Action-Forcing Powers and Presidential Initiative

1. Action-Forcing Powers and Presidential Initiative Last time: Intro to positive agenda power Today: more priming, framing and the public agenda presidents and military initiative

2. What do legislators want? How can they get what they want? • Goals are reelection, good public policy, career advancement; cost minimization • Strategies include advertising, position-taking, credit-claiming and delegation • The legislature is a collectivity, where MCs have only partially aligned interests • cooperating to do work is hard because of the free rider problem • coordination games typically have multiple equilibria; choosing among these is hard • risk-averse preferences  incentives to defer to experts

3. Presidential entrepreneurship • Presidents have incentives to try to solve legislators’ problems by offering entrepreneurial services • presidential goals also include reelection and good public policy; presidents also seek to advertise, take positions, claim credit • Presidential means? • first-mover advantages; focal points • expertise • distributive resources • priming, framing effects of going public

4. When can the president set the legislative table directly? • prez has formal proposal powers only in trade • prez (or cabinet members) is often delegated reporting requirements that include requests for legislative proposals • first-mover advantages: because leg. is costly, early proposals have advantage over later ones; prez has incentive to give proposals for MCs • the more costly it is to produce an alternative, the greater the 1st-mover advantage • 1st-mover adv also applies to purely distributive proposals

5. Bicameral bargaining and presidents • Bicameral legislatures create the possibility of bargaining failures • 2-player bargaining games: • relative bargaining strengths? • are there “obvious” solutions (Schelling focal point solutions)?

6. Presidential persuasion • “Going public” (external lobbying) • priming • framing • Insider lobbying • patronage; campaigning support • persuasion

7. Can the president prime issues? • Jeffery Cohen article on State of the Union addresses: • presidential mentions of an issue area are related to increased mentions of those issues by survey respondents (a priming effect) • prez popularity seems unrelated • leadership effects decay faster in domestic than in foreign policy arenas • no evidence of framing effects

8. Presidential initiative • Where does reversionary policy favor the president? • Where does the president have proposal power? • Where can the president best shape public opinion? • What discretionary resources can the president employ to shape others’ incentives?

9. Presidential initiative • Constitutional authorities: Commander in Chief; chief diplomat; treaties; take-care clause • Delegated authorities: contingency funds and discretionary resources; trade agreements

10. Congress, Prez and Security • What are the political goals of security policies? consider: • the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), • making it a crime to criticize the government, gave the prez authority to detain, deport aliens • Trading with the Enemies Act of 1917 and Espionage and Sedition Act of 1917 • Congress gave Wilson authority to oversee trade, declare embargoes, etc. and made it a crime to “hinder” the war effort • Lincoln’s suspension of civil law in parts of the country and of habeas corpus in 1861 • (see Ex Parte Merryman (1861), in which the S.C. ruled the suspension unconstitutional; Ex Parte Milligan (1866), in which the S.C. ruled that military trials of civilians when civil courts were capable of functioning was illegal). • What are the conditions for presidential leadership/success in foreign policy? • what counts as “presidential leadership”? • action-forcing vs. action-blocking authorities

11. Congressional goals • MCs assumed to want to (1) get reelected; (2) promote own career; (3) create good public policy • Reelection strategies include (1) advertizing; (2) position-taking; (3) credit-claiming • how does foreign policy fit? • Progressive ambition requires expanding one’s reputation to a wider electorate • how does foreign policy fit? • What does “good public policy” mean in foreign policy/security? • American attitudes toward risk? • Congressional accountability?

12. Managing the president • Presidents as agents of the American people in foreign/security policies • Congress as (1) institutional checks; (2) oversight agents on presidential action in foreign/security policies • The public suffers from • hidden information • hidden action • Madison’s dilemma • Collective action problem