Bibliography

Abstract

Investigating executive and legislative interactions is critical for understanding presidential systems. Doing so requires comparing the preferences of the elites involved, which is challenging because these actors do not take positions on the same issues and are motivated by different strategic considerations. To circumvent these difficulties, we propose a new measure of the presidents ideal point based on vote returns and an assumption about the electoral connection. We illustrate the generalizabilty of this approach by estimating the preferences of U.S. presidents (and their challengers) from 1874-2010 and California governors from 1994-2010. Additionally, we use our new measure to test the effect of executive-legislative congruence on: legislative productivity (1877-1996), agency budgeting (1933-2006), and the issuance of executive orders (1945-2001). These examples demonstrate the content validity of our measure, as well as how it can be used to refine our substantive understanding of inter-branch relations.