Confirmation Dynamics: A Model of Presidential Appointments to Independent Agencies

Abstract

Many scholars contend that senators defer to the president on appointments to executive branch positions. Others assert that presidential appointments are highly constrained by senatorial `folkways'. Still others argue that the bureaucracy is essentially uncontrollable via political appointments. In this paper, we present a stylized spatial model of presidential appointments and agency policy-making to explicate the conditions under which senators will constrain presidential appointments to independent agency boards. A key parameter for determining presidential influence is the direction (or absence) of policy drift induced by career bureaucrats' policy preferences. We show that presidential capture of independent agencies follows from favorable bureaucratic drift, but typically does not arise under adverse or zero drift. We illustrate the model via a simulation of appointments over time to an idealized agency board, identifying conditions under which rapid policy convergence on presidential preferences is possible.

Pivotal Politics, Presidential Capital, and Supreme Court Nominations

“…However, only Johnson's nomination of Fortas for associate justice occurred at a time when the president had a filibuster-proof majority in his own party. 5 Like other recent literature that focuses on the interaction between the executive and the Senate during the confirmation process, Moraski and Shipan consider the median senator critical, rather than the filibuster pivot (see e.g., Nokken and Sala 2000). Based on this assumption (among others) they argue that the ideological makeup of the Senate constrains the president's choice of nominees, and oftentimes fully constrains this choice.…”

Lobbying (strategically appointed) bureaucrats

“…This study is distinct from the cited literature in that it accounts for the possibility of strategic agency selection, in the same spirit of Calvert et al (1989), Nokken and Sala (2000), Chang (2001), Bertelli and Feldmann (2007) and Krehbiel (2007). Most of these studies treat bureaucratic agencies as autonomous policy setters, with Bertelli and Feldmann (2007) representing an important exception.…”

Appointment Delay and the Policy Environment of the National Transportation Safety Board

“…In formal theories of appointment, mutual anticipation of presidential and senatorial preferences and the search for an acceptable nominee throughout the duration of the vacancy are the central aspects of the process (Hammond & Hill, 1993;Nokken & Sala, 2000). There is no reason to expect appointment delay to be perfectly reflected in only one of its subintervals.…”