The Politics of Presidential Decree: Presidential Proclamations, the Unilateral Presidency and the Separation of Power

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This project investigates the use of presidential proclamations to explore an underlying tension in executive power. Specifically, when presidents use unilateral powers, do they work with Congress or do they truly act alone? To address this question, the PIs create a new coding of proclamations, articulate a theory that unilateral power is shared between the branches, and examine how a president justifies unilateral action in terms of the source of legal authority invoked in each order and any delegated of authority from Congress that corresponds to the president?s order. The PI?s theory and new data speak to the evolution of executive power as well as to the ongoing controversy over the role of legal rules in guiding or enhancing presidential power. Each proclamation will be coded for the authority presidents used to justify the action taken and the amount of discretion provided in each statute cited by the president in each order. There are approximately 4,000 proclamations that need to be coded to complete the analysis. These data will also be made available to the public. This new theory and data will show that, contrary to the current literature, presidents are both strategic actors who engage in independent executive action and participants in politically integrated activities with Congress for the purposes of enacting and implementing policy. Presidential unilateral orders are not uniformly used for one selective purpose or the other ¯ presidents vary their strategy depending on the amount of authority they have and nature of the political environment they face. This project will contribute information to the public conversation concerning executive power. By making the data publicly available, the project will allow other scholars and citizens to evaluate presidential proclamations. In addition, this project will train students in social scientific research methods.