Opportunity, Constraints, and the Development of the Institutional Presidency: The Issuance of Executive Orders, 1939-96

TLDR

The study questions whether presidents act opportunistically or as constrained institutional actors across administrations. The authors argue that understanding the development of the institutional presidency is key to interpreting presidential behavior, with opportunistic actions during early stages and constraint‑driven actions once the institution matures. They analyze executive orders from 1939 to 1996 using event‑count regression and model‑selection criteria to test the competing theories. Results show that both opportunistic and constraint models are supported, each fitting different stages of the institutional presidency.

Abstract

A central question in the study of executive politics concerns whether presidents behave in an idiopathic, opportunistic fashion reflecting individual differences across administrations, or whether presidents behave as institutional actors who are constrained by external forces that occur across administrations. We argue that development of the institutional presidency is an important consideration in understanding presidential behavior. We maintain that presidents will behave consistent with the opportunistic model during the developmental phase of the institutional presidency, while they will act compatibly with the constraint model once the institution has fully matured. Using data on executive orders for the 1939-96 sample period, both event count regression techniques and model selection criteria are employed to test our theory. The statistical evidence supports our claim that each theory has empirical merit, depending upon the stage of the institutional presidency under investigation.