Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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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.Item The Economy and the American Presidency in a Polarized Era: Changes to Income and Unemployment by Class, Race, and Gender(2017) Mugglestone, Konrad Peter; Morris, Irwin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)For decades, political scientists have debated, with little consensus, whether Democratic and Republican presidents have contrasting macroeconomic records. While some scholars have argued that presidents can (and do) target economic benefits to constituents, existing research on party differences in macroeconomic politics has assumed that the two major parties have constituencies distinguished by class and that each party managed the macroeconomy to benefit these class-based constituencies. However, political and economic conditions have changed over the past thirty years. Scholars have been concerned about the effects of increasing political polarization, which has caused unusually contentious and slow-paced policymaking. High debt levels have made major budgetary changes more difficult, and monetary policy has been checked by the zero lower bound. In light of these new political and economic challenges, this dissertation utilizes a unique dataset to examine presidential administrations from 1970 to 2014. Using this data, this project seeks to answer several key questions: Do modern presidents of opposing parties have contrasting macroeconomic records? In light of changing political and economic conditions, have these differences grown or decreased from the differences observed in the past? Finally, do modern presidents reflect the identity politics of the polarized, modern era by focusing not only on class constituencies, but on race and gender constituencies as well? Some of the findings are predictable, but others are surprising. In terms of the macroeconomy, Democratic presidents demonstrate economic records superior to their Republican counterparts. However, the party of the president rarely has any meaningful impact on income growth for specific class, race, and gender groups. Even so, the party of the president does have a consistently meaningful effect on unemployment rates. On average, Democratic presidents have greater impacts than Republicans on the overall unemployment rate and the unemployment rates of some of their constituent groups: the working class, and racial minorities. Moreover, evidence suggests that other political factors sometimes matter – both divided government and an election year variable capturing the Political Business Cycle have statistical relevance, especially in unemployment models. Finally, this study finds little statistical evidence that polarization is having a meaningful impact on presidential economic policymaking.Item The Transformation of the Role of the Economy in U.S. Presidential Elections Over Time(2012) Curry, Jill; Morris, Irwin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most studies in the presidential elections literature include only a narrow subset of more recent presidential elections. This exclusion is particularly evident in work examining the relationship between economic issues and the vote for president where early presidential elections are routinely excluded. This exclusion is often done without much justification or by leaning on the poorly defined concept of the modern presidency either explicitly or implicitly by the sample used. However, there is evidence to suggest that the influence of the economy on the vote for president occurred much earlier than well into the 20th century. Diverging from most of the existing literature, this study examines the relationship between the economy and presidential elections from 1789 to 2008. The findings of this analysis are two-fold. First, the relationship between the economy and presidential elections is an enduring one. The impact of the economy on the vote for president has been present in varying degrees for almost every presidential election held in the U.S. The role of economic issues in the vote for president is not limited to just more recent presidential elections. The second conclusion is that the relationship between the economy and presidential elections is changing over time. Even though economic issues have influenced presidential elections since the founding, the U.S. today is very different from the U.S.in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The political, economic, and social landscape of the United States has changed substantially over time. This work finds that the relationship between the economy and presidential elections is evolving in that the economic issues that influenced presidential elections in early U.S. history are different from the economic issues that have affected more recent presidential elections.Item In Trepidis Rebus: The Constitutional Basis of the Executive War Power(2010) Lowery, Todd R.; Butterworth, Charles E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Traditional approaches to questions of executive war power emphasize presidential-congressional relations, and focus on the meaning and implications of specific constitutional clauses. This dissertation offers an alternative approach by examining executive war power through the higher, more normative purposes to which the Constitution aims. It views executive war power from the perspective of Constitution's basic but essential goal of self-preservation, and argues that the Presidency has a unique duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Presidential power, therefore, should be viewed in light of its duties to preserving the constitutional order. Presidential power, however, should not be viewed as "anything goes" for, true to republican principles, the people ultimately are sovereign and have multiple constitutional means by which to hold their leaders accountable. The dissertation focuses its analysis on the Constitution's text, examining Publius and other writings of the Founding era, to help uncover the explicit purpose and implicit principles for understanding the Constitution. Understanding "to what end" the Constitution aims provides the lens through which we should view the actions of its institutions and officers. The dissertation then offers an interpretative analysis of President Washington's words and deeds during the Whiskey Rebellion, demonstrating that his construction of the executive war power offers an important contribution to U.S. constitutionalism. It also focuses on Lincoln's construction of the executive war power during the Civil War, arguing that although Lincoln exercised extraordinary power in meeting the necessity of the situation, he did so while remaining true to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. This counters conventional opinions that Lincoln's conduct was un- or extraconstitutional, or that he had to act outside of the Constitution in order to save it. The dissertation suggests that the constitutionalism and statesmanship of Washington and Lincoln offer much perspective for understanding issues surrounding the executive war power today.