Tariff politics and congressional elections: exploring the Cannon Thesis

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J Clarke ◽  
Jeffery A Jenkins ◽  
Kenneth S Lowande
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Market Instability ◽  
The U.S

While a number of studies have examined the politics of tariff decision-making in the United States, little work has examined the subsequent political effects of tariff policy. We help fill this gap in the literature by analyzing—both theoretically and empirically—the electoral implications of tariff revision. Specifically, we investigate the veracity of the Cannon Thesis—the proposition advanced by Speaker Joe Cannon in 1910 that the majority party in the U.S. House was punished when it made major revisions to the tariff. We find that from 1877 to 1934 major tariff revisions were, on average, associated with a significant loss of votes for majority-party members—both regionally and nationally—that translated into a loss of House seats. We find support for the notion that major tariff revisions generated inordinate uncertainty among various business interests, which the opposition party could then use (by leveraging fear and market instability) to mobilize its base and gain ground in the following election. Our results provide a new explanation for the delegation of tariff policymaking to the executive branch.

scholarly journals Party Competition, Personal Votes, and Strategic Disloyalty in the U.S. States

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292095321
Author(s):  
Richard Burke ◽  
Justin H. Kirkland ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Strong Incentive ◽  
Majority Control ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The U.S

Legislators will sometimes vote against their party’s position on roll-call votes to differentiate themselves from the party mainstream and to accrue a “personal vote.” Research suggests that the use of rebellion to generate a personal vote is more common (1) among majority party members and (2) among ideological extremists. But these majority party extremists only have a strong incentive to rebel in situations where the accrual of a personal vote is electorally useful. In this manuscript, we evaluate variation in rebellion rates of state legislators in the United States conditional on ideological extremism and majority control. Using donation-based measures of ideology and roll call–based measures of party loyalty over a twenty-year period across more than 30,000 legislators, we find that when legislators have little incentive to differentiate themselves from their parties, this “strategic” party disloyalty among majority party ideological extremists is limited. However, when legislators have strong incentives to craft a personal vote, ideological extremists defect from their party more often than their moderate counterparts. In particular, we find greater evidence for this type of strategic party disloyalty in states with high intra-party competition and low inter-party competition and less evidence in states with high inter-party competition.

Politics, economics, and U.S. participation in multilateral development banks

1982 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Schoultz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Major Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Multilateral Development Banks ◽  
Procedural Change ◽  
Development Banks ◽  
The U.S

In the 1970s the U.S. executive branch was forced to make a significant change in the procedure it uses to influence decisions by the multilateral development banks. This procedural change—from exclusive reliance on behind-the-scenes pressure to open voting in bank councils—reflects two more fundamental alterations: the relative diminution of U.S. power in bank councils and, especially, the development of increased congressional interest in formulating U.S. policy toward the banks. As a result of these two changes, the United States has identified publicly many of the policies it seeks to promote through the banks. Taken as a whole, the U.S. voting record indicates an abandonment of the verbal commitment to the liberal concept of maintaining the banks as apolitical financial institutions. Since the concept has never been a reliable guide to U.S. behavior in bank councils, its abandonment does not signify a major change in the relationship between the banks and the United States government. Rather, it signifies an opening of the U.S. political process, one that encourages public debate and multiple advocacy in the making of U.S. policy toward the banks.

The U.S. Assistance to the MENA Arab Countries under the Trump Administration: The Logic of a Diff erentiated Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 131-170
Author(s):  
V. I. Bartenev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
Unexpected Result ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Trump Administration

This paper identifi es and explains key changes in the U.S. aid policies towards Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) under Donald Trump. It seeks to validate two widespread arguments — the one about the current administration’s revision of pivotal principles of providing foreign assistance, and the other one — about an accelerated disengagement of the United States from the MENA region since 2017. The paper consists of four sections. The fi rst section explores the transformation of the U.S. strategic thinking and regional context under the Trump administration and then posits fi ve hypotheses about possible changes in the volume and composition of the U.S. assistance to the MENA region (in comparison with the fi nal two years of the Obama administration), as well as the diff erences in the executive branch and the Congress’s positions. The second section explains particularities of the statistical data and the methods of its exploration, the third section presents the results of hypothesis testing using aggregated data on aid fl ows to the region, and the fi nal section explains these results, sometimes unexpected, using the data disaggregated by country. Three of fi ve hypotheses proved wrong based on the aggregate data. First, the Trump administration did not cut assistance to the MENA more substantially than to other regions of the globe. Second, it did not ringfence aid accounts which helped yield direct dividends to the U.S. businesses. Third, the Republican Congress was clearly less willing to support the executive’s aid chocies under a new Republican President than during the last years of a Democrat Barack Obama’s second term. Only two hypotheses proved correct — one about a prioritization of security and military assistance under Donald Trump and the other one — about disproportionate cuts of democracy promotion assistance. Such an unexpected result calls for refi ning both aforementioned arguments and taking into account the dissimilarities in the dynamics of assistance to diff erent countries. The United States tends to practice a diff erentiated approach in dealing with two largest Arab aid recipients (Egypt and Jordan) and with other Arab countries. The assistance to Cairo and Amman is ringfenced and protected, while aid to other recipients, including security assistance and FMF grants, is prone to quite drastic cuts. This diff erentiation is explained by the fact that cooperation with Egypt and Jordan rests not only on more solid strategic foundations but also on a strong support within the United States — both from the defense contractors interested in large export contracts and from an infl uential pro-Israel lobby. The U.S. will not abandon this highly diff erentiated approach after the 2020 elections but the structure of assistance to the MENA region might undergo quite a dramatic transformation.

Divided government and U.S. trade policy: theory and evidence

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Lohmann ◽  
Sharyn O'Halloran
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Constraint Forces ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
White House ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
The U.S

If different parties control the U.S. Congress and White House, the United States may maintain higher import protection than otherwise. This proposition follows from a distributive politics model in which Congress can choose to delegate trade policymaking to the President. When the congressional majority party faces a President of the other party, the former has an incentive to delegate to but to constrain the President by requiring congressional approval of trade proposals by up-or-down vote. This constraint forces the President to provide higher protection in order to assemble a congressional majority. Evidence confirms that (1) the institutional constraints placed on the President's trade policymaking authority are strengthened in times of divided government and loosened under unified government and (2) U.S. trade policy was significantly more protectionist under divided than under unified government during the period 1949–90.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY): Prosecutor V. Krnojelac

2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-380 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
The Right ◽  
And Control ◽  
The U.S

This case presents the question whether the Executive Branch may hold uncharged citizens of foreign nations in indefinite detention in territory under the "complete jurisdiction and control" of the United States while effectively denying them the right to challenge their detention in any tribunal anywhere, including the courts of the U.S. The issues we are required to confront are new, important, and difficult.

scholarly journals The President’s Private Dictionary: How Secret Definitions Undermine Domestic and Transnational Efforts at Executive Branch Accountability

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudha N. Setty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Customer Data ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
The U.S

Published: Sudha Setty, The President's Private Dictionary: How Secret Definitions Undermine Domestic and Transnational Efforts at Executive Branch Accountability, 24 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 513 (2017)..The 2016 EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is an agreement allowing companies to move customer data between the European Union and the United States without running afoul of heightened privacy protections in the European Union. It was developed in response to EU concerns that the privacy rights of its citizens have been systematically abrogated by the U.S. government in the name of national security, and contains a variety of assurances that the United States will respect and protect the privacy rights of EU citizens.How trustworthy are the U.S. assurances under the Privacy Shield? Both the Bush and Obama administrations secretly interpreted the terms of treaties, statutes and regulations in a manner that allowed them to take controversial actions, keep those actions secret, and later invoke national security to defend the legality of those actions if they became public. In cases involving torture, bulk data collection, and targeted killing, these administrations did so despite the common and objective understanding of applicable legal constraints not providing authorization for the very actions that they claimed were legal.It remains an open question as to whether the Trump administration will interpret the Privacy Shield in a similarly misleading manner: one in which public assurances suggest compliance with the Privacy Shield’s constraints, but the administration’s private interpretation of the Privacy Shield secretly breaches EU privacy protections. This paper considers possible ways to constrain the executive branch from relying on secret interpretations that would undermine the Privacy Shield’s transnational attempts at accountability

scholarly journals Unification of Powers: When Effective Lawmakers Sponsor Presidential Proposals in Congress

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Volden ◽  
Samuel Kernell ◽  
Roger Larocca ◽  
Alan Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Party Members

While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through persuasion, veto bargaining, and public appeals, we argue that an important tool is missing from this list. Specifically, presidents who are strategic in their choices of early coalition partners in Congress – such as effective sponsors of administration bills – significantly enhance their chance of legislative success. We identify more than 1,400 executive branch proposals appearing as bills in Congress between 1989 and 2006. We examine which members of Congress sponsor these bills, finding strong evidence of disproportionate sponsorship by effective champions, such as majority-party members, committee and subcommittee chairs, lawmakers with proven effectiveness in the previous Congress, party leaders, and senior lawmakers, all else equal. Analyzing the fate of these proposals, we find that much of the success of the president’s agenda in Congress depends on these critical and strategic partnerships with effective congressional proponents.

The Fourth Restatement, International Law, and the “Terrorism” Exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

2020 ◽  
pp. 391-410
Author(s):  
Beth Stephens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

This chapter evaluates the “terrorism” exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States sets out to “restate” the law of the United States and “relevant portions of international law,” not to critique U.S. law or settle debates about the content of international law. However, that task is complicated when the law of the United States triggers questions about unresolved international law issues. The “terrorism” exception to the FSIA illustrates this complexity. Congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary have employed the exception as a politically motivated weapon to target disfavored states, while excluding U.S. allies, politically powerful states, and the United States itself from the reach of the statute. The text of the Fourth Restatement merely restates the U.S. law governing the “terrorism” exception, without identifying international law concerns or analyzing the issues they raise. The chapter, by contrast, offers a critique of the “terrorism” exception, focusing on the statute as written, as amended to reach particular targets, and as applied in practice. A well-crafted statutory exception to sovereign immunity for state human rights violations would be a welcome addition to human rights accountability. The “terrorism” exception falls far short of that goal.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN U.S. OIL POLLUTION PLANNING AND PREPAREDNESS POLICY

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-44
Author(s):  
Gary Yoshioka ◽  
Julie Reber ◽  
Ryan Thompson ◽  
Joan Tilghman
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Oil Pollution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Final Rule ◽  
Public Policy Decisions ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT Regulatory agencies in the United States represent the Executive Branch of the Federal Government in implementing and enforcing rules, and these agencies are required to follow certain procedures when writing those rules. At a minimum, the agency must publish a notice explaining the proposed rule, request comments, and state the basis and purpose of the final action. This paper provides examples of instances where an agency has revised the rule as a result of comments received or has otherwise been responsive to the commenter'S argument. For example, with regard to oil pollution planning and preparedness policy, commenters on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency'S proposed revisions to the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) plan rule raised the idea of a minimum container size for applicability of the SPCC rule and EPA included such a minimum for the first time in the final rule, thus reducing the burden of the rule for many facilities. Federal agencies are required to request public comments on the issues presented in their proposed rules to enable the agencies to evaluate the new or revised provisions. With agencies now accepting electronic comments through web sites, regulated parties can easily participate in this process. As this paper shows, many agencies that regulate oil pollution planning and preparedness are very responsive to suggestions, and members of the regulated community have an opportunity to influence public policy decisions in this area.

The Empire Trap

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Maurer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Financial Interests ◽  
The Government ◽  
Incremental Step ◽  
The U.S

Throughout the twentieth century, the U.S. government willingly deployed power, hard and soft, to protect American investments all around the globe. Why did the United States get into the business of defending its citizens' property rights abroad? This book looks at how modern U.S. involvement in the empire business began, how American foreign policy became increasingly tied to the sway of private financial interests, and how postwar administrations finally extricated the United States from economic interventionism, even though the government had the will and power to continue. The book examines the ways that American investors initially influenced their government to intercede to protect investments in locations such as Central America and the Caribbean. Costs were small—at least at the outset—but with each incremental step, American policy became increasingly entangled with the goals of those they were backing, making disengagement more difficult. The book discusses how, all the way through the 1970s, the United States not only failed to resist pressure to defend American investments, but also remained unsuccessful at altering internal institutions of other countries in order to make property rights secure in the absence of active American involvement. Foreign nations expropriated American investments, but in almost every case the U.S. government's employment of economic sanctions or covert action obtained market value or more in compensation—despite the growing strategic risks. The advent of institutions focusing on international arbitration finally gave the executive branch a credible political excuse not to act. The book cautions that these institutions are now under strain and that a collapse might open the empire trap once more.

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