The Secular Decline in Presidential Domestic Policy Making: An Organizational Perspective

Domestic policy making has been an area that has received considerable scholarly attention by students of the American presidency. This has been true of bilateral activities involving other institutions whether it concerns legislation (e.g., Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989; Peterson 1990) or veto authority (e.g., Cameron 1999; Rohde and Simon 1985; Spitzer 1988; Woolley 1991). Presidents also engage in unilateral activities that do not require them to act in concert with other institutions (e.g., Gleiber and Shull 1992; Gomez and Shull 1995; Howell 2003; Krause and Cohen 1997, 2000; Mayer 1999, 2001; Moe and Howell 1999). These activities generally exhibit a secular decline involving both the breadth and depth of presidential policy initiatives. This is clearly borne out by Paul Light, who claims that the trend in domestic policy making has exhibited a secular erosion in both the volume and substance of presidential domestic policy-making activity through time (Light 1999, 2000). (1) What explains this phenomenon? One can reasonably argue that a myriad of factors constrains presidential initiative and action, and that these constraints have become more severe through time. For instance, public opinion is one noticeable constraint on presidential activity (e.g., Canes-Wrone 2001; Cohen 1997; Edwards and Wood 1999; Kernell 1986; but see Jacobs and Shapiro 2000 for a modified perspective). Simply, presidents are responsive to public opinion, thus hindering their ability to behave in a truly entrepreneurial fashion where they can shape public opinion. Another possible reason why presidential domestic policy making has suffered is the American system of separated powers that hinders unfettered activity (Jones 1994; but see, for example, Cameron 1999 for an alternative perspective with respect to veto authority). Presidents are thus marginalized in the policy-making process because the institution is not well suited for policy activism, especially as it relates to the legislative process. Further confounding the president's dilemma is the expanding girth of the presidency as an institution (Hart 1995; Ragsdale and Theis 1997; but see also Dickinson 1997, 2003; Walcott and Hult 1999 for alternative perspectives). (2) As a result of these evolutionary features displayed by this office during the latter half of the twentieth century, presidents have found it increasingly difficult to both formulate and adopt public policies that are large in terms of size or scope. Addressing the first two explanations, as to why both the quality and quantity of presidential domestic policy making has declined in a secular manner over the past several decades, is a complex task. It remains unclear whether public opinion is exogenous to presidential activity (Edwards and Wood 1999) or endogenous to it (Canes-Wrone 2001; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Kernell 1986). (3) Furthermore, public opinion regarding presidential job performance tends to exhibit a cyclical pattern, thus capturing short-run variations instead of secular movements (Stimson 1976). A focus on public opinion as a means of making the presidency a more effective institution for democratic governance in the twenty-first century is a fruitful, yet less straightforward endeavor from a long-run institutional perspective. Furthermore, the system of separated powers is a condition that has held through time due to its substantive underpinnings found in the Constitution, and thus does not provide a powerful explanatory argument for understanding the secular devolution of presidential domestic policy-making activities through time consistent with Light's (2000) thesis. Short-term inter-branch politics ranging from divided government/unified government distinction (e.g., Epstein and O'Halloran 1999) to varying policy gridlock intervals (e.g., Krehbiel 1998) fail to exhibit a discernible secular (long-run) pattern that displays meaningful variation during the postwar era. …