In this dissertation, I argue that vacancies in appointments that require Senate confirmation are calculated choices presidents make, within their larger nomination strategies, to advance their policy priorities. This absence is striking since presidents have perpetuated vacancies in their appointments, without submitting nominations, for decades. Even though much has been written on the president's strategies for choosing appointees in light of their potential for Senate confirmation, the president's use of vacancies is almost completely absent from the literature on presidential appointments. These unexpected outcomes raise the important question of why presidents choose to leave certain positions vacant while seeking the Senate's advice and consent for others. Yet, in practice, these vital policymaking positions are often filled with temporary officials - or left empty entirely - without Senate confirmation. Separation of powers models typically assume that executives are constrained by the need for legislative approval when placing these agents in unelected office. Accordingly, the legislatures in such models should not act like a Romer-Rosenthal agenda setter.Īll presidential administrations experience vacancies in agency leadership. Unlike the assumptions of many previous models, we show that it is not appropriate to assume that such bodies will act as a single individual, even when the conditions of Black's median voter theorem are satisfied. One of the most interesting implications involves models that incorporate the separation-of-powers aspect of U.S. Finally, we suggest that scholars have not fully considered the implications of a world where legislators cannot vote sophisticatedly. In addition, we introduce a theoretical model, and we show how it, along with some subtle aspects of the rules for voting in the House and Senate, provides a rational-choice explanation for the lack of sophisticated voting in Congress.

While Ladha's study has gone relatively unnoticed by scholars, we re-examine his results and explain why they may be the most important of all empirical work on sophisticated voting. We are aware of three such systematic studies-those by Poole and Rosenthal (1997), Wilkerson (1999), and Ladha (1994). In contrast, the studies that claim that sophisticated voting is rare tend to be systematic examinations of many roll calls. That is, the studies that find sophisticated voting examine only one, or at most a few, roll call votes. All evidence supporting sophisticated voting has been only piecemeal. They show that when it comes to government gridlock, it doesn’t matter who’s in the White House or who’s in control of Congress it’s as American as apple pie, and its results may ultimately be as sweet in ensuring stability and democracy.Īn asymmetry exists in the empirical literature on sophisticated voting in Congress. Bush, the authors clearly and carefully analyze important crux points in lawmaking: the swing votes, the veto, the filibuster, and the rise of tough budget politics. Looking at key legislative issues from the divided government under Reagan, through Clinton’s Democratic government to complete unified Republican control under George W. It is, instead, an instrumental part of American government?built into our institutions and sustained by leaders acting rationally not only to achieve set goals but to thwart foolish inadvertencies. Brady and Craig Volden demonstrate that gridlock is not a product of divided government, party politics, or any of the usual scapegoats. In this fully revised edition, political scientists David W. Despite the early prospects for bipartisan unity on terrorism initiatives, government gridlock continues on most major issues in the wake of the 2004 elections.

Gridlock politics