The Separation of Powers

1. The Separation of Powers Last time: Prez power and leg. agendas Separation of powers models veto gates and legislative success Edwards and Barrett; Sinclair; Fleisher and Bond

2. Presidential power and legislative agendas • Two kinds of agendas • “public agenda • legislative agenda: the stuff that gets worked on in Congress • Presidents wish to affect both • Insider lobbying strategies: veto threats, patronage; campaign support; leg. entrepreneurial activities • Outsider lobbying: going public to prime and frame issues to shape public pressures

3. Presidents and legislative agendas • Presidents may be able to affect the set of issues and the order they are taken up • shaping the public agenda • bills introduced by request • entrepreneurial efforts to smooth the path to passage for some bills; veto threats or entrepreneurial efforts to block others • Majority MCs hold all positions with positive agenda powers and generally control gatekeeping functions too; • the prez’s formal agenda power is small; prez’s work best in shaping policy by providing services to MCs where they wish to see change and dragging their feet where they do not • Senate is more permeable to minority role in agenda setting • but this doesn’t give the prez any special privileges; prez can still provide entrepreneurial services

4. Effects of bicameralism • one-dimensional models with complete information: the closest “veto player” to the reversion point limits how far policy can change • legislating is a bilateral veto game or bargaining game between H and S • threat of presidential veto; override potential • incomplete info models • who has policy-making initiative? foreign vs. domestic • risk aversion means majorities may trade procedural privileges/discretion for policy expertise • effects of preference divergence on delegation? • multidimensional models • limited veto means potential competition between prez and minority for legislative partnership

5. Bicameralism and incomplete info • In the unicameral leg. models with incomplete info, risk-averse legislators: • delegation to agent(s) to reduce risk • some policy divergence from median voter’s ideal point is tolerated as the cost of expertise • Bicameral leg. with incomplete info & preference differences; if median leg. in H and S are very different, effects on delegation? • each chamber may learn from the other’s actions • bicameralism means that “procedural precommitment” is less valuable to committees • as credit-claiming leg. opportunities decline, position-taking incentives become relatively more important

6. Information and the executive • Bicameralism and committee expertise dilemma • bicameral free-rider problem for committees charged with becoming “experts” • bicameral pre-commitment problem: when experts in one propose, opposite chamber can learn w/o paying • Incentive to delegate reporting requirements to executive • bicameral agreement to pay for outside expertise • no procedural pre-commitment on outside expertise • expectation: • when P & Q lie between H and S, full information; • when P betw H and S but not Q or when P lies outside H-S, depends on Q

7. Multidimensional models of separation of powers • limited veto means majorities have choice of coalition partners to make laws • two-stage process limits majority advantage in Veto Game bargaining (can anyone commit to making self worse off in order to limit losses?)