Public Responsiveness to Presidential Policymaking

Transcription

1 Public Responsiveness to Presidential Policymaking Andrew Reeves Washington University in St. Louis Jon C. Rogowski Washington University in St. Louis February 12, 2016 Abstract Scholarship on democratic responsiveness generally focuses on how political power is used to achieve outcomes that reect the public s policy preferences but overlooks public attitudes toward the instruments of power. Building upon recent research that studies public opinion toward the president s unilateral powers, we argue that the public penalizes presidents for achieving policy outcomes through unilateral means. Results from a series of nationally representative survey experiments show that the public responds strongly to the means by which new policies are achieved. Across a range of policy domains, presidential candidates who promised to exercise unilateral powers were rated signicantly more negatively than those who pledged to accomplish their political goals through legislation passed by Congress. In additional analyses, we show that attitudes toward unilateral action in the abstract aect how respondents evaluate policies achieved through unilateral action by presidents from Lincoln to Obama. Our results suggest that public opinion serves as an important constraint on presidents use of unilateral powers. This research was generously supported by Betsy Sinclair, Steve Smith, and the Weidenbaum Center for the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. We are grateful to David Doherty, Justin Fox, Will Howell, Kenneth Lowande, Joel Sievert, Betsy Sinclair, Steve Smith, and Sharece Thrower for helpful comments and discussion. Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Campus Box 1063, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130; reeves@wustl.edu. Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Campus Box 1063, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130; jrogowski@wustl.edu.

2 Do voters have preferences over the tools that presidents use to pursue their policy objectives? Existing scholarship on public opinion and democratic responsiveness generally focuses on how political power is used to achieve outcomes that reect the public s policy preferences (Burstein 2003; Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004; Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993; Lax and Phillips 2009; Page and Shapiro 1983) but overlooks public attitudes toward the instruments of power. Nowhere in the American political system is power more contested than it is with respect to the presidency, and questions about the use and abuse of executive power have animated debates in Latin America (Horowitz 1990), Russia (Fish 2006), and elsewhere around the world. Understanding how the public responds to the exercise of presidential power, however, has important implications for identifying the incentives for presidents behavior and informing normative debates over the boundaries of presidential power. In the American system of separated powers, congressional assent is required to pass legislation that furthers the president s policy objectives. But presidents in the modern era have increasingly turned to unilateral means to address their policy priorities (Bolton and Thrower Forthcoming; Howell 2003; Lowande 2014), particularly when Congress is unable or unwilling to consider the president s desired legislation (cf., Chiou and Rothenberg 2013). For instance, beginning in 2011, President Obama repeatedly stressed and demonstrated his willingness to exercise unilateral powers when Congress refused to act. 1 Though presidents have recognized that unilateral tools enable them to achieve many of their goals, presidents also often cited a reluctance to use them, usually doing so only after repeated failures to achieve these goals legislatively. Challenging existing theories of presidential accountability, which focus largely on how vot- 1 Lowande and Milkis (2014) traces the Obama administration s embrace of unilateralism as a means for achieving personal and partisan objectives. It should be noted that Obama is not the rst president to cite congressional recalcitrance as the justication for exercising unilateral means. For instance, in 2004, President George W. Bush announced that he had signed an executive order to support faith-based initiatives because Congress refused to consider his proposal. See Remarks at the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in Los Angeles, California, March 3, 2004; available at (accessed December 18, 2015). 1

3 ers evaluations of policy outcomes aect their support for presidents (e.g., Cohen 1999; Edwards 2003; Fiorina 1981; Key 1966; Kriner and Reeves 2015a; Page and Shapiro 1985), we argue that voters hold presidents accountable for how they exercise power in the pursuit of policy. While others have explored attitudes toward process in the legislative and judicial branches (e.g., Caldeira and Gibson 1992; Gibson 1989; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1996, 2002; Smith and Park 2013), extant research reaches mixed conclusions about whether the ways policies are fashioned aect public opinion toward political actors and policy outcomes. This omission is particularly surprising in the context of the presidency, where extensive debate over the exercise of unilateral powers focus mostly on normative and constitutional issues (e.g., Ackerman 2013; Goldsmith 2012; Kagan 2001; Posner and Vermeule 2010; Schlesinger 2004) but generally overlooks the role of public opinion. Building on recent research on public opinion toward president power (Christenson and Kriner 2015, Forthcoming; Reeves and Rogowski 2015, 2016), we study public reactions to the use of unilateral action. Previous literature outlines a variety of costs presidents may face for exercising unilateral powers, but has focused almost exclusively on the political costs presidents pay for having their actions struck down by Congress or the courts (Chiou and Rothenberg 2013; Howell 2003) and generally dismisses or ignores the possibility that the use of unilateral powers may inuence how the public evaluates the president and the policies created through unilateral means. We report evidence from one of the rst studies on how the use of unilateral powers aects public evaluations of the president with a series of survey experiments we conducted with a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults in fall Across a range of policy domains, we nd that survey respondents were strongly responsive to the means presidents used to achieve political outcomes. Presidents who exercised unilateral powers were rated more negatively than presidents who accomplished their political goals through legislation passed by Congress. These eects were strongest in domestic policy domains. We nd no evidence that the use of unilateral powers aected perceptions of leadership characteristics; instead, consistent with recent 2

4 scholarship Reeves and Rogowski (2016), we nd that unilateral action decreased respondents assessments that the president respects the rule of law. In additional analyses, we show that attitudes toward unilateral action in the abstract aects how respondents evaluate policies that have been achieved unilaterally by presidents from Lincoln to Obama. Our results have important implications for theories of public responsiveness to political elites and contribute new evidence to suggest that the use of unilateral action may be constrained by public opinion. Political Accountability and Executive Power Research on presidential accountability emphasizes that presidents are fundamentally concerned about and held accountable for the political outcomes that occur under their watch. A vast empirical literature demonstrates that the president s approval rating and electoral performance are responsive to factors including unemployment rates (Kramer 1971; Mueller 1970), federal spending (Kriner and Reeves 2012; Gasper and Reeves 2011), and war casualties (Karol and Miguel 2007). Presidential election results have also been shown to reect the impact of events well beyond the control of the president or anyone else, including the incidence of shark attacks (Achen and Bartels 2002) and the performance of local sports teams (Healy, Malhotra, and Mo 2010). Given that the public expects the president to do something about everything (Cohen 1999; Edwards 1983), presidents face incentives to use their oce to eect policy change across myriad policy domains. Lawmaking in the U.S. system of separated powers generally requires agreement between Congress and the president. Accordingly, the traditional view holds that a president s ability to accomplish his key political goals depends primarily on his ability to convince other actors especially members of Congress to support his initiatives (e.g., Neustadt 1990). This perspective suggests that a president s success in oce depends on his ability to secure legislative outputs that produce his desired policy change. Indeed, presidents expend tremendous energy on recruiting 3

5 legislative sponsors for their key initiatives, soliciting opinions from congressional stakeholders, and rallying public support for the president s legislative goals (e.g., Canes-Wrone 2006; Kernell 2006). Under this perspective, pursuing legislation with congressional support is a president s best chance to aect the outcomes for which he is held accountable. More recent literature, however, highlights a variety of unilateral tools and strategies that presidents can use to aect political outcomes. For instance, presidents can issue executive orders to change how policies are administered by executive agencies and which carry the force of law (e.g., Howell 2003; Mayer 2002; Moe and Howell 1999). 2 Presidents can engage in particularism through the use of federal resources by approving some states requests for federal funds for disaster relief while denying others or directing federal grants toward preferred constituencies (e.g., Kriner and Reeves 2015a,b; Reeves 2011). 3 Presidents can also heavily incentivize states and localities to adopt the president s preferred policies by implementing waiver programs through the relevant executive agencies (e.g., Howell 2015; Mann 2015). In using tools such as these, presidents can directly aect political outcomes without involving Congress and perhaps in spite of congressional opposition. In many instances, the president can achieve the same objective through either approach. For instance, in August 2013, President Obama considered whether to launch missile strikes against Syria in retaliation for President Bashar al-assad s use of chemical weapons. While Obama himself and many members of Congress argued that the president was not required to receive congressional approval before launching military strikes, other legislators argued that Obama risked an easy precedent for future presidents to violate the separation of powers if he did not involve Congress. The key point is that Obama ultimately chose to seek congressional approval for an outcome he could have also achieved with unilateral means. While presidents cannot al- 2 Presidents can also issue memoranda to direct executive branch agencies to take a particular set of actions (Lowande 2014), yet the legal status of these measures is somewhat less clear. 3 Similarly, Lowande, Jenkins, and Clarke (2015) show that presidents have used their power to determine tari schedules to set more protectionist tari rates for industries that benet the president s party. 4

6 ways achieve policy outcomes through unilateral means that are identical to those that could be achieved legislatively, the practical implications are often quite similar. For instance, in 2014 President Obama issued an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 per hour. 4 While this policy does not apply to all employers across the U.S. it did aect wages for some fraction of the estimated 2 million federal contract workers and also signaled to voters his commitment to an increased minimum wage. Existing scholarship has paid less attention, however, to how voters respond to a president s decision to achieve political goals through legislative or unilateral means. In particular, virtually every theoretical and empirical study of presidential behavior ignores or altogether rules out the potential for the public to evaluate presidents based on how political outcomes were achieved. Kriner (2014) conducts one of the only studies on this topic and nds that respondents in a survey experiment provide greater support for a president s proposed military action when it receives congressional authorization, but does not examine support for the same military action conducted unilaterally without receiving congressional approval. However, recent research suggests that public opinion may serve as a potential constraint on a president s use of unilateral action (e.g., Christenson and Kriner 2015; Reeves and Rogowski 2016), thus raising the possibility that how the public evaluates a president s performance may depend on the means presidents use to achieve their goals. Understanding how attitudes toward political processes aect attitudes about how presidents achieve political outcomes is thus important for explaining how public opinion may gure into a president s unilateral calculations. 4 Zachary A. Goldfarb, Obama to raise minimum wage foor federal contract workers, Washington Post, January 28, 2014; available at obama-to-raise-minimum-wage-for-government-contract-workers/2014/01/27/ f7994b34-87cd-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html (accessed Decembeer 18, 2015). 5

7 Political Processes and Presidential Evaluations Most public opinion research suggests that the public is unconcerned with or simply unable to factor political processes into their assessments of presidents. Voters generally operate in low information environments and give only passing attention to many basic political facts (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) and their elected ocials (Zaller 1992). Voters evaluations of political ocials often reect the use of heuristics such as partisanship (Popkin 1994) and other elite cues (Layman and Carsey 2002; Zaller 1992). The public s relative lack of attention to many central features of politics and their reliance on information shortcuts when evaluating political ocials may make it unlikely that the public s evaluations of political ocials would be responsive to the ways political outcomes were achieved. In fact, other literature nds that even the public s responsiveness to political outcomes such as the state of economy is highly variable (e.g., Anderson 2007), which may weigh against the possibility that the public is responsive to other more procedural considerations. Summarizing this perspective, Smith and Park (2013, 735) point out that The conventional wisdom is that Americans do not care much about procedural matters. This viewpoint is also sometimes expressed by political ocials and in journalistic accounts. For instance, in response to questions about congressional operations during her tenure as Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi argued that the American people don t care about process. 5 Similarly, after President Obama promised to use unilateral action more aggressively in his 2014 State of the Union address, media commentators argued that Obama did not risk public backlash because [e]xecutive orders are about process. It s a means of making public policy. And the public is largely unmoved by insider-y process stories despite the attention they get in D.C. 6 Presidential campaigns and the resulting media coverage often express similar sentiments. For instance, 5 John Harwood, Obama Notwithstanding, Democrats Defend Messy Lawmaking, New York Times, January 30, 2010; available at _r=0 (accessed December 12, 2015). 6 Sean Sullivan and Peyton M. Craighill. Executive Order = Political Nothing Burger, Washington Post, January 29, 2014; available at 29/executive-order-political-nothing-burger/ (accessed December 18, 2015). 6

8 after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledged in October 2015 that she would use unilateral powers to address a range of political issues if she were elected, one media outlet promptly declared there s no evidence of a political risk in using executive power. 7 In contrast with this view, we argue that public opinion toward the president is responsive to how the president exercises power and achieves political goals. Research on other political institutions nds that evaluations of political processes play an important role in shaping evaluations. For example, the fairness of the judicial process is widely argued to be a key factor that inuences how citizens view courts (e.g., Gibson 1989), and the public views courts as more legitimate when judicial questions are believed to have been decided fairly and transparently. Other research on U.S. state courts shows that the ways judges are selected inuences how the public evaluates the court s legitimacy (Gibson 2012). Research focused on Congress has also shown that perceptions of the legislative process inuence public attitudes toward Congress (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1996, 2002) and more recent research has found that evaluations of Congress reect both what policies are made and how they are made (Doherty 2015). More generally, a long literature based on insights from social psychology has shown that perceptions of institutional fairness inuence public opinion (Doherty and Wolak 2012; Lind and Tyler 1988; Thibaut and Walker 1975) and provides evidence that support for political leaders is responsive to the procedures those leaders employ (Rasinski and Tyler 1988; Tyler, Rasinski, and McGraw 1985). In a study of public evaluations of the president s handling of foreign aairs, Hurwitz and Peey (1987) nd that both foreign policy outcomes as well as the president s strategy in addressing foreign aairs were important determinants. Political ocials commonly invoke political processes when appealing to the public. For instance, in debates over the Aordable Care and Patient Protection Act, both President Obama and members of Congress took each other to task for the procedures they employed. During his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama argued that decreased public support for 7 7

9 health care reform was due to a lack of transparency in how the proposed legislation was debated in Congress. [T]his is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became... with all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, What s in it for me? 8 Obama s decision to highlight unsavory legislative manuevering was described by observers as a new element of tension in the president s relationship with congressional leaders. 9 Four years later, House Republicans voted to sue President Obama over his use of executive action to delay implementation of the employer mandate component of the Affordable Care Act. As House Speaker John Boehner explained, [T]he President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the American people to stop him. 10 These public appeals suggest that politicians believe voter opinion can be moved by discussing political tactics and procedures that the public may view with skepticism. In particular, we expect that the public grants more favorable evaluations to presidents who achieve their goals through legislative rather than unilateral means. Research by Reeves and Rogowski (2015, 2016) nds that support for the use of unilateral action by presidents is relatively low, particularly among voters who disapprove of the president then in oce and who express strong commitments to the rule of law. These ndings suggest that the public may be less inclined to view policy outcomes as legitimate when they are achieved through unilateral means. As Friedman (1998, 256) argues, [W]hen people say that laws are legitimate, they mean that there is something rightful about the way the laws came about. Thus, the public may downgrade their 8 The White House, Oce of the Press Secretary, Remarks by President in State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010; available at remarks-president-state-union-address (accessed December 12, 2015). 9 John Harwood, Obama Notwithstanding, Democrats Defend Messy Lawmaking, New York Times, January 30, 2010; available at _r=0 (accessed December 12, 2015). 10 Boehner: Why We Must Now Sue the President, CNN, July 6, 2015; available at com/2014/07/06/opinion/boehner-obama-lawsuit/ (accessed December 12, 2015). 8

10 evaluations of a president who achieves political outcomes through the use of unilateral action rather than through the legislative process. In a similar vein, Christenson and Kriner (2015, 912) argue that the public prefers legislative solutions to presidential unilateralism such that unilateral actions could introduce political costs by provok[ing] public ire and erod[ing] the president s political capital. We further expect that the eects of unilateralism will vary in important ways. Namely, the eects of unilateralism on public evaluations of the president are likely to be greater in domestic policy than they are in foreign aairs. (Bryce 1995 [1888], 48-49) argued that the authority of the president expands with portentous speed during war and other foreign crises because immense responsibility is then thrown on one who is both the commander in chief and the head of the civil executive. Previous research has shown that the public is more deferential to the president during times of war (Mueller 1973) and is generally more acceptant of unilateral action when it is used in the service of national security (Reeves and Rogowski 2016). Data and Methods How does unilateral action aect how voters evaluate the president? We examine this question with a series of survey experiments we conducted in October The experiments were administered to a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,700 U.S. adults as part of The American Panel Study (TAPS), a monthly panel survey elded by GfK Knowledge Networks. 11 Survey experiments oer important advantages over other alternative approaches. Most importantly, the experimental design allows us to identify the eect of unilateral action on public opinion by administering information about a president s policy goal and in which we randomize information about the president s chosen strategy for achieving it. In particular, they allow us to observe presidential evaluations under counterfactual conditions in which presidents imple- 11 The project website is available at 9

11 ment policies through non-unilateral means. We can then compare respondents evaluations of the president based on what information respondents received about the means through which presidents pursued their political priorities. It is nearly impossible to identify real-world policy outcomes that were achieved through dierent means (i.e., through the legislative process or by unilateral action) that were otherwise identical in every respect. Thus, the experimental design not only simplies the analysis but also addresses concerns about confoundedness that would arise in the context of an observational study. The survey experiment was conducted by developing vignettes about policy goals expressed by hypothetical presidential candidates along with the means by which the candidates intended to achieve them. The use of hypothetical candidates comes at the cost of reducing some of the real-world attributes of the experiment, but this cost is oset by removing respondents from their feelings about any actual politician. We developed vignettes around three candidates who were given common last names ( Jones, Davis, and Smith ) and were simply referred to as Candidate [last name]. No other personal information about the candidate, including political party aliation, was provided. Each candidate was associated with a dierent issue area. Candidate Jones expressed support for legalizing medical marijuana, Candidate Davis supported reducing taxes for corporations, and Candidate Smith supported sending troops to Eastern Europe to protect that region from a potential Russian invasion. These three issues span a range of policy domains (social issues, economic policy, and foreign aairs, respectively) and are salient political issues in contemporary American politics. In addition, as our data conrm, public opinion varies considerably across these three policy proposals. While each respondent was presented with each of these candidates, we randomly selected one of three conditions relating to how the candidate proposed achieve the desired policy. In the unilateral condition, the candidate promised to act without Congress and use the powers of the presidency to achieve the policy. In the legislative condition, the candidate said he would 10

12 work with Congress to pass a bill to accomplish the policy aim. In the control condition, we did not specify how the candidate would go about achieving the desired outcome. We present the full question wordings in Table 1. The order in which the candidates were presented was also randomized. Table 1 goes here. We consider two main dependent variables. First, we examine whether or not respondents support the candidate in question. 12 Second, we study whether or not respondents approved of the candidate s proposed handling of the issue. 13 Results We begin by evaluating how the presidential candidates proposals to achieve their policy goals aected respondents evaluations of the candidates. Table 2 shows the proportions of respondents who reported supporting each candidate (top panel) and approving of the candidate s proposed handling of the issue (bottom panel). The entries in the table show, rst, that survey respondents are strongly responsive to the means by which policy outcomes are achieved. The F-statistics and associated p-values evaluate the null hypothesis of no dierence in respondent evaluations across treatment conditions. The proportion of respondents supporting the candidates signicantly varied across treatment groups in each of the policy domains. For instance, 62% of respondents in the control condition supported the candidate who wanted to legalize medical marijuana, compared with 58% 12 The question wording was: How likely would you be to support Candidate [name]? The question was asked on a four-point scale, ranging from very unlikely to very likely. For simplicitly we collapsed the very and somewhat responses to create a dichotomous variable. 13 The question wording was: Do you approve or disapprove of Candidate [name] s handling of [issue]? This question was asked on a ve-point scale, ranging from strongly disapprove to strongly approve, with a middle option of neither approve nor disapprove. For simplicity we omitted respondents who chose the middle option and collapsed the remaining responses to create a dichotomous variable. 11

13 of respondents in the legislative condition and 46% of respondents in the unilateral condition. The hypothesis of no global dierences can be rejected at p =.000 (F = 27.49). We nd similar patterns for the candidates who supported reducing corporate taxes and deploying U.S. troops to Eastern Europe. We also nd that the means by which presidential candidate proposed to achieve their policy goals led to signicant dierences in evaluations of the candidate s handling of the issue. For example, 22% of respondents in the control condition approved of the candidate s handling of corporate tax reductions, compared with 24% of respondents in the legislative condition and just 11% of respondents in the unilateral condition. These dierences are signicant at p =.005 (F = 5.42). The weakest evidence for the eect of how power is exercised on candidate evaluations is found when evaluating the candidate s handling of sending troops to Eastern Europe, but even here the null hypothesis of no global dierences can be rejected at p =.055 (F = 2.91). Thus, an initial inspection of the data reveals that the ways presidents propose to achieve their policy goals has signicant consequences for how citizens evaluate them. In addition, we also nd that candidate evaluations are lowest in the unilateral condition across both dependent variables and all issue areas. Table 2 goes here. We now directly test how the use of unilateral action aects presidential evaluations. Figure 1 plots the dierences in candidate evaluations between respondents in the unilateral condition and each of the other two conditions. The top panel shows the dierences in the proportion of respondents who supported the candidate and the bottom panel shows the dierences in the proportion of respondents who approved of the candidate s handling of the issue. The dierence between the unilateral condition and the control condition is shown with a circle ( ) and the dierence between the unilateral condition and the legislative condition is shown with a triangle (N). The horizontal lines represent the 95 percent condence intervals. Recall that our primary 12

14 hypothesis is that voters penalize presidents for the use of unilateral action. If our hypothesis is correct, we expect the dierences to be negative, which indicates that the use of unilateral powers decreased candidate evaluations. The vertical line at zero indicates the null hypothesis of no eect of unilateral action on candidate evaluations. The results are consistent across all three policy areas and both dependent variables. Unilateral action signicantly decreased support for the candidates and evaluations of the candidates handling of the issues. Compared to the control condition, in which the vignette presented no information about how the candidate proposed to achieve their policy goals, the use of unilateral action to legalize marijuana decreased candidate support by 16 percentage points and reduced approval of the candidate s handling of the issue by 22 percentage points. The dierences are somewhat smaller for two other issue areas yet they are still statistically signicant. For the candidate who supposed lowering corporate taxes, unilateral action reduced support by 5 percentage points and approval of the candidate s handling of the issue by 11 percentage points compared to the control condition. Deploying troops via unilateral means reduced candidate support by 7 percentage points and approval of the candidate s handling of the issue by 12 percentage points. When presidents contemplate the use of unilateral action, however, they often do so by deciding whether to take action of their own or to instead pursue their goals through legislative means. Thus, identiying the eect of unilateral action with respect to the same policy outcome that is achieved with congressional approval may be a more realistic comparison. As Figure 1 shows, however, we nd virtually the same patterns when comparing the use of unilateral action to a context-free scenario. The evidence of the negative eects of unilateral action is especially strong for the candidates supporting domestic policy outcomes. Signicantly smaller percentages of respondents supported the candidate and approve of the candidate s handling of the issue when the candidate supporting legalizing marijuana (dierences of 12 and 19 percentage points, respectively) and lowering corporate taxes (dierences of 9 and 12 percentage points, respectively) using unilateral powers rather than by going through Congress. The evidence for the eect of 13

15 unilateral action compared to legislative means is somewhat weaker for the candidate who proposed military deployments. For both dependent variables, unilateral action decreased candidate evaluations, though the dierence in candidate support was not statistically distinguishable from zero (p =.325). Figure 1 goes here. Unilateral Action and Evaluations of Presidential Traits To further explore the eects of unilateral action, we examine other ways the exercise of unilateral powers aects perceptions of presidents. In particular, we study how unilateral action aects perceptions that the presidential candidate abides the rule of law. The rule of law is an especially important principle in democratic systems because, as Gibson (2007, 593) writes, a primary function of the rule of law is to impede tyranny. Moreover, scholars working in the tradition of American political thought have often viewed executive prerogative as a disturbing anomaly in a normally rule-bound system of government (Fatovic 2004). Presidents who are believed to violate the rule of law thus may be vulnerable to criticism that they are abusing their constitutional authority as president. In a system where authority is both shared and separated across the branches of government, increases in a president s unilateral authority reduces the authority of other adjoining branches. Recent work on public opinion toward unilateral powers by Reeves and Rogowski (2016) nds that support for unilateral action is lower among voters with stronger beliefs in the rule of law. We measured respondent evaluations of the presidential candidates by asking them to indicate whether they believed each candidate respects the rule of law. We expect that agreement with this statement was lowest among the candidates who proposed the use of unilateral action. The results are shown below in Figure 2. Across each policy domain, unilateral action significantly decreased respondents beliefs that the candidate respected the rule of law. Compared to 14

16 the control condition, unilateral action decreased respondents beliefs that the candidate respects the rule of law by 19, 16, and 22 percentage points for the candidate who advocated legalizing marijuana, lowering corporate tax rates, and deploying troops to Eastern Europe, respectively. Nearly identical results are found when comparing the unilateral condition to the legislative condition. The corresponding decreases for marijuana legalization, reducing corporate taxes, and deploying troops were 26, 24, and 19 percentage points, respectively. In sum, these results indicate that the use of unilateral action aects how citizens evaluate the president s adherence to core principles of democratic governance. Figure 2 goes here. In light of the negative eects we have found regarding the use of unilateral action, we investigated the possibility that a candidate s intention to exercise unilateral powers could also have some countervailing eects. For instance, citizens may view presidents as stronger and more eective leaders when they pledge to use unilateral action. Scholarship has found that traits such as leadership can lead to increased electoral support (Fridkin and Kenney 2011; Funk 1999; Hayes 2005), and Cohen (2015) nds that assessments of presidential leadership are an important contributor to presidential approval ratings and presidential success. We thus investigated how unilateral action aected respondents beliefs that the candidate provides strong leadership and is able to get things done. The results are shown in Figures 3 and 4. If unilateral action increased perceptions of the candidates leadership and ability to get things done, we would expect to see positive values along the x-axes. We nd no support for this hypothesis, however. Looking rst at Figure 3, only in one of the six comparisons was unilateral associated with increased perceptions of leadership relative to a comparison scenario (reducing corporate taxes via unilateral means increased perceptions of leadership by 1 percentage point relative to the control condition), and this dierence is not statistically distinguishable from zero. The other comparisons show that the use of unilat- 15

17 eral action reduced perceptions of leadership by between 3 and 12 percentage points. Figure 4 reveals similar patterns. Rather than increasing perceptions of leadership and accomplishment, our ndings generally show that unilateral action signicantly decreases respondents beliefs in these character traits. Figures 3 and 4 go here. The survey experiments reported here demonstrate that unilateral action is associated with substantial costs to a president s public standing. Not only does the public evaluate presidential candidates based on how the candidates intend to achieve their policy goals, but the use of unilateral powers in particular decreases voters assessments of the the candidates. Moreover, contrary to popular beliefs that political leaders such as presidents can foment positive public images of leadership and accomplishment by acting alone, our ndings suggest that the use of unilateral action signicantly decreases how the public evaluates candidates along these trait dimensions. Evaluating Presidents Uses of Unilateral Action To what extent do the ndings reported above aect evaluations of real-world outcomes presidents have achieved through the use of unilateral action? Of course, we cannot recreate history to conduct experiments where we manipulate how presidents have accomplished their policy goals. Instead, we study how respondents attitudes toward unilateral action aect their approval of policies presidents have achieved through unilateral means. If, as our experimental results indicate, the public is less supportive of policies when they are achieved through unilateral action, we would expect to nd that individuals attitudes toward unilateral action also inuence how they view policy outcomes that were accomplished unilaterally. We study this question using data from a nationally representative survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by The Economist/YouGov in February The survey asked respondents whether 16

18 they approved or disapproved of a series of policies that presidents from Lincoln to Obama have achieved through unilateral action. Our dependent variables are indicators for whether respondents approved of each of the following policies: Freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government. Established the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created military exclusion zones during World War II and allowed for the forcible relocation of Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps. Desegregated the U.S. military. Placed U.S. steel mills facing a strike by union workers under federal control. Restricted all non-governmental organizations that receive federal funding from performing or promoting abortion services as a method of family planning in foreign countries. Authorized enhanced interrogation techniques and established military tribunals to try foreign enemy combatants. Directed the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence. Deferred deportation hearings for illegal immigrants who were brought into this country before they were 16 years old, have lived in the U.S. for at least 5 years, must be younger than 30, and have graduated from high school in the U.S. or served in the U.S. military. Support for these actions varied widely, from a low of 19 percent for Japanese internment to 77 percent for freeing slaves during the Civil War. The key independent variable measures attitudes toward unilateral action. Before respondents were asked to evaluate the policies noted above, they were asked whether they approve 17

19 or disapprove of presidents using executive orders. This variable was measured on a four-point scale ranging from strongly disapprove (1) to strongly approve (4). If the means through which policies are achieved aect how the public evaluates those policies, we expect to nd a positive association between attitudes toward unilateral action and each of the policy outcomes listed above. We estimate a series of logistic regressions where approval of the policies above are regressed on attitudes toward unilateral action. We also include respondents ideological self-placements along a ve-point scale ranging from very liberal (1) to very conservative (5). In addition, we account for the possibility that attitudes toward unilateral power reect respondents assessments of President Obama by including respondents approval rating of Obama. We weight our analyses to national population parameters. Before proceeding, we note that this exercise constitutes a tough test of the relationship between unilateral action and evaluations of policy outcomes. Our dependent variables measure attitudes toward some of the highest-prole actions taken throughout U.S. history, coinciding with the Emancipation Proclamation, Japanese internment during World War II, Truman s seizure of the steel industry that resulted in the Youngstown Steel case, and electronic surveillance conducted during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies. Given the historical signicance of many of these actions, it would not be surprising to nd no evidence that respondents contemporary attitudes toward unilateral action aect their assessments of historical policy outcomes. For ease of presentation, the results are presented graphically in Figure 5. The plotted points show the dierence in the predicted probability of supporting each policy outcome between respondents who strongly disapprove and strongly approve of presidents using executive orders. The full table of coecients can be found in Table A.1 in the Supplementary Appendix. Negative values along the x-axis indicate decreased support for the policy among respondents who strongly disapprove of executive orders. The horizontal lines show the 95 percent condence intervals. 18

20 Across each policy outcome, we nd that attitudes toward unilateral action strongly aect evaluations of policies achieved through its use. Respondents who dislike executive orders were less supportive of each policy we studied. The dierences were statistically signicant for 8 of the nine policies; the one exception was for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. The reductions in support for the policy outcomes were quite substantively signicant. For instance, respondents who strongly disapproved of presidents using executive orders were 21 percentage points less likely to approve of freeing slaves during the Civil War compared to respondents who strongly approved of presidents using executive orders. The dierences were even larger when comparing support for creating the WPA (26 percentage points), interning Japanese Americans in World War II (22 percentage points), desegregating the military (37 percentage points), federalizing the steel industry (33 percentage points), prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion in foreign countries (39 percentage points), conducting research on the causes of gun violence (49 percentage points), and allowing illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain here without fear of deportation (28 percentage points). Figure 5 goes here. The results shown in Figure 5 clearly indicate that attitudes toward unilateral power in the abstract shape how voters evaluate policies presidents have achieved through unilateral means. Not only do voters penalize presidential candidates for advocating policy change through unilateral rather than legislative means, as our experiments demonstrated, but voters who express opposition to unilateral action also are less likely to support policies that are accomplished unilaterally. In addition, the survey results also show that the insights from our experimental analysis generalize to real world presidents and policy outcomes. We do not wish to overinterpret the results, however, as we lack a true counterfactual policy outcome that was accomplished through non-unilateral means. Nevertheless, in contrast with existing research that argues voters hold presidents accountable on the basis of policy preferences and the president s approval ratings, 19

21 the results shown in Figure 5 provide evidence that the public also judges presidents on the basis of how their policies were achieved. Discussion and Conclusion The bounds of presidential power have been contested since the nation s founding. Contemporary debates on this subject often center on the president s use of unilateral powers to fund initiatives, send troops o to war, or change how policies are implemented within the executive branch. Presidents in the modern era are held accountable for an extraordinary range of political outcomes that occur on their watch and have often asserted unilateral powers to achieve their political goals. As Howell (2003, 13) writes, the ability to act unilaterally speaks to what is distinctively modern about the modern presidency. Extant scholarship on unilateral action focuses almost exclusively on the constraints provided by legislatures, courts, and bureaucrats on a president s decision to go it alone (e.g., Bolton and Thrower Forthcoming; Dickinson 2008; Howell 2003; Kennedy 2015; Mayer 2002; Rudalevige 2012, 2015). By studying how the public reacts to unilateral action by presidents, however, we contribute new evidence about how public opinion may aect interbranch dynamics in a system of separated powers. Our paper contributes to ongoing debates over the nature of presidential power by suggesting that the public may constrain a president s use of unilateral action. We show that the public is responsive to the means through which presidents achieve political outcomes and penalizes presidents who exercise unilateral powers. Previous scholarship has neglected to consider the role of public opinion for a president s decision to use unilateral action, and the evidence presented in this paper suggests that public opinion may serve as a check against presidential unilateralism even when other institutional checks fail. In an era where neither Congress nor the courts appear especially well-poised to constrain a president s use of unilateral powers, the public s negative reaction toward unilateral action may explain why presidents do not employ unilateral 20

22 means more frequently than they do (for more on this point, see Christenson and Kriner 2015). Additional theoretical and empirical inquiry on this possibility is an important task for further research. The ndings in this paper also enrich scholarly knowledge about democratic responsiveness and accountability. While executives and legislators are often held accountable for a wide range of political outcomes, research in this area has generally not studied how elected ocials may be held accountable for the ways those political outcomes are achieved. Moreover, research on democratic responsiveness focuses on the degree to which political outcomes reect public opinion. Our research calls new attention to how policy responsiveness is driven not just by demand for particular policy outcomes, but also by the public s fundamental normative expectations about the separation of powers and how those policies ought to be achieved. We also contribute to debates over the proper bounds of presidential power. While these debates generally focus on normative discussion about where political power should be vested in the American system, our data indicate that the public privileges policy outcomes achieved through the traditional legislative process over those achieved through unilateral means. Quite apart from the claim advanced by Howell, Jackman, and Rogowski (2013, 106) that the public wants their presidents to break constitutional rules and nd ways to exercise their will, the ndings shown in our paper may provide support for legal scholars, jurists, members of Congress, and political commentators who express concern about the centralization of American political power in the presidency. At the same time, to the degree that public opinion eectively constrains presidents use of unilateral action, our ndings may also give cover to others who argue for vesting an expanded set of unilateral prerogatives in the presidency if the president is likely to deploy them only when public opinion supports their use. By design our research has some important limitations. Though our experimental design afford us great leverage over identifying the causal eect of unilateral action on public opinion, it also raises questions about external validity. Where possible, future research should explore 21

23 how public opinion responds to real-world instances in which the presidents uses unilateral and legislative means to achieve his policy goals. While our ndings also suggest that presidents enjoy wider latitude over and receive smaller penalties for the use of unilateral action in foreign aairs, additional research should further explore the conditions under which the public supports the use of unilateral powers across policy domains. There may be other important sources of variation as well. For instance, support for the use of unilateral power may vary based on whether the public supports or opposes the policy outcome in question. In addition, because previous research argues that the president s approval rating drops after a veto is issued due to the revelation of conict between the president and Congress (Groseclose and McCarty 2001), the use of unilateral powers could also suggest the presence of conict between the president and Congress. Future research could thus explore whether public response to unilateral action varies depending upon whether Congress supports or opposes the policy in question. These caveats and extensions aside, our research represents an important step in advancing scholarship on the presidency and the separation of powers by more fully incorporating public opinion into theories of presidential behavior. 22