The Politics Precedents Make: Executive Order Persistence

• In Event: Politics of the Unilateral Presidency

Abstract

Why do some executive orders persist? A key aspect of them is that they can be unilaterally reversed at any time. But subsequent presidents sometimes fail to reverse orders that they would not have enacted on their own. I use a formal model to argue that two factors can explain this phenomenon. First, policy stemming from an order may alter the power of constituent groups, influencing future actors’ induced preferences such that the order perpetuates itself. Second, the order may force an awkward trade-off for a future president, who may have to choose between perpetuating policy or revealing misaligned policy preferences to constituents. These results suggest that executive orders are stickier than usually supposed.

Author

• David Robert Foster, University of California, Berkeley