The Politics of Requesting Appointments: Congressional Requests in the Appointment and Nomination Process

• Author: Daniel E. Bergan,Brandon Rottinghaus
• Date: 01 March 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912909343582
• Published date: 01 March 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

64(1) 31 –44

© 2011 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912909343582

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The Politics of Requesting

Appointments: Congressional

Requests in the Appointment

and Nomination Process

Brandon Rottinghaus1 and Daniel E. Bergan2

Abstract

There is persistent debate about who most influences the federal appointment process, especially whether the

executive branch staffs the federal bureaucracy with individuals loyal to the White House or relies on the process as

an accommodation to important political players, especially members of Congress. Yet, people still know little about

the role members of Congress play in the process of shaping the prenomination environment. In this article, the

authors address this debate by using unique archival data from the Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford Presidential

Libraries to identify which legislators contacted the president about a specific nomination or appointment request and

under what conditions these requests were successful. The authors find that legislator resources, Senate membership,

and those closer ideologically to the president are related both to the number of requests made and to the number

of successful appointment or nomination requests granted. The results suggest that the president relies on members

of Congress for credible information about staffing administrative positions, but they appoint or nominate individuals

that are in their own interest, not necessarily to accommodate Congress.

Keywords

presidential-legislative relations, appointment, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower

The president’s appointment power is outlined in the

“appointments clause” of Article II, Section 2, of the

Constitution, where the president nominates individuals

to several offices with the “advice and consent” of the

Senate. This creates a “diffused responsibility” of adminis-

trative governance because the powers are shared (Jones

1994, 24). As with many aspects of shared governance,

this institutional arrangement provides a distribution of

power between two branches but also encourages con-

flict. Corwin’s (1957) description of the separated powers

as an “invitation to struggle” has framed scholars’ think-

ing about the interaction between the presidency and

Congress and conditions “that great game” where the two

sides engage in collective bargaining to advance their

policy agendas (Neustadt 1990, 32). Weingast (2005,

336) argues that the bureaucracy is “caught in the middle”

of a complex political tug of war between Congress and

the president. As a result of this struggle, especially in

times of divided government, when traditional legislation

is more difficult to pass, presidents have turned to the

“administrative presidency” to organize the bureaucracy

in their favor (Weko 1995; Moe 1999) and to attempt to

conduct policy outside of the purview of the Congress,

the media, and the public (Nathan 1983; Walcott and

Hult 1987).

So how do presidents staff the bureaucracy? The poli-

tics of presidential appointments has often been viewed

as a trade-off between the accommodation to political

party (the interests of members of Congress) or as an

extension of presidential policy objectives. On one hand,

a president may staff the executive with individuals who

are loyal to the president’s party, thereby pleasing the

president’s core supporters. This view was prevalent in

the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because of

the role of patronage for party loyalists (Nokken and

Sala 2000; see also Skowronek 1982; Johnson and

1University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

2Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Brandon Rottinghaus, Assistant Professor, University of Houston,

Department of Political Science, Phillip Guthrie Hoffman Hall,

Room 447, Houston, TX 77204

E-mail: bjrottinghaus@uh.edu