Policy dynamics and electoral uncertainty in the appointments process
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629816630432 |
| Author | Yoji Sekiya,Jinhee Jo,David M Primo |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Policy dynamics and electoral
uncertainty in the
appointments process
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2017, Vol. 29(1) 124–148
©The Author(s) 2016
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DOI:10.1177/0951629816630432
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Jinhee Jo
Department of Political Science, Kyung Hee University, Korea
David M Primo
Department of Political Science and Simon Business School, University of Rochester, USA
Yoji Sekiya
Independent Scholar
Abstract
By incorporating electoral uncertainty and policy dynamics into three two-period models of the
appointments process, we show that gridlock may not always occur under divided government,
contrary to the findings of static one-shot appointments models. In these cases, contrary to the
ally principle familiar to students of bureaucratic politics, the president or the confirmer is willing
to move the court away from his or her ideal point as a way to insulate against worse outcomes
in period two. By demonstrating how a simple set of changes to a workhorse model can change
equilibrium outcomes significantly, this paper provides a foundation for reconsidering the static
approach to studying political appointments.
Keywords
Interbranch bargaining; appointments; gridlock; divided government; courts
1. Introduction
It is well-established that the behavior of political actors is conditioned by expectations
about future interactions. This “shadow of the future” (Axelrod, 1984) has been mod-
eled extensively in many areas of political science such as crisis bargaining (e.g., Fearon,
Corresponding author:
David M Primo, Department of Political Science and Simon Business School, University of Rochester,
Rochester, NY 14627-0146, USA.
Email: david.primo@rochester.edu
Jo et al. 125
1998) and legislative policymaking (e.g., Baron, 1996; Battaglini and Coate, 2007; Dug-
gan and Kalandrakis, 2012; Kalandrakis, 2004; McCarty, 2000). Despite this progress,
dynamic analysis has been noticeably absent in studies of the appointments process.1
This is ironic, since the decisions made by political appointees, especially judges, affect
policymaking for years and even decades into the future, in part by moving policy and
setting precedents, thereby influencing future bargaining by changing the location of the
status quo.
This paper focuses on two important forward-looking aspects of the appointments
process left out of previous models—elections and the possibility of future vacancies. We
construct three two-period models in which the president and Senate (confirmer) bargain
over a political appointment. In the first model, there is an intervening election between
period one and period two, and both the president and confirmer can be ousted during
the election. If an agreement is not reached in the first period, the vacancy carries over to
the next period, and bargaining continues for one more period after the election. In the
second model, instead of an election, we allow for the possibility that there is a second
nomination in the second period (regardless of whether the initial vacancy carries overto
the second period). In the third model, we consider how these two features interact.
We show that both mechanisms help explain how “gridlock,” or the inability to move
the court median, can be broken in the appointments process under divided govern-
ment (where the president and the Senate’s pivotal voter are on opposite sides of the
court median), and related, why presidents and confirmers may be willing to support a
nominee that moves the court away from their ideal points. These results are at odds
with those in a standard one-shot spatial bargaining model, where gridlock is the norm
under divided government (e.g., Johnson and Roberts, 2005; Krehbiel, 2007; Lemieux
and Stewart, 1991; Moraski and Shipan, 1999; Primo et al., 2008; Rohde and Shepsle,
2007). This limitation is acknowledged by Rohde and Shepsle (2007), who write that this
“anomaly” ought to be resolved by future modeling efforts. (In what follows, we discuss
the appointments process in terms of courts and judges. In the conclusion, we discuss
how the models’ logic could be extended to other multimember bodies.)
In addition to helping us understand the importance of dynamics in the appointments
process, the models in this paper also contribute to the “ally principle” (Bendor and
Meirowitz, 2004) literature. The ally principle holds that, all else equal, a principal dele-
gating responsibility to an agent should appoint somebody as close to the principal’s ideal
point as possible. There have been numerous challenges to the ally principle, mostly in a
bureaucratic context, that account for the role played by interest group lobbying (Bertelli
and Feldmann, 2007), competing principals (McCarty, 2004), and bureaucratic hierarchy
(Jo and Rothenberg, 2014), among other factors. From the perspective of the president,
elections affect the ally principle logic in a nominations context by creating the possi-
bility that somebody else will get to propose the nominee if the president does not get
his nominee through—and that the “somebody else” will be hostile to his preferences.
Multiple vacancies, meanwhile, introduce the possibility of exogenous shifts in the status
quo in ways that hurt the president, making a move-the-median appointment today more
attractive.
For tractability, we make several assumptions in our modeling efforts. First, we
assume just one confirmer—a single pivotal senator—rather than considering multiple
pivots. Second, we assume that courts make decisions in a simple median voter setting.
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