The Effects of Polarization on Ideological Certainty: An Application to Executive Order Issuance

• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18814477
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Gary E. Hollibaugh,Mark Brockway
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18814477

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(4) 506 –522

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18814477

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Article

Over the past several decades, elite polarization in the United

States has steadily increased, with individuals sorting into

parties based largely on ideological lines; liberals have

become more aligned with the Democratic Party, and conser-

vatives with the Republican Party (Bafumi & Herron, 2010;

Fleisher & Bond, 2004; Layman, Carsey, & Horowitz, 2006;

McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006). Within the halls of

Congress, these dynamics are reflected in historically high

rates of party support scores, party unity votes, party una-

nimity votes, and growing ideological divergence between

the two parties. Recently, it has become far easier to predict

how individual members of Congress will vote—as well as

their ideological preferences—based on their partisan affilia-

tions (Theriault, 2008).

Several causes of Congressional polarization have been

proffered, including party influence (McCarty, Poole, &

Rosenthal, 2001), demographic shifts (Aldrich, 1995; Fleisher

& Bond, 2004), electoral polarization (Abramowitz, 2010;

Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008), gerrymandering (Carson,

Crespin, Finocchiaro, & Rohde, 2007; Fiorina, Abrams, &

Pope, 2006; McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2009; Theriault,

2008), increased strength of parties (Cox & McCubbins,

2005; Theriault, 2008), the discouragement of ideological

moderates from running for office (Thomsen, 2017), and

polarization within Congressional leadership (Heberlig,

Hetherington, & Larson, 2006). However, despite the interest

in the topic, studies of the effects of polarization in the

separation-of-powers context tend to focus on polarization as

it relates to the ideological distance between the two parties,

despite evidence that greater ideological divergence is not the

only effect of polarization; indeed, polarization is also associ-

ated with greater intraparty ideological homogeneity, and not

all members of Congress are equally affected by this latter

factor. While ideological extremists might welcome stricter

ideological dogma, moderate members may balk at support-

ing policies with which either they or their constituents dis-

agree. On many votes, regardless of how these “cross-

pressured” legislators vote, they may face condemnation

from their constituents or party leadership, or they may find

themselves supporting a bill with which they disagree. Thus,

it is no surprise that increasing polarization has corresponded

to a decline in the ranks of these inherently unpredictable

cross-pressured legislators (Han & Brady, 2007).1

Importantly, these cross-pressured legislators have been

largely replaced by those whose ideological preferences more

closely match those of their parties and the partisan members

of their reelection coalitions (Han & Brady, 2007). As these

members feel fewer conflicts between the demands of

814477APRXXX10.1177/1532673X18814477American Politics ResearchBrockway and Hollibaugh

research-article2018

1University of Notre Dame, IN, USA

2University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr., Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Public and

International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, 3802 Wesley W. Posvar

Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.

Email: gary.hollibaugh@pitt.edu

The Effects of Polarization on Ideological

Certainty: An Application to Executive

Order Issuance

Mark Brockway1 and Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr.2

Abstract

Many standard models of political institutions frame outcomes as a function of the preferences of key decision makers.

However, these models, and the empirical analyses they inspire, typically assume decision makers can infer the identities and

ideological locations of other decision makers without error. Here, we reveal the substantive importance of this assumption.

We show that partisan sorting, a common cause of polarization, can result in reduced uncertainty about the ideologies of

key decision makers and the identities of key pivots. When we incorporate estimates of pivot uncertainty into empirical

models of executive order issuance, we find lower levels of uncertainty are associated with higher rates of policy-relevant

executive order issuance. These results have implications for the study of polarization and the use of models of institutions

in political science.

Keywords

executive orders, polarization, separation of powers

Brockway and Hollibaugh 507

constituents, parties, and personal beliefs, voting records in

more recent Congresses have more closely reflected the

wishes of parties (Ramey, 2015). Moreover, with fewer cross-

pressured legislators, “waffling” in Congress has decreased,

with fewer members voting against bills they once (co-)spon-

sored (Kirkland & Harden, 2016). All of these dynamics have

resulted in Congressional behavior becoming more predict-

able on the basis of partisanship alone (Theriault, 2008).2,3,4

We show partisan polarization induced by partisan sorting

can result in greater certainty about the identities and ideo-

logical locations of key members of Congress. After showing

this, we provide one example of this dynamic in the separation-

of-powers context and show that, by our measures, uncer-

tainty is associated with fewer executive orders. As

mentioned, this is presumably because the president will

have more information about the preferences of and/or iden-

tities of key players and will be able to structure executive

orders in ways acceptable to at least one relevant pivot, thus

preempting Congressional opposition.5,6 Moreover, uncer-

tainty matters even when we incorporate the ideological

divergence between the parties (i.e., one common way of

operationalizing polarization) into our empirical models, a

finding that should incentivize scholars to refine understand-

ings of polarization and the effects thereof.7

Polarization, Uncertainty, and

Executive Orders

Despite the relationship between polarization and ideologi-

cal uncertainty, the latter has yet to be seriously engaged by

scholars of American institutions (e.g., Cox & McCubbins,

2005; Krehbiel, 1998; but see Cameron, 2000). This is

despite the fact that greater certainty about the ideological

preferences of key actors should affect institutional outcomes.

Indeed, vast amounts of research in political science—and

cognate disciplines—based in part on formal models of

incomplete information have suggested that uncertainty is

important to political interactions, and can change the incen-

tive structures and actions of those involved. For example,

private information about—and incentives to misrepresent—

one’s military capabilities and willingness to fight have been

cited as reasons for the occurrence of war (Fearon, 1995).

Within American politics, it has been argued that one reason

for the existence of political parties is their ability to reveal

information about the preferences of those running under

their labels (Snyder & Ting, 2002). Voter uncertainty over

the president’s preferences can lead Congress to write bills it

expects the president to veto, with the goal of making the

president seem more extreme (Groseclose & McCarty, 2001;

but see Martin, 2012). And uncertainty over the location of

the veto pivot has been argued to provide the president more

leverage compared to a world without uncertainty (Cameron,

2000).8,9

In particular, Cameron’s (2000) logic is that when indi-

viduals are less certain about the ideological locations of key

pivots—or the identities thereof—it will be more difficult to

structure bills to ensure that they will later be acceptable to

the veto pivot. This same logic would suggest that if presi-

dents are more certain about the identities and ideological

locations of key pivots, they will be better able to structure

executive orders in order to preempt legislative retribution.

And this potential ability to use informational advantages to

sidestep Congressional opposition is, in some ways, not alto-

gether different from other sources of presidential advan-

tages in the inter-branch bargaining process. For example,

Howell (2003) argues that when Congressional policy pref-

erences are broadly fragmented, Congress is unable to form

majorities necessary to overcome subsequent vetoes of legis-

lation introduced to negate executive orders—assuming they

can even pass the negating legislation in the first place.10 The

common thread between these two dynamics (Congressional

fragmentation and certainty about the ideologies or identities

of key pivots) is that both might be caused by higher degrees

of partisan polarization.

However, the extant research on executive orders has

focused primarily on the first dynamic and variations thereof

(such as the degree of ideological divergence between the two

parties), and has largely ignored how growing partisan polar-

ization might relate to ideological certainty. This is a notable

oversight, given standard models of ideological sorting, and

much empirical research on the topic suggests that the parties

have not only grown further apart—to the extent that there is

no longer any ideological overlap between them—but their

ideologies have become more tightly concentrated around

more divergent party medians (Bafumi & Herron, 2010;

McCarty et al., 2006). These dynamics have consequences

for the roles of Congressional fragmentation and certainty

about the ideologies or identities of key pivots (due to

increased intraparty homogeneity), and thus attendant conse-

quences for executive order issuance patterns, as standard

models assume the executive considers the preferences of the

legislature before issuing executive orders (Cameron, 2000;

Cameron & McCarty, 2004; Chiou & Rothenberg, 2014,

2017; Hassell & Kernell, 2016; Howell, 2003; Martin, 2012;

Mayer, 2002; Tsebelis, 2002; Warber, 2006).

Within these standard models, of which Howell’s (2003)

is perhaps the most prominent and well-known, executive

orders offer the president an important advantage and an

opportunity to take an active role in the creation of policy.

However, within Howell’s (2003) model, this ability is lim-

ited and subject to discretionary limits imposed by the judi-

ciary (wherein the judiciary will overturn the executive order

if the discretion is exceeded), as well as limits on discre-

tion—and possibly direction—imposed by the legislature.11

Chiou and Rothenberg (2014, 2017) build on Howell’s model

and formally introduce the role of parties, finding that mod-

els incorporating the majority party median exhibit better

statistical fit than those where the executive is most respon-

sive to the chamber median (or not responsive to any legisla-

tive actor).