Suchergebnisse

Observing substantial variations in Senate confirmation durations, existing studies have tried to explain when the Senate takes more or less time to confirm presidential nominees. However, they have largely ignored the president's incentives to nominate someone who he expects will be delayed and do not specify conditions under which delay occurs. To improve on existing literature, I develop a dynamic model of presidential appointments in which the Senate decides whether to delay as well as whether to confirm the nominee. The model shows that the president rationally chooses a nominee who he expects the Senate will delay if the status quo belongs to a certain interval in a one-dimensional policy space. Moreover, the president sometimes chooses a nominee who may fail to gain confirmation after a delay. Finally, the effects of important factors on expected confirmation duration are analyzed: most interestingly, as presidential popularity increases, the Senate takes longer to confirm the nominee.

Lewis and Schultz (2003) develop a statistical signaling model to deal with international conflicts or bargaining situations in which states have private information about their payoffs. They claim that they can confirm that there always exists a unique equilibrium in their model. In this paper, I show that Lewis and Schultz's claim is not true and their model admits multiple equilibria under some parameter settings. Monte Carlo analysis shows that when there are multiple equilibria, the parameter estimates may not converge to their true values even if the number of observations increases.

Existing methods for estimating ideal points of legislators that are comparable across time and chambers make restrictive assumptions regarding how legislators' ideal points can move over time, either by fixing some legislators' ideal points or by constraining their movement over time. These assumptions are clearly contradictory to some theories of congressional responsiveness to election dynamics and changes in constituency. Instead of using legislators as anchors, our approach relies on matching roll calls in one chamber and session with roll calls or cosponsorship decisions on identical bills introduced in a different chamber or session. By using these "bridge decisions" to achieve comparability, we can remove any assumptions about the movement of legislators' ideal points. We produce these estimates for both chambers from the 102nd (1991–92) to 111th (2009–11) Congresses, and we show that our estimates provide interesting insights into the nature of legislative behavior change.

Existing theories of legislative delegation feature spatial models in which a principal chooses a single agent to whom to delegate authority. In the canonical model, the ally principle holds – the principal picks the ideologically closest agent. However, elected politicians typically decide whether to delegate not to an individual but to an institution, which consists of many individuals with differing preferences. To improve on existing work, we model delegation with bureaucratic hierarchy. Our results show that hierarchy is sufficient to undercut the ally principle. Indeed, capturing the logic of delegation and its results requires incorporating agency structure, especially the costs of an agency head controlling her subordinates resulting in incomplete control, as different structures are associated with different policy outcomes even when the same people constitute a bureaucracy. We also demonstrate that integrating hierarchy has important implications for a wide range of considerations, such as agency structural choice and the measurement of agency ideal points.

When something goes awry in a governmental agency, a frequent claim is that appointed political heads are incompetent. If true, what explains this in a separation of powers system where the executive nominates and the legislature approves? Our analysis provides a rationale and conditions for rational incompetence. Specifically, we present a model in which a President nominates and the Senate confirms or rejects an appointee. Besides choosing a nominee's ideology, the President can determine competence, with less competence meaning more policy outcome variance. Interestingly, without assuming that political actors are inherently risk takers, we identify conditions generating what Goemans and Fey (2009) have labeled institutionally-induced risk taking, where both the President and the relevant filibuster pivot propose and approve an incompetent administrator in equilibrium. Reasons for incompetence go beyond pure loyalty or patronage, and our model corresponds to contemporary cases of seemingly incompetent administration. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

When something goes awry in a governmental agency, a frequent claim is that appointed political heads are incompetent. If true, what explains this in a separation of powers system where the executive nominates and the legislature approves? Our analysis provides a rationale and conditions for rational incompetence. Specifically, we present a model in which a President nominates and the Senate confirms or rejects an appointee. Besides choosing a nominee's ideology, the President can determine competence, with less competence meaning more policy outcome variance. Interestingly, without assuming that political actors are inherently risk takers, we identify conditions generating what Goemans and Fey (2009) have labeled institutionally-induced risk taking, where both the President and the relevant filibuster pivot propose and approve an incompetent administrator in equilibrium. Reasons for incompetence go beyond pure loyalty or patronage, and our model corresponds to contemporary cases of seemingly incompetent administration.

In a recent article in this journal, Chapman presents a formal model of the informational role played by international institutions. Unfortunately, the equilibria given in the article are incorrect. In this article, we identify the errors in the analysis of Chapman and solve for correct equilibria to the model. Our results show little support for the empirical implications derived in the original article. Contrary to these original findings, we find that there may be no relationship between an institution's policy position and its effect on domestic public opinion or the likelihood that leaders will consult the institution. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

In a recent article in this journal, Chapman presents a formal model of the informational role played by international institutions. Unfortunately, the equilibria given in the article are incorrect. In this article, we identify the errors in the analysis of Chapman and solve for correct equilibria to the model. Our results show little support for the empirical implications derived in the original article. Contrary to these original findings, we find that there may be no relationship between an institution's policy position and its effect on domestic public opinion or the likelihood that leaders will consult the institution.