Adherents of unitary executive theory claim the president has exclusive authority over the conduct of foreign policy. Why, then, are some presidents impeached after being involved in foreign policy scandals while others are not? Through a structured, focused comparison, I analyze the Iran-contra affair that embroiled the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Ukrainian phone call scandal precipitated by President Donald Trump in 2019. I find support for the presidential contrition hypothesis as evidenced through Reagan's apology which helped cauterize his scandal. I find weak support for the partisan impeachment hypothesis where instances of impeachment become more frequent as partisan polarization increases. I conclude that impeachment does not function the way the public and scholars expect-as a tool to remove the president from office. The cases analyzed here reveal the threat of impeachment caused administration policy to realign with legislative intent.
Legislative-executive relations are generally portrayed as partisan and combative. The conventional wisdom is that Senate confirmation votes follow party lines, but the reality is different. Based on an original dataset of nearly 500 presidential nominations to executive agencies from 2017-2024, we find that the vote follows the party line only 12% of the time, and the majority of the time, ten or more senators defect from their party's position. We examine the factors that explain the extent of party defection, focusing on the role of electoral timing, the position to which the individual is nominated, and the nominees themselves. We find that party defection is more likely when nominees are not seen as being ideological or partisan, and when the position is of higher status or in an agency perceived as less ideological. These findings reveal overlooked bipartisan dynamics due to the expectation that all politics is partisan.
This article addresses a gap in the study of presidential transitions by examining the understudied role of personal diplomacy between presidents-elect and foreign leaders. While a president-elect holds no formal authority during the eleven weeks between Election Day and the inauguration, there are incentives for foreign leaders to seek out a newly elected president. Similarly, presidents-elect have international and domestic motivations to engage in personal diplomacy. In addition to discussing the logic of leader-to-leader contacts during the transition, this article provides a brief account of the face-to-face meetings between presidents-elect and world leaders since the end of World War II.
How do members of Congress secure influential committee assignments or leadership roles? While scholars have extensively examined the determinants of congressional advancement, the role of financial contributions to party organizations-what we term a "party tax"-has received comparatively limited recent attention. We revisit this mechanism using new data and updated empirical approaches, treating member contributions as indicators of willingness and capacity to advance party goals. Our findings show that such contributions are particularly consequential for members occupying elite committee and leadership positions, consistent with theories emphasizing the concentration of institutional power. We also find asymmetric influences between parties, with stronger effects among Republicans. Addressing causal concerns, we apply coarsened exact matching, showing that members ascending to more powerful positions subsequently increase their party contributions-reinforcing a feedback loop where financial supporters are rewarded with desirable placements. Collectively, our results underscore a strategic process by which monetary contributions facilitate access to institutional power and deepen partisan resource flows.
