Presidential Unilateral Authority in a Comparative Perspective

• In Event: Rethinking Conceptions of Presidential Power (Virtual Session)

Abstract

Political scientists and pundits alike have suggested that American democracy is broken, that executive power has gone too far, and that voters will let the president of their party do whatever he wants so long as a party goal is obtained. But there is a significant counter-literatures that suggest, first, that the public maintains boundaries on the executive and police democratic norms and, second, that democracy is likely to be safer if more power was given to the executive as long as it is carefully circumscribed and channeled through appropriate institutions. Our contribution is to put the presidency in comparative perspective across American institutions. How does the unilateral authority of the executive stand with the public? Especially when that authority is compared with that of other branches. We find, through novel survey experiments, that the presidency generally does slightly worse than the other branches---Congress and the Supreme Court---in the eyes of the public. With an institutionally comparative perspective it becomes clear that the president should tread carefully as public sentiment, on average, favors congressional legitimacy, and to a lesser degree the Supreme Court's legitimacy.

Authors

• Alejandra Aldridge, Brigham Young University

• Jeremy C. Pope, Brigham Young University