting while providing a plausible coalition-based account for their varying life spans.
Scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of Con... more Scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of Congress, paying particular attention to committees and majority parties. This article highlights the president, who has extensive opportunities, both ex ante and ex post, to influence the distribution of federal outlays. We analyze two databases that track the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 24-year period—the largest and most comprehensive panels of federal spending patterns ever assembled. Using district and county fixed-effects estimation strategies, we find no evidence of committee influence and mixed evidence that majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays. We find that districts and counties receive systematically more federal outlays when legislators in the president's party represent them.
Whereas presidents serve the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Conse... more Whereas presidents serve the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies, but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional−and by extension criterial−differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for policies to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when politicians privilege national outcomes, members of Congress pass appropriations that more closely reflect presidential proposals.
While previous scholars have focused on the production of legislation, we explore life after enac... more While previous scholars have focused on the production of legislation, we explore life after enactment. Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is commonplace. In addition, we find significant changes in program budgets and other forms of mutation over time. We suggest that a sitting congress is most likely to kill, cut, or transform programs inherited from an enacting congress when its partisan composition differs substantially. To test this intuition, we examine the post-enactment histories of every federal domestic program established between 1971 and 2003, using a new dataset that distinguishes program death from restructuring. Consistent with our predictions, we find that changes in the partisan composition of coalitions have a strong influence on program size and durability. We thus dispel the notion that federal programs are everlasting while providing a plausible coalition-based account for their evolution.
We study a model that characterizes the conditions under which past misbehavior becomes the subje... more We study a model that characterizes the conditions under which past misbehavior becomes the subject of present scandal, with consequences for both the implicated politician and the parties that work with him. In the model, both authentic and fake scandals arise endogenously within a political framework involving two parties that trade off benefits of continued collaboration with a suspect politician against the possibility of reputational fallout. Rising polarization between the two parties, we show, increases the likelihood of scandal while decreasing its informational value. Scandals that are triggered by only the opposing party, we also find, are reputationally damaging to both parties and, in some instances, reputationally enhancing to the politician. The model also reveals that jurisdictions with lots of scandals are not necessarily beset by more misbehavior. Under well-defined conditions, in fact, scandals can be a sign of political piety.
We study a model of electoral competition in which politicians must decide whether to initiate th... more We study a model of electoral competition in which politicians must decide whether to initiate the provision of some public good and, afterward, how much of the public good to supply. The model illuminates how a project's implementation affects elections and, conversely, how electoral considerations influence decisions about implementation. Under well‐defined conditions, politicians will either implement projects that they do not like or delay projects that, absent electoral concerns, they would support. The model further reveals how the perceived benefits of holding office can impede the production of public goods about which there is broad consensus. And depending on facts about the program's structure and the electoral landscape, a policy's implementation can either mitigate or exacerbate political conflict.
Separated powers cannot permanently constrain individual ambitions. Concerns about a government's... more Separated powers cannot permanently constrain individual ambitions. Concerns about a government's ability to respond to contemporary and future crises, we show, invariably compromise the principled commitments one branch of government has in limiting the authority of another. We study a dynamic model in which a politician (most commonly an executive) makes authority claims that are subject to a hard constraint (administered, typically, by a court). At any period, the court is free to rule against the executive and thereby permanently halt her efforts to acquire more power. Because it appropriately cares about the executive's ability to address real-world disruptions, however, the court is always willing to affirm more authority. Neither robust electoral competition nor alternative characterizations of judicial rule fundamentally alters this state of affairs. The result, we show, is a persistent accumulation of executive authority.
Presidents routinely issue appeals to the American public. These appeals, however, are a great de... more Presidents routinely issue appeals to the American public. These appeals, however, are a great deal more than words on a page. They are embedded in public performances that are replete with symbolism and ritual. We show that such performances can systematically alter how the public views the president. Members of the public randomly encouraged to watch Trump's Inaugural Address and his first appearance before Congress were more likely to subsequently say that he fulfills the obligations, expectations, and norms of his office. Effects were particularly pronounced for people who initially reported lower thermometer ratings of Trump. We also find that the visual elements of political performances, not the content of speeches, leave the largest impressions. We find no evidence that these performances changed people's policy views. These findings point toward new ways of * For helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, we thank
With increasing frequency, U.S. presidents have orchestrated relations between federal and state ... more With increasing frequency, U.S. presidents have orchestrated relations between federal and state governments. A defining feature of this "executive federalism" is a pragmatic willingness to both borrow from and reconstitute very different types of past federalisms. A case in point is President Barack Obama's Race to the Top (RttT) initiative, which sought to stimulate the adoption of specific education reforms in state governments around the country through a series of highly prescriptive but entirely voluntary policy competitions. This paper evaluates the results of such efforts. To do so, it draws on four original data sets: a nationally representative survey of state legislators, an analysis of State of the State speeches, another of state applications to the competitions themselves, and finally, an inventory of state policymaking trends in a range of education policies that were awarded under the competition. This paper then relies upon a variety of identification strategies to gauge the influence of RttT on the nation's education policy landscape. Taken as a whole the evidence suggests that RttT, through both direct and indirect means, augmented the production of state policies that were central components of the president's education agenda. C
Scholars have largely ignored one of the most important ways in which presidents influence the ad... more Scholars have largely ignored one of the most important ways in which presidents influence the administrative state in the modern era, that is, by creating administrative agencies through executive action. Because they can act unilaterally, presidents alter the kinds of administrative agencies that are created and the control they wield over the federal bureaucracy. We analyze the 425 agencies established between 1946 and 1995 and find that agencies created by administrative action are significantly less insulated from presidential control than are agencies created through legislation. We also find that the ease of congressional legislative action is a significant predictor of the number of agencies created by executive action. We conclude that the very institutional factors that make it harder for Congress to legislate provide presidents new opportunities to create administrative agencies on their own, and to design them in ways that maximize executive control. The administrative state is the nexus of public policy making in the modern era. While Congress writes the laws, administrative agencies do the work of translating vague and often conflicting legislative provisions into concrete public policy. To understand what the federal government does, one must understand the bureaucracy-which agencies constitute it, how these agencies are structured, and who controls them. Until recently, the literature on the federal bureaucracy proceeded under the assumption that Congress created all administrative agencies or, at least, directed their creation through delegation and oversight. The congressional dominance literature, the most sophisticated body of work in political science on bureaucratic oversight, forcefully argues that Congress retains final say over which agencies are created, what functions they serve, and how they are designed (Bawn 1997; Epstein and O'Halloran 1999; Horn 1995; Macey 1992; McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1989). Recently, renewed interest has been directed toward presidents and the influence they wield over the federal bureaucracy. In particular, scholars have begun to consider how presidents appoint and remove employees, reorganize the bureaucracy, and manipulate budgets to augment their control over agencies within it (see, e.g.,
For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumben... more For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumbents' electoral prospects in national and state elections. Hundreds of thousands of elections in the United States occur at the local level and have little to do with unemployment or inflation rates. This paper focuses on the most prevalent: school boards. Specifically, it examines whether voters hold school board members accountable for the performance of their schools. The 2000 elections reveal considerable evidence that voters evaluate school board members on the basis of student learning trends. During the 2002 and 2004 school board elections, however, when media (and by extension public) attention to testing and accountability systems drifted, measures of achievement did not influence incumbents' electoral fortunes. These findings, we suggest, raise important questions about both the scope conditions of retrospective voting models and the information voters rely upon when evaluating incumbents.
In this article, the authors explore a basis for presidential power that has gone largely unappre... more In this article, the authors explore a basis for presidential power that has gone largely unappreciated to this point but that has become so pivotal to presidential leadership that it virtually defines what is distinctively modern about the modern presidency. This is the president's formal capacity to act unilaterally and thus to make law on his own. The purpose of the article is to outline a theory of this aspect of presidential power. The authors argue that the president's powers of unilateral action are a force in American politics precisely because they are not specified in the Constitution. They derive their strength and resilience from the ambiguity of the contract. The authors also argue that presidents have incentives to push this ambiguity relentlessly to expand their own powers-and that, for reasons rooted in the nature of their institutions, neither Congress nor the courts are likely to stop them. What are the foundations of presidential power? Almost forty years ago, Richard Neustadt (1960) offered an answer that transformed the study of the American presidency. Neustadt observed that presidents have very little formal power, far less than necessary to meet the enormous expectations heaped on them during the modern era. The key to strong presidential leadership, he argued, lies not in formal power, but in the skills, temperament, and experience of the man occupying the office and in his ability to put these personal qualities to use in enhancing his own reputation and prestige. The foundation of presidential power is ultimately personal.
An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate preside... more An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate presidential power. And central to this argument is a conviction that judges predictably uphold elements of presidents' policy agendas in war that would not withstand judicial scrutiny in peace. Few scholars, however, have actually subjected this claim to quantitative investigation. This article does so. Examining the universe of Supreme Court cases to which the US Government, a cabinet member, or a president was a named party over a 75-year period, and estimating a series of fixed effects and matching models, we find that during war Justices were 15 percentage points more likely to side with the government on the statutory cases that most directly implicated the president. We also document sizable effects associated with both the transitions from peace to war and from war to peace. On constitutional cases, however, null effects are consistently observed. These various estimates are robust to a wide variety of model specifications and do not appear to derive from the deep selection biases that pervade empirical studies of the courts. (JEL K0, K3, Z0). Among stimulants to presidential power, war knows no equal. On this, consensus has reigned for quite some time. Wrote James Madison in Helvidius 4, "war is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement." A century later, with the nation having fought two major wars and one catastrophic civil war, James Bryce (1995 (1888): 48-49) observed that "[Though] the direct domestic authority of the president is in time of peace very small. .. [in war] it expands with portentous speed."
Scholars have long debated the relative influence of domestic and international factors on the pr... more 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+
This review critically evaluates the largely consensual view that wars naturally and reflexively ... more This review critically evaluates the largely consensual view that wars naturally and reflexively augment presidential power. After summarizing the key arguments advanced by presidency scholars in the aftermath of World War II, this article canvasses the existing empirical basis for their claims and the theoretical microfoundations upon which they are offered. Both appear wanting. Few systematic studies yield unambiguous evidence that the adjoining branches of government reliably support elements of the president's domestic or foreign policy agendas during war that they otherwise would oppose. And no one, to date, has offered a clear theory explaining why either Congress or the courts would behave in this way. The article therefore calls for continued empirical research on the causal effects of war on presidential power, and for renewed investments in theories that might account for the ways in which war figures into congressional and judicial voting.
Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is... more Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is commonplace and seek to explain why. We develop a simple model of distributive politics, which we call "probabilistic universalism." Our theory suggests that differences in the ideological composition of coalitions between a current and an enacting Congress drive program elimination. To test the theory, we examine the durability of every federal discretionary program established between 1970 and 2004, using a new dataset that distinguishes program death from restructuring. Consistent with our predictions, we find that changes in the partisan composition of coalitions have a strong influence on program durability. We also demonstrate that these effects are asymmetric: programmatic life spans are shortened by coalition losses and lengthened by coalition gains. We thus debunk the conventional wisdom that federal programs are everlasting while providing a plausible coalition-based account for their varying life spans.
Scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of Con... more Scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of Congress, paying particular attention to committees and majority parties. This article highlights the president, who has extensive opportunities, both ex ante and ex post, to influence the distribution of federal outlays. We analyze two databases that track the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 24-year period—the largest and most comprehensive panels of federal spending patterns ever assembled. Using district and county fixed-effects estimation strategies, we find no evidence of committee influence and mixed evidence that majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays. We find that districts and counties receive systematically more federal outlays when legislators in the president's party represent them.
Whereas presidents serve the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Conse... more Whereas presidents serve the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies, but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional−and by extension criterial−differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for policies to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when politicians privilege national outcomes, members of Congress pass appropriations that more closely reflect presidential proposals.
While previous scholars have focused on the production of legislation, we explore life after enac... more While previous scholars have focused on the production of legislation, we explore life after enactment. Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are immortal, we show that program death is commonplace. In addition, we find significant changes in program budgets and other forms of mutation over time. We suggest that a sitting congress is most likely to kill, cut, or transform programs inherited from an enacting congress when its partisan composition differs substantially. To test this intuition, we examine the post-enactment histories of every federal domestic program established between 1971 and 2003, using a new dataset that distinguishes program death from restructuring. Consistent with our predictions, we find that changes in the partisan composition of coalitions have a strong influence on program size and durability. We thus dispel the notion that federal programs are everlasting while providing a plausible coalition-based account for their evolution.
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Papers by William Howell