The Logic of Collective Inaction: Senatorial Delay in Executive Nominations

Abstract

While most executive nominees are successfully confirmed, this success masks wide variation in how long it takes the Senate to decide. Delay of critical nominees influences the character and effectiveness of agencies while hampering the policy ambitions of presidents. The exact logic of which nominees are targeted for delay and why, however, remains difficult to uncover. Building on prior literature, this project suggests that delay can be used to protect allied agencies from presidential politicization. Using a data set of several thousand executive nominations from 1987 to 2012, the ideological predisposition of an agency relative to the president is demonstrated to influence senatorial delay. Ultimately, these findings help explain why some nominees are delayed while other, seemingly similar, nominees are not.