Do Presidents' Veto Threats Matter?

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The veto is a key instrument of presidential success in dealing with an opposition-controlled Congress. Not only does it allow the president to prevent the opposition party from passing its legislative program, the veto can be enlisted as a stage in a bargaining game to force Congress to accommodate the president's preferences. Recent game theoretic research has identified conditions in which veto-based bargaining can be extended into the realm of presidential rhetoric specifically, veto threats. Veto threats can be effective instruments when the president's preferences are uncertain, he is known to value his reputation, and has publicized his threat to the extent that backing down would harm his prestige and his party's electoral prospects. In sum, current research has found that veto threats can under appropriate conditions matter. This research asks a more empirical question, do presidents' veto threats generally matter? After developing an empirical model that has presidents deciding to send a variable costly, this research test the effectiveness of the more than 2,000 veto threats enlisted since 1981 on the policy content and failure rate of legislation and the roll call behavior of partisan legislators. The research assesses a potentially important tool of presidency agenda setting in divided government. It also creates and provides for the dissemination of two major datasets of veto threats. The first consists of scanned images of 2500 pages of Statements of Administration Policy in which the president threatened to veto a bill under consideration in Congress. The second data set represents all coded threats and their covariates.