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AbstractThis study focuses on how voters and politicians rationally select a preferred policy-making venue (Politician or Agency), and its implications for the principal-agent relationship between voters and politicians in a representative democracy. This study allows for incomplete information, as well as solving for the comparative static conditions pertaining to the extent that a politician's policy-making venue choices mirror those preferred by a representative voter. The comparative static results highlight when a politician (1) chooses the representative voter's preferred policy-making venue (ActiveorPassive Political Responsiveness); (2) is able to choose freely either policy-making venue without committing agency loss (Political Discretion); and (3) willing to deviate from the representative voter's preferred policy-making venue (Political Shirking). In contrast to the study by Spence, this study analytically demonstrates that one cannot infer that the benefits accrued from agency policy-making will necessarily exceed those from electoral institutions.

Modern scholarship on the institutional presidency has emphasized the formal mechanisms that presidents employ to obtain bureaucratic compliance. This literature emphasizes presidents' effective use of both expressed and implied constitutional powers. Unfortunately, little systematic inquiry has analyzed how extraconstitutional features of the executive branch limit the president's capacity for effective control over administrative agencies. This essay highlights three problems of organizational complexity relating to presidential control over the bureaucracy that merit greater attention from scholars of U.S. executive politics: (1) vertical coordination, (2) horizontal coordination, and (3) credible commitment. The author sketches out elements of a research agenda that examines presidential control over the bureaucracy in relation to each of these coordination problems. The basic implication of this essay is a simple one—failing to account for these organizational problems overstates the true capacity of presidential control over executive administration.

Conventional wisdom suggests that macroeconomic outcomes do not follow a political business cycle (PBC) pattern. In this study, the nature of the electoral underpinnings of such opportunistic behaviour are investigated by analysing alternative formulations of PBC theory: (1) a naive-unconditional PBC, (2) an electoral security-conditional PBC, (3) an electoral uncertainty-conditional PBC; & (4) a partisan-conditional PBC. Data on the US real personal income growth rate for the 1948:1-2000:4 quarterly period reveals support for both naive-unconditional & partisan-conditional PBCs, yet rejects an electoral cycle attributable to the incumbent administration's ex ante re-election prospects. Simulation analysis reveals that while Democratic administrations enjoy higher income growth than Republican counterparts for non pre-election stimulus periods, Republican presidents are associated with larger pre-election economic expansions than Democratic presidents consistent with a partisan-conditional PBC theoretical model. This finding supports the notion that incumbent governments engage in partisan-based policy balancing with respect to the creation of opportunistic electoral cycles in real macroeconomic activity. On a broader level, these statistical findings provide strong support for adaptive models of the electoral cycle that emphasize partisan differences while refuting the policy neutrality proposition & rational-competence models predicated on the extent to which an incumbent administration experiences electoral vulnerability. 7 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

Conventional wisdom suggests that macroeconomic outcomes do not follow a political business cycle (PBC) pattern. In this study, the nature of the electoral underpinnings of such opportunistic behaviour are investigated by analysing alternative formulations of PBC theory: (1) a naïve-unconditional PBC, (2) an electoral security-conditional PBC, (3) an electoral uncertainty-conditional PBC; and (4) a partisan-conditional PBC. Data on the US real personal income growth rate for the 1948:1–2000:4 quarterly period reveals support for both naïve-unconditional and partisan-conditional PBCs, yet rejects an electoral cycle attributable to the incumbent administration's ex ante re-election prospects. Simulation analysis reveals that while Democratic administrations enjoy higher income growth than Republican counterparts for non pre-election stimulus periods, Republican presidents are associated with larger pre-election economic expansions than Democratic presidents consistent with a partisan-conditional PBC theoretical model. This finding supports the notion that incumbent governments engage in partisan-based policy balancing with respect to the creation of opportunistic electoral cycles in real macroeconomic activity. On a broader level, these statistical findings provide strong support for adaptive models of the electoral cycle that emphasize partisan differences while refuting the policy neutrality proposition and rational-competence models predicated on the extent to which an incumbent administration experiences electoral vulnerability.

What has caused the secular (long‐term) decline in presidential domestic policy‐making activities over the past several decades? In a previously published article in this journal, Paul Light provides several interesting speculative reasons for this trend. I propose a general explanation for the secular decline in presidential domestic policy making that centers on the rising organizational size and scope of the institutional presidency. Specifically, I argue that the American presidency's greater than optimal organizational size and scope has hurt its domestic policy‐making activities in absolute terms. The suboptimal organizational size and scope of the presidency has also led to a deterioration of its institutional comparative advantage in policy‐making activities vis‐à‐vis Congress. Therefore, twenty‐first century American presidents possess a strong incentive to restrict the organizational size and scope of the Executive Office of the President as a means to strive for optimal institutional performance.