Structured-Induced Deference or Equal and Coordinate Actor: Congressional Influence on American Foreign Policy

Abstract

Perhaps no separation of powers issue receives as much scholarly attention as the near monopoly modern presidents exert over foreign policy. Yet, despite an extensive literature on the subject, scholars have drawn different conclusions as to the causes of this change, finding that lawmakers either defer to the president or are equal and coordinate actors on foreign policy. Using the separation of powers as a guide, I attempt to rectify these differences and demonstrate instances in the roll call record where examples of both explanations are most evident. Recovering ideal point estimates between the 87th and 112th Congress on votes highlighting competing governmental objectives, findings show that the chamber median frequently shifts toward the president on foreign policy votes in the final passage stage and during the treaty process. However, evidence also shows Congress is less likely to defer to the president on domestic legislation and appropriations.

Keywords

presidency separation of powers U.S. Constitution foreign policy

Introduction

A common criticism of the U.S. Constitution is that the Framers did not firmly establish the exact allocation of authority for how to address certain policy concerns. One area in particular that challenges scholarly judgments of interbranch policy jurisdiction is the role of Congress and the president in shaping national defense and foreign policy.¹ Some argue, for example, that the single defining feature of the modern presidency distinguishing it from nearly all previous understandings of executive power is the near monopoly Congress gives contemporary presidents on foreign policy (Eagleton, 1974; Edelson, 2013; Ely, 1993; Fisher, 2004; Franck, 1992; Hinckley, 1994; Koh, 1990; Lindsey, 1994; Rudalevige, 2006; Schlesinger, 2004). Presidents now singlehandedly commit troops abroad while Congress is content to remain a mere spectator. Critics of this view, on the contrary, counter that Congress actually plays a larger role in resisting presidents on foreign policy, often forcing executives to amend, and even alter, their foreign policy goals (Carter & Scott, 2009; Goldsmith, 2012; Howell, 2011; Howell & Kriner, 2009; Howell & Pevehouse, 2007; Kriner, 2010; Sundquist, 1981). Far from being a toothless institution complacent in executive aggrandizement, lawmakers not only have tools to stop the president, they actually use them. However, despite the valuable insights these theories provide, they often leave readers with little guidance on how to reconcile the alternative political realities they envision: in one, Congress acquiesces to the president; in the other, it is an equal and coordinate actor.

A central theme that undergirds the literature is that the circumstance of war ultimately shapes interbranch relations. War helps explain conditions that motivate presidential uses of force (Fordham, 2005; Meernik, 2000; Meernik & Waterman, 1996; Mitchell & Moore, 2002; Ostrom & Job, 1986; Patrick & Oneal, 1991; Stoll, 1984), such as the possibility that presidents benefit from rally effects at the onset of war (Edwards & Swenson, 1997; Kernell, 1997; Lee, 1977; Muller, 1970; Ostrom & Simon, 1985), and how, during wartime, public opinion can affect a president’s ability to govern (Baum, 2004; Berinsky, 2009; Boettcher & Cobb, 2006; Edwards & Wood, 1999; Gartner, 2008; Gartner & Segura, 1998; Gelpi, Feaver, & Reifler, 2009; Gelpi & Grieco, 2015; Hetherington & Husser, 2012; Kriner & Shen, 2014; Voeten & Brewer, 2006). Yet, war cannot fully account for inconsistencies between explanations of executive dominance and congressional agency as one can assume that, during peacetime, presidents should face stiff resistance on foreign policy. Rather than clarify these disagreements, war can confound explanations of interbranch rivalry on foreign policy.

Lost in debates over Congress’ ability to counter the modern executive on foreign policy is how the Constitution was purposively structured to give each branch the qualities needed to secure three governmental objectives: popular will, self-preservation, and popular rights. The structures embedded within the separation of powers, in other words, provide both branches with unique vantage points from which to address these objectives (Tulis, 2014). Where the primary constitutional objective for Congress centers on concerns over popular will, the Constitution’s goal for the presidency is to place self-preservation, or national defense, as its primary concern. Congress, in turn, is ideally positioned to deliberate, legislate, and, in effect, legitimize executive actions on foreign policy. If the Framers demarcated a constitutional gray area on foreign policy, opening the door for cooperation or conflict (Yoo, 2005), it is when these primary objectives are at odds (as when popular will conflicts with self-preservation) that disagreements over foreign policy are most visible.

To demonstrate this view, I recover legislator ideal point estimates for both the House and Senate between the 87th and 112th Congress on roll calls that highlight instances when these objectives influence congressional voting. My theory is that because the Constitution structures each branch with unique qualities and functions, lawmakers will behave differently to address each governmental objective. When comparing aggregate ideal points between all roll call voting and select votes that represent these objectives, I argue that legislative preferences will shift toward the president on votes that specifically align with objectives associated with self-preservation (final passage voting on foreign policy and treaty consent votes in the Senate). In contrast, preferences on polices commonly associated with popular will (appropriations and domestic legislation) will have a higher likelihood of shifting away from the president.

Overall, findings comport with theoretical expectations. Using Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers’s (2004) IDEAL estimating procedure, results show that the chamber median on foreign policy voting in the final passage stage in the House and Senate, as well as treaty consent votes in the Senate, overwhelmingly shift toward the policy preferences of the president. Findings also show that presidents are less influential in moving the chamber median on domestic legislation, domestic treaty legislation, and on both foreign and domestic appropriations.

Background

Perhaps the most popularized argument to help explain the struggle between Congress and the president on foreign policy is Wildavsky’s (1966) “two presidencies” thesis. In this seminal study, Wildavsky argues that while the Constitution provides for one president, in practice there are two presidencies—one for domestic legislation and another for foreign policy. Although presidents rarely succeed in enacting their domestic policy agendas as competing interests make surviving the legislative process difficult, presidents rarely lose on foreign policy. Presidents not only have access to classified information that allows them to make foreign policy unilaterally; in contrast, Congress is often concerned with parochial interests and policies that motivate constituents (Canes-Wrone, Howell, & Lewis 2007).

Armed with a hypothesis that claimed to explain modern presidential power, scholars set out to test this theory, producing competing and often conflicting results. On the positive side, a number of studies supported the two presidencies thesis, albeit not uniformly, using an impressive range of data and perspectives. Souva and Rohde (2007), for example, show that while votes on foreign policy have become increasingly combative over time, significant bipartisan support issues still exists. The reason, they argue, is that elite opinion cleavages are often less intense on foreign policy, as lawmakers suffer information asymmetries to effectively challenge the president. Canes-Wrone et al. (2007), on the contrary, find presidents in fact have considerably more control to influence foreign affairs through the budget process. Others, such as Marshall and Pacelle (2005) find significant difference in the president’s ability to issue successful executive orders on foreign policy than domestic policy. In the end, where Wildavsky finds evidence of the two presidencies between 1948 and 1964, recent studies find evidence well into the late 1990s supporting the claim that the thesis is not merely an artifact of the Cold War era.

Other studies also find a strong link between expanded presidential power and foreign policy. While evidence suggests the two presidencies exist for Republican presidents (Fleisher & Bond, 1988), another study finds particularly strong evidence during periods of divided government (Zeidenstein, 1981). Further support is also found in presidential communications with the public. Compared with domestic policy, presidents are less likely to use foreign policy speeches to entice the public to pressure Congress, as the public already gives the president considerable leeway to conduct diplomacy and use the vast national security apparatus to protect citizens (Lewis, 1997).²

Although the research in favor of the two presidencies thesis appears compelling, others find little evidence to support the theory. While some find absolutely no evidence (Christenson & Kriner, 2017; Schraufnagel & Shellman, 2001), the general consensus among critical studies centers on a serious time-bound effect, especially after the mid-1960s (Cohen, 1982; Edwards, 1986; LeLoup & Shull, 1979; Meernik, 1993; Prins & Marshall, 2001; Sullivan, 1991). For example, though McCormick and Wittkopf (1990) find bipartisan support for the theory before the Vietnam War, Sigelman (1979) finds mixed evidence for the two presidencies between the Eisenhower and Carter administrations; while Fleisher, Bond, Krutz, and Hanna (2000) show that the theory is time-bound because foreign policy voting has become less bipartisan over time.

Theory

One explanation that may lend needed clarity to this debate is that the link between separate yet overlapping spheres of authority on foreign policy has not been conceptualized in a manner that lends itself to accurate testing. A common approach is to examine this policy from an institution-centric perspective. Political scientists, in other words, tend to view power as something that can be partitioned between institutions (Tulis, 1987, 2014) prompting scholars to give extra explanatory weight to a single institution when describing systemic interactions. While congressional scholars often take inventory of legislative action in response to presidential uses of force—whether through direct legislative action (Howell & Kriner, 2009; Kriner, 2010; Sundquist, 1981) or through indirect means (Goldsmith, 2012; Howell & Pevehouse, 2007)—presidential scholars, particularly those who view the presidency as an office with wide grants of legal authority to direct American foreign policy, gravitate toward using the vesting clause in Article II to argue that executive power should not be limited, as by its very nature the execution of law requires discretion to meet a diversity of circumstances (Eastland, 1993; Nichols, 1994; Posner & Vermeule, 2006; Thach, 2010; Yoo, 2010).

In an attempt to expand on this institutional-centric perspective, I present a systemic view of American foreign policy that accounts for how the objectives, qualities, and structures of the separation of powers help explain when legislators defer to the president on foreign policy or when Congress is an equal and coordinate player. In the following sections, I hope to convince the reader that though the Constitution is “an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy” (Corwin, 1957), the document does provide clear guidance not only on the specific powers of Congress and the president on foreign policy but also where these powers are likely most pronounced in the roll call record.

The President

A common view on the development of the American presidency is that since World War II presidential power has expanded significantly on foreign policy. While numerous narratives and theories have been introduced to explain this change, including the repositioning of the United States as a superpower (Lobel, 1989), advances in media technology and the expansion of the public presidency (Kernell, 1997), and an increasing number of foreign policy events (Wood & Peake, 1998), rarely do scholars discuss how constitutional design provides opportunities for the chief executive to set the nation’s foreign policy agenda. Certainly while some have criticized this transformation in presidential power as a serious threat to republican governance (Ackerman, 2013), particularly in the areas of executive agreements (Schlesinger, 2004), executive privilege (Crockett, 2009), and prerogative power (Fatovic, 2004; Lobel, 1989; Rossiter, 2002), one should not view these changes from an entirely negative perspective or, for that matter, as a recent metamorphosis in the separation of powers. One can also view the president’s role as the primary architect of American foreign policy as a natural attribute of presidential power, and as part of the Constitution long before the 20th century (Nichols, 1994).

Table 1 presents an overview of the objectives, functions, and structures of both Congress and the president within the separation of powers and the expressed authority assigned to both branches on foreign policy. Adapted from Tulis (1987, 2014), the purpose of this table is to show that though it is widely accepted that the separation of powers preserves liberty by limiting the arbitrary use or concentration of power in one branch, the notion that government was structured in a way as to only protect liberty and individual rights misses its underlying goal. “The purpose of the separation of powers was to make effective governance more likely” (Tulis 2014, p. 10). Thus, if one objective of the Constitution is to provide an adequate defense, as the preservation of liberty and the protection of individual rights is meaningless without sufficient security, then it is more likely that a unitary actor (Federalist 70), serving for adequate duration (Federalist 71), and eligible for reelection (Federalist 72) should have the necessary qualities (energy, secrecy, and dispatch) for the steady administration of law. This is not to suggest that presidents are never concerned with popular will, or that the goals of national defense are never in tension with these other objectives. Rather, presidential priorities often focus on ensuring that this governmental objective is met.

Table 1.

Separation of Powers and Foreign Policy.

Objectives	Functions	Constitutional design	Foreign policy powers
(Rank order)	(Special qualities)	(Structures and means)	(Expressed)	(Implied)	(Delegated)
Presidency
1. Self-Preservation	a. Energy	Unity	Commander-in-chief	Ex. agreements	Directing forces
2. Popular will	b. Dispatch	Duration	Make treaties	Ex. privilege	Spending
3. Popular rights	c. Secrecy	Reeligibility	Appoint officers	Prerogative	Readiness
	d. Steady administration of law		Receive ambassadors		Covert operations
			Head federal agencies
Congress
1. Popular will	a. Deliberation	Plurality	Declare war	Oversight
2. Popular rights		Electoral proximity	Raise military
3. Self-preservation		Bicameralism	Support military
			Appropriations
			Call militia
			Organize military
			Rule making
			Punish piracy
			Approve treaties

Source. Taken from The Two Constitutional Presidencies, Table 1.1 (Tulis, 2014).

If the Constitution equips the president with the necessary means and requisite energy to conduct foreign policy, then the relatively strong formal and informal powers given to the chief executive should provide some guidance as to the manner in which legislators are likely to behave in foreign affairs. Not only do expressed powers provide the president with the authority to make treaties, receive foreign ambassadors, and head federal agencies but it is also common practice that during national foreign policy emergencies, presidents will exercise discretionary authority to combat unforeseen challenges even without existing statutory guidance (Fatovic, 2004; Lobel, 1989; Rossiter, 2002). In addition, the president’s vantage point within the constitutional order encourages the chief executive to exercise prospective judgments on potential issues and threats long before both Congress and the public can fully appreciate the gravity of a foreign policy threat (Tulis, 2009). The president, both through his expressed power as commander-in-chief and through the authority delegated by Congress to direct military forces, spend appropriated funds, and conduct covert operations, will often force foreign policy issues onto the legislative agenda, prompting lawmakers to act on executive actions and proposals in which they may lack up-to-date or sufficient knowledge.

This is not to say that legislators are entirely at a disadvantage relative to the president on foreign policy. Instead, this view merely claims that the president is likely to have influence in some areas of the legislative process. In other words, the structural advantages given to the president by the Constitution allow the chief executive to place greater priority on certain aspects of foreign policy than Congress. Because presidents have unique institutional and constitutional abilities in key dimensions of foreign policy including access to information, embedded expertise in the defense and diplomatic bureaucracy, operational control over key agency resources, and, most importantly, the ability to set American foreign policy, lawmakers often place a lower priority on those aspects of foreign policy where they are at a disadvantage. In contrast, Congress exercises more control, and thus places greater priority, on facets of the legislative process where presidents cannot act unilaterally and require congressional action. Structured-induced deference, unlike the arguments advanced in the literature, does not signify a complete abdication of constitutional responsibility by Congress, though such conditions can and do exist. Rather, structural design forces each branch to rank its policy priorities.

To help the reader conceptualize the conditions under which lawmakers are most likely to shift their preferences toward the president, I present this theory using a standard utility model (Chiou & Rothenberg, 2003; Clinton, 2007; Cox & McCubbins, 1993; Krehbiel, 1998; Peress, 2013). Following convention, I assume legislators have single-peaked preferences in a unidimensional policy space $X$ where legislator i’s most preferred outcome among a set of policy choices is $x_{i} \in X$ . Furthermore, I assume the status quo point, q, reflects existing policy from some previous decision making period. Using a straightforward median voter model (Black, 1958; Downs, 1957), the chamber median m with ideal point $x_{m}$ signifies the median legislator on a given policy choice. Under conditions in which the president, $p$ , places a lower priority on a given policy outcome, policy proposals will reflect the preferences of the median voter, $q = x_{m}$ . If we imagine that this condition occurs during a period of divided government in which Congress is under Democrat control with a Republican president, then the median voter, a Democrat, would create a policy outcome, $x_{m} < q < p$ , in which the chamber median is left of the status quo. However, if Congress places a lower priority on a proposed outcome, then the median voter will shift toward the preferred policy position of the president $q < x_{m} < p$ on votes initiated by the president. The key distinction that signifies shifts in legislator preferences on foreign policy is that lawmakers prioritize domestic legislation over foreign policy. This rank ordering, however, may not signify sincere preference ordering but rather recognition of their institutional abilities to impact both policy areas relative to the president

Where in the legislative record are we most likely to see examples of structured-induced deference and instances where Congress is an equal and coordinate actor? Wildavsky, of course, argues that Congress supports the president on most foreign policy votes. This seems unlikely, however, as the dynamics of the legislative process suggests lawmakers have opportunities to influence all legislation. They simply need to have conditions where their priorities give a higher payoff. Thus, despite claims that legislator preferences are consistent across the entire roll call record (Poole & Rosenthal, 2007), some, for example, find that lawmakers actually treat final passage and procedural votes differently (Roberts, 2007). In fact, as Theriault (2008) shows, most of the polarization in Congress since the 1970s actually occurs on procedural and amendment voting, not final passage votes. I assume, then, that we are more likely to see examples of structured-induced deference, instances where legislator preferences move in the direction of the president, on final passage votes that address foreign policy. The hypothesis for final passage votes on foreign policy is as follows:

Hypothesis 1: The chamber median will shift toward the president’s preferred position on foreign policy roll calls that are in the final passage stage.

By extension, this hypothesis implies that shifts in the chamber median should be less pronounced or negative on domestic legislation. That is, when advantages such as energy, secrecy, and dispatch provide the chief executive with the skills to singlehandedly address national security concerns, these features diminish on policies that stir the passions and concerns of local interests. Presidents are less likely to create the same bipartisan alliances on, say, education policy, as they can with defense policy.

To further demonstrate the link between legislator preferences and presidential initiatives on foreign policy, I next turn to international treaties. Unlike the assumption underpinning the first hypothesis, the treaty process clearly places the president as the key agenda setter. While the Constitution is silent on enforcing and terminating treaties, Article II, Section 2 does stipulate a direct role for the Senate in treaty-making. Not surprisingly, considerable scholarly debate centers on the extent to which the chief executive has plenary authority to unilaterally initiate treaties with foreign states (Adler, 2004; Auerswald & Maltzman, 2003; Fisher, 2008). Yet, despite efforts to embellish Congress’ role in the treaty process, most would agree that “the executive branch is the sole mouthpiece of the nation in communication with foreign sovereignties” (Corwin, 1957, p. 189). However, while presidents use the treaty process to signal policy intentions to Congress (Martin, 2005), presidents are more likely to use executive agreements to advance their foreign policy priorities (Caruson & Farrar-Myers, 2007) as executive agreements are more efficient and expedient than relying on the treaty process (Krutz & Peake, 2006). Presidents prefer to circumvent the treaty process and unilaterally set foreign policy, but because presidents initiate treaties, the expectation is that the median ideal point of the chamber will shift toward the president in the treaty process.

Hypothesis 2: The Senate median will shift toward the president’s preferred position on treaty consent votes.

Congress

The Constitution clearly grants Congress numerous foreign policy powers. Yet the number of expressed powers given Congress is not necessarily the best method of determining the extent to which lawmakers influence American foreign policy. Rather, placing these powers in conjunction with the structures, qualities, and objectives of Congress can provide guidance to determine where in the legislative process Congress is most likely to exert control. Because Congress is a deliberative political body structured to allow a range of diverse political interests to influence the legislative process, concerns over such topics as creating and organizing the military, establishing rules of military conduct, and confirming leadership to manage these institutions require lengthy evaluation and debate. A close proximity to constituents, frequent and repeated evaluation by voters, and the need to protect popular will (Federalist 55), in other words, are not desirable characteristics for expedient lawmaking. Compared with the presidency, the structural advantages of which imply a forward-looking approach to foreign policy, Congress functions best when it evaluates and debates executive action. Congress’s vantage point in the constitutional order, in other words, is best suited for retrospective evaluation and judgment (Tulis, 2009).

Congress, I argue, is on equal footing with the president not when it attempts to define America’s place in the world by initiating foreign policy but when the core objectives of both branches clash. That is, when executive action in war becomes too objectionable, when the need for self-preservation no longer satisfies or supersedes popular will, and when foreign policy is more about politics than policy; Congress’s position in the constitutional order is enhanced when it exercises its legislative toolbox to rebalance government’s priorities by making executive discretion accountable to democratic principle. The genius of the separation of powers is that it not only divides spheres of political power but also creates a working tension between the branches by making disagreements over democracy, rights, and self-preservation a governing virtue that transforms and elevates partisan argument into debates over institutional power.

Congressional scholars have long recognized that Congress has tools at its disposal to challenge the executive. Popular strategies, such as conducting oversight hearings (Aberbach, 1991; Kriner & Schickler, 2014; McCubbins & Schwartz, 1984; Park, 2017; Parker & Dull, 2009), placing holds on presidential appointments (Epstein & Segal, 2007; Krutz, Fleisher, & Bond, 1998; Shipan & Shannon, 2003; Tulis, 1997), passing new legislation to restrict executive discretion (Sundquist, 1981), and, of course, impeachment (Tulis, 2009), can shift the pendulum back toward Congress. In addition to these tools, two areas where Congress can challenge the president on foreign policy are through appropriations and domestic treaty legislation.

In designing the Constitution, the Framers understood that the power of the sword and the purse should be housed in different branches (Hamilton & Madison, 1793/1845). Looking to English history, the Framers recognized that the one protection Parliament possessed to stop the king from initiating and perpetuating destructive foreign policy centered on limiting funding (Yoo, 2005). Even contemporary proponents of a potent executive (Eastland, 1993; Yoo, 2010), who argue efforts to impede the president’s expressed and implied powers on foreign policy is a blatant usurpation of constitutional power, recognize that the one tool Congress can use to check the president is its spending power. When Congress delegates to the president, admitting a function is executive in nature and outside its competence, it is through appropriations that lawmakers can reclaim some authority. The appropriation of funds, rather than legislative efforts to limit expressed executive authority, provides Congress with the means to participate in all aspects of foreign policy.

Hypothesis 3: Presidents will have less influence in shifting the chamber median toward their ideal position on appropriations.

Lawmakers are also likely to exert stronger influence over legislation that attempts to interpret the nation’s international obligations. Although the Constitution provides clear direction in the ratification and approval of international treaties, disagreement exists over self-execution of international agreements on domestic regulation and conduct. Surprisingly, legal scholars disagree over the extent to which the president and the Senate can circumvent the full legislative process when approving international treaties (Bradley, 1998; Golove, 2000; Henkin, 1997; Yoo, 2005). At the center of this debate is the question of whether treaties are binding on the sovereign authority of the United States or are merely a starting point in fostering relations with other countries, as complete codification requires enactment through proper constitutional channels. Whereas the president has unilateral authority to draft and propose treaties, and the Senate can agree to any proposal, the legislative process allows all legislators a bite of the treaty pie. If lawmakers are territorial on domestic legislation and more likely to exert their influence on matters that concern local constituent concern, then this behavior should also extend to domestic treaty legislation.

Hypothesis 4: Presidents will have less influence in shifting the chamber median toward their ideal position on domestic treaty legislation.

Data and Method

To test these theoretical predictions, I examine the roll call record for both the House and Senate between the 87th and 112th Congress. Although some have criticized using roll call votes to analyze American foreign policy—arguing that as Congress has systematically delegated authority to the president in foreign affairs, the sample size for an effective study is decreased (Canes-Wrone et al., 2007; Clinton & Lapinski, 2008)—I argue that the roll call record can, in fact, provide insight into understanding whether legislator preferences shift under different circumstances (Howell & Rogowski, 2013). Two arguments support this view.

First, scholars have demonstrated that specific roll calls can provide opportunities to make predictions on legislative behavior without relying exclusively on the entire voting record. Although some have found noticeable differences in legislator preferences by vote type (Roberts, 2007; Theriault, 2008) and policy (Crespin & Rohde, 2010), others have discovered legislator preferences can change on specific policies over time, despite the fact that aggregate preferences demonstrate a degree of stability (Bateman, Clinton, & Lapinski, 2017). Thus, few avenues exist for estimating shifts in legislator preferences other than the roll call record.

Second, though alternative metrics, such as federal spending (Canes-Wrone et al., 2007), provide insight into interbranch politics, these measures may not entirely capture the theory described above. Budgets supporting presidential requests are not necessarily a sign that Congress defers to the president. In many instances, Congress acts on presidential budget requests with indifference as most line items are embedded in the regular budget process and receive little attention from lawmakers. In addition, presidents are more successful early in their terms, but lose the ability to sway legislators as their administration progresses (Schick, 2007). It is difficult to discern, then, whether budget figures are the result of congressional appeasement, indifference, or the wish of lawmakers to extract benefits from the appropriations process.

To determine when legislative preferences shift toward the president, I parse the roll call record by specific policy. Using the major topic codes provided by the Policy Agendas Project, foreign policy votes are labeled as Defense (16) and International Affairs and Foreign Aid (19). All other topic codes are classified as domestic legislation where final passage votes pertain to final passage, conference report voting, and veto override roll calls. For the remaining classifications, I divide the roll call record by foreign and domestic appropriations³ using the above topic codes.⁴

Estimation

To recover legislator ideal points across these various classifications, I use the Bayesian estimation procedure developed by Clinton et al. (2004). Although the industry standard DW-Nominate scores (Poole & Rosenthal, 2007) allow users to directly compare estimates across time and between chambers, these scores are limited in this application as they are estimated from all roll calls votes regardless of policy. The Bayesian approach, on the contrary, allows a greater degree of flexibility to parse votes by policy and type as this estimation procedure does not exclude voting members with limited voting records as is common with Nominate.

One challenge in estimating legislator ideal points is that comparison across time and between chambers is difficult, as the spatial proximities of votes may not always align. While scholars have developed techniques to overcome this issue by creating a fixed point of reference for comparison (Bailey, 2007; Groseclose, Levitt, & Snyder, 1999; Howell & Rogowski, 2013), the underlying concerns that motivate dynamic scaling methods are not entirely applicable to this article. Following Clinton (2007), because I do not directly compare legislator preferences across time or chamber and instead focus primarily on each individual Congress, there is little need to use a bridging technique.⁵

I operationalize shifts in legislator preferences as the difference between the median position on specific roll calls and the median position on all roll calls. For example, to demonstrate chamber median shifts toward the president on foreign policy in the final passage stage, I calculate this difference as $- (m_{F} - m_{C})$ when the White House is under Democrat control, and $(m_{F} - m_{C})$ when under Republican control. In each equation, the spatial position of the chamber on a single dimensional plane is no longer of primary concern. The size of the shift toward the preferred position of the president is more important. Negative scores signify a shift away from the president while positive scores denote the opposite.

Legislative Preferences and Self-Preservation

To give the reader a sense of the variability in legislator preferences across different roll call classifications, Figure 1 presents a snapshot of aggregate and individual ideal point estimates for the 89th (1965-1966) and 104th (1995-1996) House of Representatives. Because the amount of data used in this study is prohibitively large to display in its entirety, the purpose of this section is to draw the reader’s attention to common characteristics that define nearly every Congress tested in this study by highlighting two important points.

Figure 1.

Select aggregate and individual-level shifts in legislator preferences.

First, when compared against lawmaker preferences on all roll call votes, findings show that—contrary to conventional wisdom—legislator preferences are not entirely stable. Supporting Howell and Rogowski (2013), who find that legislator preferences shift toward the ideal position of the president at the outset of war, legislator preferences also shift in both aggregate- and individual-level voting on foreign policy legislation. At the aggregate level, the density plots not only highlight increased partisanship across time; the findings also depict clear shifts to the left on final passage votes for foreign policy. In other words, despite the fact that Congress has become more polarized over time, legislator preferences shift more toward the president on foreign policy than on domestic legislation.

This conclusion is further supported when comparing individual-level preference shifts for both samples. In each graph, I plot individual ideal point estimates for domestic and foreign policy against each member’s preference point on all votes. Points on the 45-degree line signify preference stability. Where domestic voting seems to display a reasonable level of stability, shifts in legislator preferences are most pronounced on foreign policy roll calls. Ideal points to the left of the diagonal line signify shifts toward the president’s position, while points to the right denote the opposite.

Second, the findings presented in Figure 1 also raise important questions regarding some common indicators used to explain legislative behavior. To further demonstrate the underlying theory of this study, I select the 89th and 104th House, as these periods represent clear contrasts on how to base expectations. Although the presidency was controlled by a Democrat during both periods, the composition of Congress and the events that marked each period are dissimilar. That is, because the government during the 89th Congress was controlled by Democrats at the start of the Vietnam War and the Republican-controlled 104th Congress was marked by divided government with no major military conflict, we should see entirely different outcomes in legislative voting. But, this is not the case. Although some argue that gridlock on foreign policy is higher during periods of divided government (Peake, 2002) or that war shapes legislative preferences (Howell & Rogowski, 2013), in each instance, preferences shift toward the president.

Aggregate Shifts in Foreign Policy and Treaty Consent

To demonstrate the magnitude in preference shifts across each roll call classification, I next present the aggregate chamber medians for the entire data set. Figure 2 plots these shifts for foreign and domestic legislation across both chambers. Although the graph is easy to interpret, there are two caveats to note. First, these points do not represent median ideal points for each chamber, but rather the movement relative to the chamber median on all roll calls. Points falling to the right of the vertical dotted line, in other words, signify a shift in the chamber median toward the president, relative to the chamber median on all roll call votes. The strong shift of 0.239 in the chamber median toward Republican President Ronald Reagan in the Senate during the 97th Congress (1981-1982), for example, represents the shift between the chamber median on all votes (0.035) and foreign policy voting on bills in the final passage stage (0.274).⁶

Figure 2.

Aggregate chamber shifts on final passage voting, 87th to 112th Congress.

The second point to note is the vertical line separating positive and negative shifts is not meant to signify a confidence interval in which the true value of the mean lies within a certain range of probability. The line is only meant to provide the reader with a visual reference point to gauge aggregate shifts in legislator preferences.

Overall, there is strong support for the theory that lawmakers are more likely to support the president on foreign policy than on domestic legislation. Although the findings are not uniform across every Congress, there is still enough evidence to support this claim. The strong shifts toward the president on foreign policy not only lends support to Wildavsky’s (1966) central argument that presidents are more likely to exert greater influence in this policy area but it also provides clear evidence, at least when estimating legislator preferences by vote type, that some criticism of the two presidencies thesis is misplaced. For instance, Zeidenstein (1981) finds support for the two presidencies but mostly during periods of divided government and for the Senate. The evidence presented here shows little consistency between unified and divided government to make such a claim, though there is a clearer pattern of support in the Senate than the House.

Probably the most consistent criticism of the two presidencies centers on its time-bound effect. A common conclusion is that the two presidencies existed before the Vietnam War, but not after. McCormick and Wittkopf (1990), for instance, argue that Vietnam signals a dramatic break for Congress. Whereas support for the president in foreign affairs before Vietnam was frequently bipartisan, the post-Vietnam era is marked by intense partisanship in which presidents are only able to rely on their co-partisans in Congress to support their foreign policy initiatives. In direct contrast, the evidence presented here indicates that not only do chamber medians frequently shift toward the president after Vietnam but also this shift occurs regardless of which party controls the presidency.

Although the findings presented in Figure 2 lend ample support to the two presidencies thesis, these findings, more importantly, also show when voting supports the primary objectives of both branches. One obvious feature in both the House and Senate is the relatively small movement in the chamber median on domestic legislation. In fact, a consistent theme is that the chamber median often shifts away from the president on domestic legislation. Certainly, while the negative shifts in aggregate legislator preferences between the 91st and 93rd (1969-1974), as well as during the 109th House (2005-2006), likely highlight instances when popular will clashed with executive concerns over self-preservation, overall, the president seems to have less sway over domestic legislation. Lawmakers can, in other words, exert influence over legislation when the primary governmental objective centers popular will.

Finally, Table 2 presents the findings for aggregate shifts in treaty consent votes in the Senate. Although the number of aggregate shifts in this vote classification is small due to a lack of useable votes for proper estimation (Column 2), the dearth of available data points should not diminish the impact of these findings. Whereas aggregate shifts in the chamber median vary widely from strongly positive to negative, the Chamber Support column clearly shows that lawmakers often choose not to challenge the president on international treaties as White House treaty requests regularly receive greater than 90% chamber support. In fact, it is common for both political parties to give the president near-unanimous consent on treaty proposals. The weak support for the president during the 91st (1969-1970), 95th (1977-1978), and 100th (1987-1988) Senate, on the contrary, provides a glimpse into moments when self-preservation and constituent interests clash. While the high chamber support scores in these three examples suggest an inconsistency between these measures and the median shifts, the findings imply the opposite. Interbranch disagreements over nuclear nonproliferation (1969), nuclear arms reduction with the Soviets (1980), and reformulating the Panama Canal Treaty (1978) provided ammunition for Senators to question executive treaty negotiations.

Table 2.

Aggregate Chamber Shifts, Usable Roll Calls, and Chamber Support on Senate Treaty Consent Votes, 87th to 112th Congress.

Senate	Roll calls	Usable votes	Chamber support (%)	Median shift
87	10	3	97.34
88	17	11	87.75	0.614
89	14	0	100.0
90	40	9	93.87	0.414
91	23	9	93.55	−0.153
92	35	3	99.54
93	34	4	96.37
94	33	5	98.21
95	93	83	71.56	0.106
96	39	4	98.53
97	24	0	100.0
98	24	3	97.76
99	14	6	92.90
100	32	23	87.82	0.004
101	17	0	100.0
102	7	4	94.32
103	0	0	00.00
104	1	1	95.60
105	14	12	79.61	0.221
106	2	2	53.26
107	0	0	00.00
108	4	2	76.46
109	1	0	100.0
110	0	0	00.00
111	13	13	66.41	0.454
112	1	1	61.62

Note. Senate roll call data classified as treaty consent on final passage and amendment voting.

Legislative Preferences and Popular Will

As discussed above, appropriations offer lawmakers an opportunity to shape foreign policy. Figure 3 presents findings on aggregate median shifts for foreign and domestic appropriations. Compared with Figure 2, the chamber median is less likely to shift toward the president on foreign policy appropriations. Whereas the average shift on foreign policy voting in the final passage stage for the House is 0.125 and 0.200 for the Senate, these averages shrink dramatically to 0.040 and 0.039 when funding foreign policy. Aggregate legislative preferences, it seems, make no distinction between Republican and Democratic presidents, which party controls each chamber, whether government control of both branches is unified or divided, or whether the nation is engaged in a major military conflict. Lawmakers, in other words, treat foreign policy decisions differently than appropriations.

Figure 3.

Aggregate chamber shifts on appropriations, 87th to 112th congress.

These findings are even more apparent for domestic policy appropriations. Unlike the results for foreign policy, legislator preferences do not shift dramatically and remain fairly consistent with voting on all roll calls. In other words, domestic appropriations demonstrate preference stability, as in most instances the median shift is close to zero. Compared with foreign policy appropriations, the average shift for both chambers on domestic appropriations is 0.034 for the House and −0.002 for the Senate.

Finally, Figure 4 presents findings for aggregate median shifts on roll calls classified as domestic treaty legislation. In contrast to the normal treaty process, where presidents propose international treaties and the Senate ratifies those proposals, treaty legislation is classified as policy designed to codify international agreements through the regular legislative process. The classifications in this heading comprise the following topic codes: agricultural trade (401), U.S. security assistance (1602), arms control and nuclear proliferation (1605), military aid (1606), trade (18), and international affairs and foreign aid (19). Although these categories overlap to varying degrees with the above analysis, this classification is unique, as these votes provide opportunities for lawmakers to amend existing treaties.

Figure 4.

Aggregate chamber shifts on domestic treaty legislation, 87th to 112th congress.

As with appropriations, the ability of the president to influence lawmakers in policy areas more accustomed to legislative influence is limited. This is especially evident in the House where the median shift between treaty legislation and chamber preferences on all recorded votes frequently shifts away from the president by an average of −0.018. The average shift for the Senate is relatively small, at 0.034.

Moving Beyond the Median Voter

Compared with the straightforward median voter model used above, some argue successful policy implementation is better explained by the ability of lawmakers and presidents to navigate key veto players in the policy process (Chiou & Rothenberg, 2003; Krehbiel, 1998). Whereas the focus of the literature centers on determining the size of a gridlock interval, the point to note is that the ideal point distance between, say, the floor median $x_{m}$ and some pivot point x_v, $[x_{m}, x_{v}]$ , determines overall legislative success. The purpose of this section is to provide the reader with an alternative perspective on the findings presented above. Figure 5 plots the rank ordering of senators from most conservative to most liberal in the 97th Congress (1981-1982) on foreign, domestic, and all roll calls.

Figure 5.

Ideal point rank ordering from most conservative to most liberal, 97th Senate.

Following convention, the distance between the filibuster and veto override pivots in the gray-shaded regions is quite large on foreign policy voting when compared with the alternative categories. That is, the ideal points are more extreme in this region, suggesting the passage of foreign policy legislation is less likely.⁷ However, this conventional view misses the fact that a large number of Democratic senators have ideal points that align with the president in foreign policy when compared with roll call voting on domestic policy and all roll calls. The evidence is quite convincing. For example, though President Reagan “loses” four Republicans in foreign policy voting (their score is to the left of their ideal point estimates on all roll calls),⁸ he “gains” eight Democrats whose ideal point is to the right of the chamber median. In contrast, Reagan gains only one Democrat on domestic policy while losing seven Republicans.

Expanding this example, Figure 6 presents findings on the number of individual-level preference shifts from the chamber median for all senators on foreign and domestic policy between the 87th and 112th Congress.⁹ Results demonstrate that across nearly every Senate, the number of lawmakers with ideal points shifting closer to the president on foreign policy exceeds the number of shifts on domestic policy in all but one instance (91st). Moreover, preference shifts on foreign policy, even during periods of divided government and heightened party polarization, exceed 51% majority requirements and nearly meet the 60-vote filibuster threshold, suggesting presidents are more influential in foreign policy then they are on domestic legislation.¹⁰

Figure 6.

Senate ideal point rank ordering on foreign and domestic voting, 87th to 112th congress.

Conclusion

The single defining feature of the modern presidency that distinguishes it from nearly all previous understandings of presidential power is that executives now exert unilateral control over foreign policy with little or no congressional opposition. Indeed, no single separation of powers issue has received as much scholarly attention as this growing imbalance in the constitutional order. Yet, despite a common interest in clarifying what is arguably the central puzzle of modern presidential power, scholars have drawn entirely different conclusions as to the causes of this change. Some, for instance, have advanced convincing arguments and presented clear evidence that Congress itself is responsible, as lawmakers lack the political will to challenge the president. Others, in contrast, show that Congress is actually an equal and coordinate player in foreign policy, as lawmakers frequently use their vast array of constitutional powers to remake policy. However, while scholars have provided valuable insight on this topic, numerous questions remain on how to reconcile these differences.

An underappreciated and often overlooked explanation in this debate is how the structures, means, and functions described in the Constitution provide ample guidance on the conditions under which Congress is more likely to defer to the president on foreign policy and when Congress is an equal and coordinate player. Common explanations such as party, public opinion, and war, while an important part of this narrative, are often used to justify institution-specific hypotheses without considering structural advantages and disadvantages. Circumstance, not structure, tends to dominate the literature.

This article makes two contributions to this debate. First, incorporating a systemic view of American foreign policy, I use the separation of powers as a guide to determine where in the roll call record lawmakers are more likely to defer or resist the president on foreign policy. The key characteristic of this study that separates it from previous research is this article recognizes that the Constitution allocates political power in such a way that dictates how Congress is likely to behave. Thus, because the Constitution gives the chief executive numerous advantages in both initiating and conducting foreign affairs, this study shows that Congress not only defers to the president on foreign policy votes in the final passage stage but also overwhelmingly supports the president on treaty consent votes. However, Congress is likely to be an equal and coordinate actor in foreign policy when it can use retrospective evaluations such as appropriations or domestic treaty legislation to check executive initiatives.

Using the Constitution as a guide, my second contribution is I recover unique ideal point estimates on roll calls where the distinction between popular will and self-preservation is most evident. Whereas many studies use ideal point estimates recovered from all roll call votes across an entire congressional session to test theories of legislative behavior, this study only analyzes roll calls that fit these governmental objectives. Median shifts in aggregate preferences across all votes analyzed generally support theoretical expectations.

Although the findings presented in this study provide valuable insight into the debate over institutional power and foreign policy, this article does have limitations. For instance, where constitutional structure provides numerous vantage points for understanding chamber behavior, we still lack a clear understanding of how specific individual preference shifts and party impacts this relationship. That is, future work should consider factors beyond chamber preference shifts to help fully understand the link between constitutional structure and policy output. Questions to consider may comprise such topics as individual-level shifts, unique policy jurisdictions, and historical context. Are certain legislators more likely to prioritize domestic policy over foreign affairs? Does specific domestic policy jurisdiction impact this relationship? Have the determinants discussed in this study shifted over time and if so what are the conditions that influence this change?

In all, American foreign policy formation in the post–World War II era is not as black and white as previous research suggests. Certainly, modern presidents are important in shaping and conducting this policy area. But this research demonstrates Congress plays an important role as well. The key is to understand when Congress is most likely to exercise its constitutional authority. When the impulse to protect popular will is less of a concern than ensuring self-preservation, or when lawmakers consider legislation outside of its primary objective, Congress defers to the president. When political concerns center on protecting popular will, Congress is an equal and coordinate actor.

Supplemental Material

Structured_Induced_Deference_-_Supplemental – Supplemental material for Structured-Induced Deference or Equal and Coordinate Actor: Congressional Influence on American Foreign Policy

Supplemental material, Structured_Induced_Deference_-_Supplemental for Structured-Induced Deference or Equal and Coordinate Actor: Congressional Influence on American Foreign Policy by Eric Paul Svensen in American Politics Research

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Supplemental material

Supplemental material is available for this article online.

Author Biography

Eric Paul Svensen is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Sam Houston State University. He research focuses on the presidency, congress, and conflicts in the separation of powers.

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