Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item A SIMPLE TWIST OF THE WRIST: PRESIDENTIAL USAGE OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS AND PROCLAMATIONS IN TIMES OF CRISIS, 1861-2012(2017) Williams, Raymond; Morris, Irwin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The unilateral presidency has been an important vein of research in the study of the American Presidency over the past two decades. Scholars have studied why and how presidents use certain unilateral directives during their administrations. Institutional constraints by Congress and the Courts have been the primary explanation for a president’s usage of unilateral directives. Few scholars have examined the effect that crises can have on these tools. Scholars have also primarily focused their attention on the use of executive orders and proclamations (to a lesser extent) in the post-World War II era. Few studies have examined how presidents before 1945 have used executive orders and proclamations. Using a dataset of over 2,500 directives, I examine when presidents, from 1861-2012, were more likely to issue significant executive orders and proclamations. In this dissertation, I empirically test my crisis theory of unilateral action. I test to see if crises cause presidents to issue more directives in the pre-modern era, modern era, and the full time frame. I also test the effect of the theory on these directives once they have been split into policy domains. I find that war and economic downturns cause presidents to issue more significant executive orders. Presidents issue more significant proclamations during economic downturns. War also causes presidents to issue more international executive orders, domestic orders/proclamations, and national sovereignty proclamations. Economic downturns cause them to issue more organizational orders, international orders/proclamations, and domestic proclamations. Natural disasters caused them to issue more domestic orders/proclamations and strikes caused them to issue more domestic proclamations. Overall, I find that presidential usage of unilateral directives is affected by certain types of crises and in some cases they have a stronger impact than the institutional variables.Item WHEN POLITICS MATTER: UNILATERAL POWER AND CRITICAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS(2017) Nuñez, Gilbert David; Morris, Irwin L.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Our observations of the political world are filled with examples of presidents who move policy with the stroke of a pen. The executive order, one of several tools available to presidents, is a primary example of unilateral governance wherein presidents change policy, create programs, and reorganize the government without a single vote in Congress. In political science, we study these demonstrations of executive action by paying attention to a subgroup of so-called “significant” executive orders, those with policy implications that garner the attention of other institutional actors (including the press). However, this broad category still covers a wide range of salience that muddles our understanding of how and when presidents use unilateral action. In the dissertation, I identify an even narrower set of “critical” executive orders that represent the most impactful unilateral actions of presidents. Focusing on these orders, I study the political context in which they are issued so that we can better understand the dynamics associated with greater presidential prolificacy in their unilateral governance. I use count models to identify the political factors that shape a president’s ability to issue such orders and find that divided government, polarization, presidential approval, the economy, war, and other timing variables all provide clues to the president on whether he or she has a favorable environment for issuing such orders. I also find a difference in the factors that influence the issuance of critical executive orders when broken down by domestic versus foreign and defense-related policies. When these factors are associated with lower numbers of critical executive orders, I argue that presidents are effectively constrained because they recognize that their circumstances do not as easily lend themselves to unilateral action. Recognizing that executive orders are just one of many unilateral tools available to presidents, I close with discussion about the need to identify significant subsets of these other tools and aggregate them to create a fuller picture of unilateral governance in the American system.