The Last Word: Presidential Power and the Role of Signing Statements

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER S. KELLEY ◽  
BRYAN W. MARSHALL
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Power ◽  
Signing Statements

By Executive Order

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Executive Orders

The president of the United States is commonly thought to wield extraordinary personal power through the issuance of executive orders. In fact, the vast majority of such orders are proposed by federal agencies and shaped by negotiations that span the executive branch. This book provides the first comprehensive look at how presidential directives are written — and by whom. The book examines more than five hundred executive orders from the 1930s to today — as well as more than two hundred others negotiated but never issued — shedding vital new light on the multilateral process of drafting supposedly unilateral directives. The book draws on a wealth of archival evidence from the Office of Management and Budget and presidential libraries as well as original interviews to show how the crafting of orders requires widespread consultation and compromise with a formidable bureaucracy. It explains the key role of management in the presidential skill set, detailing how bureaucratic resistance can stall and even prevent actions the chief executive desires, and how presidents must bargain with the bureaucracy even when they seek to act unilaterally. Challenging popular conceptions about the scope of presidential power, the book reveals how the executive branch holds the power to both enact and constrain the president's will.

scholarly journals You Win Some, You Lose Some: Pension Reform in Bachelet’s First and Second Administrations

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Borzutzky
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Pension Policy ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Government Coalition

This article analyses and compares President Bachelet’s successful efforts to reform the Chilean pension system in 2008 and her failure to achieve the same objective in 2017. The article addresses the impact of electoral promises, policy legacies, policy ideology, presidential power, the role of the private sector, and the role that the government coalitions had in the process of pension reform during the Bachelet administrations. We argue that the 2008 reform was possible because of Bachelet’s personal commitment to reform and the presence of a stable governing coalition that had the will and capacity to legislate. In the second administration, although the policy legacies and ideology had remained the same, the reform did not materialise due to intense conflict within the administration and within the government coalition, as well as conflict between the administration and the coalition. These conflicts, in turn, generated a vicious cycle responsible for Bachelet’s declining popularity, limited political capital, and reduced support for reform. A stagnant economy further undermined these efforts. In brief, this article argues that when assessing success and failure in pension policy reform it is important to analyse not only policy legacies and political ideology but also the strength of the executive, the cohesion of the governing coalition, and the country’s economic performance.

scholarly journals Comment: Trade Politics—A Debate

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Passé-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Fast Track ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
White House ◽  
Trade Politics ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Trade Deals ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Preceding Study

The preceding study by Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman is valuable in that it points to the complexity of trade and of trade legislation, highlighting the role of presidential fast-track authority within that process. Unfortunately, the authors overstate the case for the waxing of presidential power, choosing to view the evolving relationship as a zero-sum game. The reality is that major trade deals such as those in which fast-track authority is utilized are so complex and politically sensitive that the White House and Congress must work together to achieve success. The evolving relationship is one of managed conflict, not open hostility. The fast-track mechanism does constitute a major change in the relationship between the legislative and executive branches, as the authors document, but change does not automatically mean that the executive is sacking the legislative.

The Executive Power

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Sajó ◽  
Renáta Uitz
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Regulatory State ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Parliamentary Systems ◽  
The Will

This chapter examines the self-perpetuation of the executive branch. Since constitutions usually concentrate on the position and powers of the chief executive, they feed the mistaken impression that the executive branch is synonymous with the will of a single president or prime minister. In reality, executive power in a modern regulatory state is not a one-man show. The chapter provides an overview of where the executive branch comes from before discussing the origins and scope of presidential power. It then considers the role of cabinets, councils, and prime ministers in parliamentary systems, along with the confidence mechanism that serves as the lifeline between the legislature and the executive (cabinet). It also explores the responsibility and accountability of the executive branch, and considers measures aimed at limiting the powers of the executive within the constitutional framework.

scholarly journals Revisiting Shugart and Carey’s Relation of Executive Powers and Democratic Breakdown

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Scott Morgenstern ◽  
Amaury Perez ◽  
Maxfield Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Original Work ◽  
Relative Weight ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Combinatorial Approach ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Democratic Breakdown ◽  
Democratic Failure ◽  
Presidential Systems

This work reassesses the central thesis of Shugart and Carey’s Presidents and Assemblies, that weak presidencies make stronger, more lasting democracies. We argue that a thorough review of the literature that has evaluated this thesis thus far reveals a persistent methodological flaw that has hindered an adequate conclusion on its accuracy. While many scholars have revisited the role of presidential systems in democratic failure, comparative analyses of presidential systems have relied on additive, rather than combinatorial, measures of presidential power. We demonstrate why this produces misleading inferences about presidential power, and offer a novel methodology for its assessment. Following an investigation and replication of Shugart and Carey’s original work that incorporates the progress of the cases they studied since 1992, we test our new method on their hypothesis, and find little support for their argument. However, our combinatorial approach invites future researchers to make their own theoretically informed arguments about the relative weight of different presidential powers within a methodological framework that avoids the errors of previous work on the topic.

scholarly journals The institute of head of the state in the mechanism of strengthening state unity and the rule of law (theoretical-historical and constitutional-legal interpretation)

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-53
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Bezrukov ◽  
Valery V. Chugaev
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
The State ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Legal Mechanism

The subject. The article investigates historical legal, theoretical-methodological and constitutional-legal problems of the formation and functioning of the institute of the head of state.The purpose of the study is to show how the constitutional functions of the head of state concretize his powers.The study is based on the use of methods of analysis and synthesis, historical legal, formal legal, comparative legal methods, scientific abstraction.The main scientific results. The authors summarize that the historical and legal analysis shows the key role of the head of state in the mechanism of ensuring state unity and law and order. Reality testifies the fact that the role of the President of the Russian Federation creates sufficient constitutional and legal grounds and conditions for the consolidated work of all state authorities, including law enforcement agencies, in the direction of ensuring the unity of state power and constitutional law and order. The indicated directions are in many ways identical, organically interrelated and interdependent, systematically define the main lines of activity of the head of state, contributing to the improvement of the constitutional and legal mechanism for ensuring the rule of law in general. Firstly, the Constitution of the Russian Federation contains only the basic powers of the President of the Russian Federation, which are substantially expanded by the legislator and presidential decrees. Secondly, the President has so-called “hidden”, discretionary powers that are not directly enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, implicit in it and stem from the sense of presidential functions that manifest themselves in unforeseen extraordinary circumstances. Thus, the constitutional design of a strong presidential power allows the President of the Russian Federation to ensure the unity of the executive power and the exercise of the powers of the federal government throughout the territory of Russia (pt. 4 of Art. 78 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation). Such presidential power is carried out through the issuance of its decrees and orders, the adoption of operational and administrative decisions.Conclusions. The authors noted that the effectiveness of the work of the head of state is especially evident in the state unity and the constitutional and legal mechanism for ensuring the rule of law, which is developed in the constitutional doctrine.

scholarly journals The Essence of the Presidential Power in Russia in the Works Written by Prof. Ekaterina I. Kozlova

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-73
Author(s):  
V. V. Nevinskiy
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Integrative Function ◽  
The Russian Federation

The paper is devoted to the study of academic views of Prof. Ekaterina I. Kozlova on the problems of essence, content and role of the presidential power in modern Russia. The author substantiates Prof. Kozlova’s opinion concerning: 1) objective conditionality of non-inclusion of the President of the Russian Federation in any branch of the state power; 2) conditional constitutional separation of the power of the President of the Russian Federation from the bodies of traditional branches of state power giving the presidential power an integrative function; 3) the essence of the power of the President of the Russian Federation (presidential power) as the totality of its constitutional representative powers and, in part, powers in the legislature, executive power, and judiciary. Some Prof. Kozlova’s views have been developed in the context of the author’s attitude to Prof. Ekaterina I. Kozlova ideas.

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