Revisiting the Two Presidencies

Abstract

Recent scholarly attention has considerably advanced our understanding of executive orders. We argue that executive orders represent a valuable opportunity to assess the relevance of the two presidencies and the distinction between foreign and domestic policies. The over-time analysis (1953-1997) demonstrates significant differences in the effects for most of the variables explaining executive orders depending on the issue area. For example, we find that the president’s share of congressional party seats significantly affects executive orders on domestic policy, but no such effects are found on foreign policy. This result, as well as many others in the analysis, illustrates that factors shaping the executive’s ability to influence policy in Congress differ substantially in their effects on domestic as compared to foreign policy executive orders. We infer from our analysis that the two-presidencies distinction remains a useful one, at least for understanding executive orders.