The Boundaries of Presidents and Institutional Legitimacy

• In Event: Constraints on Exercises of Executive Power

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. If this reality is true, the future of US governance is not bright. We directly test this assumption by asking, do voters place legitimacy constraints on presidential actions when they are achieved through increasingly strong institutional means? We answer this question using two large-n surveys run on the CCES in Fall 2019 and 2020 and find that voters are in fact willing to place institutional limits on the president, even on policies they would like to see pursued.

In Study 1 conducted in Fall 2019, we test what presidential actions voters see as legitimate to accomplish a given policy goal. The scenarios start at meeting with Congressional leaders to make suggestions for legislation and end with the president ignoring the Supreme Court’s decision on his unilateral action. We present the same series of scenarios to respondents on both a left-leaning issue (taxing the wealthy) and on a right-leaning issue (cutting environmental regulations).

Overall, the picture of American democracy is not as bleak as many would suggest. As the presidential means become increasingly strong, specifically ignoring the Supreme Court, respondents generally agree that the president pursuing policy goals in those ways is not legitimate, regardless of the policy. Still, partisanship plays a strong role in the less strong mechanisms, such as meeting with Congress and vetoing a bi-partisan bill, where respondents are more likely to believe the presidential action is illegitimate if their ideology does not align with the policy aim. We discuss that these results may explain why many are concerned about the future of American democracy: most of what we see today is presidents pursuing policy through these less strong institutional means with voter reactions being driven by partisanship, which is consistent with our results in the earlier institutional levels. However, we don’t witness presidents ignoring the Supreme Court in the real world, even though we expect voters to align more with legitimacy over party.

In Study 2 conducted in Fall 2020, we more precisely test the strength of the Supreme Court as an institutional stop to the president as observed in Study 1. To do this, we conducted a survey experiment where we vary whether respondents are told an action was completed by the President via executive action or whether the President worked with Congress to achieve that policy, and then are asked how legitimate the action is. Then, we tell respondents that the Supreme Court ruled the action as either valid or invalid and ask again how legitimate they perceive the action to be. Respondents are presented with four different scenarios using four politically divisive issues: carbon emissions caps, social media censorship, undocumented immigrant status, and assault weapons bans. Study 1 showed us that respondents generally grant that the Supreme Court has strong legitimacy, and this design allows us to explicitly test respondents’ view of the Supreme Court as the final stop, even when their political side does not win the case.

Both of these studies combined offer us a realistic and positive look into voters and the limits they are willing to impose on presidents, even on policies they would like to see pursued.

Authors

• Alejandra Aldridge, Stanford University

• Jeremy C. Pope, Brigham Young University