Roger Larocca

The Bicameral Context of Presidential Agenda Setting

Congress & the presidency, May 1, 2011

I study the impact of bicameralism on presidential agenda setting in Congress. I examine how the ... more I study the impact of bicameralism on presidential agenda setting in Congress. I examine how the president&amp;amp;amp;#39;s influence over the House and Senate is affected by the very strong impact that the House and Senate exercise over each other&amp;amp;amp;#39;s agendas. To answer this question, I develop an innovative and comprehensive dataset of the 6,818 policy issues covered by both House

Strategic Diversion in Political Communication

The Journal of Politics, May 1, 2004

This study shows how an informed advisor can use selective information revelation to divert the a... more This study shows how an informed advisor can use selective information revelation to divert the agenda of a decision maker. An advisor is likely to employ diversion when the decision maker is restricted in the scope of her actions by time, resource, or institutional constraints. The incentive for diversion and the suspicion it engenders in the decision maker reduce the amount of information that can be conveyed by an advisor in two important ways: 1) by expanding the strategic conditions under which no information can be conveyed, and 2) by reducing the strategic conditions under which complete information can be conveyed. This study shows how an informed advisor can selectively reveal private information in order to divert the agenda of a decision maker. For example, a lobbyist or bureaucrat armed with policy expertise on two issues might "be selective in the evidence he offers" (Ferkis 1971) in order to induce the legislature to pursue the lobbyist's or bureaucrat's agenda, rather than the legislature's own salient issue (Deakin 1966, Milbrath 1963, Schlozman & Tierney 1986, Smith 1993). A politician faced with a scandal might release a new policy initiative, while ignoring questions about the scandal, in order to generate coverage of an issue that puts the politician in a more favorable light (e.g. Clayman 2001, Kurtz 1998, Bevalis et al. 1990; Bowers, Elliott & Desmond 1977). And a local informant with valuable knowledge about the location of a common enemy in two possible areas might reveal only one of these locations to a military commander in order to lead the commander into action that promotes the informant's own strategic interests-e.g. with respect to his other rivals-above the objectives of the military official (Sengupta 2001; Conetta 2002; Filkins 2002). In many other cases as well, advisors with expertise on two or more issues can sometimes reveal their information selectively (e.g. on one issue but not the other) in order to divert the attention of a decision maker, e.g. voter, reporter, bureaucrat, away from the decision maker's own salient issue to an issue that is more favorable to the advisor. Opportunities for strategic diversion can arise whenever a decision maker cannot act on all issues at once. This study shows how this incentive for diversion reduces the amount of information that can be conveyed by an informed advisor, and how a decision maker may be able to induce the advisor to reveal more information if she can find a way to credibly

format_quoteA lobbyist's incentive to selectively convey information undercuts message credibility, impacting decision makers' actions on interests.format_quote

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Reconciling Conflicting Gauss-Markov Conditions in the Classical Linear Regression Model

Political Analysis, 2005

This article reconciles conflicting accounts of Gauss-Markov conditions, which specify when ordin... more This article reconciles conflicting accounts of Gauss-Markov conditions, which specify when ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators are also best linear unbiased (BLU) estimators. We show that exogeneity constraints that are commonly assumed in econometric treatments of the Gauss-Markov theorem are unnecessary for OLS estimates of the classical linear regression model to be BLU. We also generalize a set of necessary and sufficient conditions first established by McElroy (1967,Journal of the American Statistical Association62:1302–1304), but not yet generally recognized in the econometric literature, that are appropriate for many political science applications. McElroy's conditions relax the traditional Gauss-Markov restriction on autocorrelation in the errors to allow a type of correlation, exchangeability, that has two desirable characteristics: (1) exchangeable data occur in a potentially important class of political science models, and (2) the form of autocorrelation that occurs in exchangeable data has a ready intuition. We thus show that a common class of sample selection models that does not satisfy the Gauss-Markov conditions specified in econometrics textbooks is, in fact, BLU under OLS estimation.

Sources of Executive Influence in Congress

Unification of Powers: When Effective Lawmakers Sponsor Presidential Proposals in Congress

While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through p... more While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through persuasion, veto bargaining, and public appeals, we argue that an important tool is missing from this list. Specifically, presidents who are strategic in their choices of early coalition partners in Congress-such as effective sponsors of administration bills-significantly enhance their chance of legislative success. We use multiple sources to identify more than 1,400 executive branch proposals appearing as bills in Congress between 1989 and 2006. We examine which members of Congress sponsor these bills on the president's behalf, finding strong evidence of disproportionate sponsorship by effective champions, such as majority-party members, committee and subcommittee chairs, lawmakers with proven effectiveness in the previous Congress, party leaders, and senior lawmakers, all else equal. Analyzing the fate of these proposals, we find that much of the success of the president's agenda in Congress depends on these critical and strategic partnerships with effective congressional proponents. * Prepared for presentation at the 2021 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Seattle. The authors thank Dan Grushkevich and Huchen Liu for valuable research assistance. NSF's grant (SES-0420124) to Kernell supported the collection and preparation of presidents' legislative initiatives. Volden and Wiseman thank the U.S. Democracy Program of the Hewlett Foundation and the Democracy Fund for their continued support for the Center for Effective Lawmaking (www.thelawmakers.org). Presidents come into office with major policy goals, ranging from Obama seeking to provide universal health care, to Trump's agenda on immigration and tax cuts, to Biden's plans on coronavirus relief, infrastructure, and climate change. Although presidents appear to rely increasingly on executive orders to advance their agendas unilaterally (Moe and Howell 1999), they do so mainly when frustrated by Congress' unwillingness to act. With public laws more durable and more financially secure than policies installed by executive orders, presidents would prefer congressional action and support. 1 Whether presidents receive such support and achieve legislative success depends on many factors, both personal and situational. Their powers of persuasion (Neustadt 1960), their influence with the public (Kernell 2006), and their ability to marshal administrative expertise for their proposals (Larocca 2006) remain valuable resources in dealing with Congress. Nevertheless, regardless of the skills the Oval Office politician, all their efforts may come to naught if Congress poses a hostile environment. Divided party control, ideological polarization, and even fissures within the president's own party in Congress pose obstacles that may be insurmountable. The fact that such unfavorable conditions frequently prevail in today's Washington has led presidents, and those who study them, to emphasize unilateral actions. Over the past several decades, presidents have relied more heavily on veto threats, executive orders, and signing statements (which tilt the implementation of laws in the president's favor). Political science research has chronicled these rising domains of presidential leadership (e.g., Mayer 1999, Cooper 2005). Each of these techniques in some sense reflects a failure of 1 Presidents may even use the threat of executive order as leverage to pry a bill out of Congress. President Trump, for example, threatened to issue an executive order in July 2020, to "bring fairness" to technology companies if Congress did not pass legislation to regulate "Big Tech" in a manner that was consistent with his priorities (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-threatens-to-use-executive-orders-against-big-tech-2020-7, Accessed September 14, 2021).

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Book Review: A Unified Theory of Party Competition

Comparative Political Studies, Mar 1, 2006

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Committee Parallelism and Bicameral Agenda Coordination

American Politics Research, Aug 24, 2009

We examine why a significant proportion of the policy issues passed in either the U.S. House or S... more We examine why a significant proportion of the policy issues passed in either the U.S. House or Senate often fail to pass in the other chamber. We hypothesize that much of this failure of the House and Senate to coordinate their agendas occurs because committee jurisdictions are not parallel across chambers. To compare House and Senate agendas, we develop a comprehensive issue-level data set covering all bills introduced in the 103rd Congress. We estimate a multinomial logit model that reveals that the degree of jurisdictional parallelism across chambers is indeed one of the most important determinants of whether issues that pass in one chamber also pass in the other chamber.

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The Presidential Agenda: Sources of Executive Influence in Congress

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Larocca, Roger T. The presidential agenda : so... more Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Larocca, Roger T. The presidential agenda : sources of executive influence in Congress / Roger T. Larocca. p. cm.-(Parliaments and legislatures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8142-1033-3 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 0-8142-9110-4 (cd-rom) 1. Presidents-United States. 2. Political leadership-United States. 3. Political planning-United States. 4. Executive power-United States. I. Title. II. Series: Parliaments and legislatures series. JK516.L254 2006 328.73'07456-dc22 2006009444 Cover design by Dan O'Dair. Text design and typesetting by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Type set in Times New Roman.

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Sources of Executive Influence in Congress

The Effect of Higher Education Performance Funding on Graduation Rates

Journal of Education Finance, 2020

Unification of Powers: When Effective Lawmakers Sponsor Presidential Proposals in Congress

While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through p... more While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through persuasion, veto bargaining, and public appeals, we argue that an important tool is missing from this list. Specifically, presidents who are strategic in their choices of early coalition partners in Congress – such as effective sponsors of administration bills – significantly enhance their chance of legislative success. We identify more than 1,400 executive branch proposals appearing as bills in Congress between 1989 and 2006. We examine which members of Congress sponsor these bills, finding strong evidence of disproportionate sponsorship by effective champions, such as majority-party members, committee and subcommittee chairs, lawmakers with proven effectiveness in the previous Congress, party leaders, and senior lawmakers, all else equal. Analyzing the fate of these proposals, we find that much of the success of the president’s agenda in Congress depends on these critical and strategic ...

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New Data for Investigating the President’s Legislative Program: OMB Logs and SAPs*

Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2019

This article introduces two newly available sources of data on presidents’ legislative programs. ... more This article introduces two newly available sources of data on presidents’ legislative programs. The first consists of administration legislative initiatives cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for submission to Congress. We refer to these records as “OMB logs” because they record OMB’s clearance actions on executive‐branch legislative proposals. The second consists of memoranda, officially called Statements of Administration Policy, that OMB sends to floor leaders detailing the president’s position on legislation pending floor consideration. We compare these new data on presidents’ legislative initiatives and policy preferences with those contained in currently available sources—The Public Papers of the Presidents and Congressional Quarterly’s scoring of presidential positions on roll‐call votes—and with a long available but seldom used fifth source, the Congressional Record. Both new data sources list bills and legislative preferences that are not included in the ...

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Fast-Track Procedures for The Consideration of Presidential Measures in Congress

The Bicameral Context of Presidential Agenda Setting

Congress & the Presidency, 2011

I study the impact of bicameralism on presidential agenda setting in Congress. I examine how the ... more I study the impact of bicameralism on presidential agenda setting in Congress. I examine how the president&amp;amp;amp;#39;s influence over the House and Senate is affected by the very strong impact that the House and Senate exercise over each other&amp;amp;amp;#39;s agendas. To answer this question, I develop an innovative and comprehensive dataset of the 6,818 policy issues covered by both House

Gauss–Markov Theorem

Encyclopedia of Research Design

Strategic Diversion in Political Communication

The Journal of Politics, 2004

This study shows how an informed advisor can use selective information revelation to divert the a... more This study shows how an informed advisor can use selective information revelation to divert the agenda of a decision maker. An advisor is likely to employ diversion when the decision maker is restricted in the scope of her actions by time, resource, or institutional constraints. The incentive for diversion and the suspicion it engenders in the decision maker reduce the amount of information that can be conveyed by an advisor in two important ways: 1) by expanding the strategic conditions under which no information can be conveyed, and 2) by reducing the strategic conditions under which complete information can be conveyed. This study shows how an informed advisor can selectively reveal private information in order to divert the agenda of a decision maker. For example, a lobbyist or bureaucrat armed with policy expertise on two issues might "be selective in the evidence he offers" (Ferkis 1971) in order to induce the legislature to pursue the lobbyist's or bureaucrat's agenda, rather than the legislature's own salient issue (Deakin 1966, Milbrath 1963, Schlozman & Tierney 1986, Smith 1993). A politician faced with a scandal might release a new policy initiative, while ignoring questions about the scandal, in order to generate coverage of an issue that puts the politician in a more favorable light (e.g. Clayman 2001, Kurtz 1998, Bevalis et al. 1990; Bowers, Elliott & Desmond 1977). And a local informant with valuable knowledge about the location of a common enemy in two possible areas might reveal only one of these locations to a military commander in order to lead the commander into action that promotes the informant's own strategic interests-e.g. with respect to his other rivals-above the objectives of the military official (Sengupta 2001; Conetta 2002; Filkins 2002). In many other cases as well, advisors with expertise on two or more issues can sometimes reveal their information selectively (e.g. on one issue but not the other) in order to divert the attention of a decision maker, e.g. voter, reporter, bureaucrat, away from the decision maker's own salient issue to an issue that is more favorable to the advisor. Opportunities for strategic diversion can arise whenever a decision maker cannot act on all issues at once. This study shows how this incentive for diversion reduces the amount of information that can be conveyed by an informed advisor, and how a decision maker may be able to induce the advisor to reveal more information if she can find a way to credibly

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Reconciling Conflicting Gauss-Markov Conditions in the Classical Linear Regression Model

Political Analysis, 2005

This article reconciles conflicting accounts of Gauss-Markov conditions, which specify when ordin... more This article reconciles conflicting accounts of Gauss-Markov conditions, which specify when ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators are also best linear unbiased (BLU) estimators. We show that exogeneity constraints that are commonly assumed in econometric treatments of the Gauss-Markov theorem are unnecessary for OLS estimates of the classical linear regression model to be BLU. We also generalize a set of necessary and sufficient conditions first established by McElroy (1967,Journal of the American Statistical Association62:1302–1304), but not yet generally recognized in the econometric literature, that are appropriate for many political science applications. McElroy's conditions relax the traditional Gauss-Markov restriction on autocorrelation in the errors to allow a type of correlation, exchangeability, that has two desirable characteristics: (1) exchangeable data occur in a potentially important class of political science models, and (2) the form of autocorrelation that occ...

Book Review: A Unified Theory of Party Competition

Comparative Political Studies, 2006

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Committee Parallelism and Bicameral Agenda Coordination

American Politics Research, 2009

We examine why a significant proportion of the policy issues passed in either the U.S. House or S... more We examine why a significant proportion of the policy issues passed in either the U.S. House or Senate often fail to pass in the other chamber. We hypothesize that much of this failure of the House and Senate to coordinate their agendas occurs because committee jurisdictions are not parallel across chambers. To compare House and Senate agendas, we develop a comprehensive issue-level data set covering all bills introduced in the 103rd Congress. We estimate a multinomial logit model that reveals that the degree of jurisdictional parallelism across chambers is indeed one of the most important determinants of whether issues that pass in one chamber also pass in the other chamber.

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U.S. State Election Reform and Turnout in Presidential Elections

State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 2011

We explore the effects of state-level election reforms on voter turnout in the 2000, 2004, and 20... more We explore the effects of state-level election reforms on voter turnout in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections. Using a cost-benefit model of political participation, we develop a framework for analyzing the burdens imposed by the following: universal mail voting, permanent no-excuse absentee voting, nonpermanent no-excuse absentee voting, early in-person voting, Election Day registration, and voter identification requirements. We analyze turnout data from the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Current Population Surveys and show that implementation by states of both forms of no-excuse absentee voting and Election Day registration has a positive and significant affect on turnout in each election. We find positive but less consistent effects on turnout for universal mail voting and voter identification requirements. Our results also show that early in-person voting has a negative and statistically significant correlation with turnout in all three elections.

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