Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates

Abstract

How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' behavior. The results underscore the role of uncertainty in statutory policymaking: on average, chief executives' performances are not much different from what should be expected if legislators flip coins to decide how to respond to their proposals. I also analyze the individual performance of chief executives statistically. The findings suggest that the standard by which we should judge the performance of chief executives cannot be conceived in isolation of the conditions under which they operate. So, for example, to be deemed as successful, a typical Westminster-style prime minister should be able to obtain passage of almost all of her pieces of legislation. In contrast, if a chief executive operating in a separation-of-powers system, with a highly fragmented legislature, secures passage for more than two-thirds of her proposals, she can be considered a very successful lawmaker.

Policymaking in Parochial Legislatures: What Laws Pass the Colombian Legislature?

“…Since most bills from either branch are single‐authored, we take this as qualified support for H1b as well. These results are consistent with Saiegh's (2009) findings on presidential “batting averages”, which suggest that executives generally are more successful in getting their bills passed.…”

“…For instance, Calvo (2004) found that Argentine presidents were more likely to pass their bills when they had a majority support in the congress. Similarly, Saiegh (2009) concludes that region‐wide presidents with majority support were more likely to get their bills passed. Thus, we would expect that presidents whose party controlled a legislative majority should be more likely to get their bills passed.…”

“…While “… legislatures rarely initiate legislation, they are often involved in negotiation over policy issues behind the scenes and vetoing or amending executive initiatives” (Morgenstern 2002a, 8). Based on evidence from across Latin America, Saiegh (2009) also concludes that executives play a large role in policymaking, as executive‐initiated bills enjoy on average greater passage rates. He goes on to suggest though that this should not be construed as evidence of legislatures’ irrelevance in the production of public policy because they still exert important influence by blocking legislation, significantly amending bills proposed by the executive, or negotiating with the executive over the content of bills prior to their introduction.…”

Divided We Stand? Democracy as a Method of Processing Conflicts1

“…My own data show that the incidence of riots is inversely correlated with electoral turnout. Perhaps most telling is the evidence offered by Saiegh (2009, reproduced with his permission) that shows that the incidence of riots is high when democratic governments are either not at all effective or when the legislature is just a rubber stamp (see Figure 5).…”

Legislative Knowledge Networks, Status Quo Complexity, and the Approval of Law Initiatives

“…After describing the key properties of the tax legislative network in Argentina, we estimate models of legislative success, that is, the rate of approval of initiatives in Congress (Canes‐Wrone and Marchi ; Mayhew ; Saiegh ; Tam Cho and Fowler ). Results provide evidence that initiatives that take as sources a larger number of (important) laws are less likely to be approved.…”