This book aims to explain why some presidents are more successful than others in winning the support of legislators during periods of unified government. This book covers five presidential and semi-presidential systems such as France, Indonesia, Mexico, Taiwan, and the U.S. with a wide variety of institutional arrangements and political dynamics. This book elaborates on explaining how institutional factors such as confidence vote, electoral system, candidate nomination and presidential unilateral power influence the ability of presidents to pass their legislative agendas through comparisons across presidential and semi-presidential systems.

Omnibus legislating is the controversial practice of combining disparate measures in one massive bill. Omnibus packages are "must-pass" bills because they have a nucleus that enjoys widespread support but they also contain a variety of often unrelated measures that are simply "hitching a ride". Why are omnibus bills employed? Why the increase in their use? Why do leaders attach certain bills to omnibus packages and not others? Glen Krutz addresses these and other questions in this original and insightful study of an important change in the legislative process. Many view omnibus packages as political vehicles and therefore attribute their rise to politics, but Krutz finds that, whatever their political value, omnibus packages are institutionally efficient. Omnibus legislating improves congressional capability by providing a tool for circumventing the gridlock of committee turf wars and presidential veto threats. In addition to furnishing a fascinating look at law-making, Hitching a Ride: Omnibus Legislating in the U.S. Congress provides a challenge to recent studies of congressional change that focus on political factors. Political and institutional factors together, Krutz argues, explain congressional evolution.

" ... brings together piercing analyses of the American presidency - dealing with both current issues and historical events. The compendia consists of the combined and rearranged issues of [the journal] "White House Studies" with the addition of a comprehensive subject index."--Preface.

Despite the fact that Republicans control two of the three branches of government following the election of Donald Trump, the relationship between the president and Capitol Hill continues to be strained. Underscoring the book’s theme that the executive and legislature regularly compete and clash—even when controlled by the same party—already tensions are emerging between President Trump and the Republican congressional majority around the Affordable Care Act, infrastructure spending, trade agreements, relations with Russia, and immigration and refugee policy. Now in its sixth edition, Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations brings together the knowledge of leading scholars and scholar-practitioners alike to explain the complex political dynamic between the president and Congress in new chapters. Contributors analyze the structural, political, and behavioral factors that shape this relationship, while showing how and why rivalry has tended to intensify when different parties control the two branches. Intended for students, scholars, public officials, and the general public, Rivals for Power offers an accessible and engaging analysis of executive and legislative rivalry across a span of eras, with particular attention to developments under recent presidents, including Trump and Obama. Contributors include Gary Andres, Ross K. Baker, Sarah Binder, Patrick Griffin, David R. Jones, Douglas L. Kriner, John Anthony Maltese, James P. Pfiffner, Jordan Tama, Claudia H. Thurber, and James A. Thurber.

Partisan conflict between the White House and Congress is now a dominant feature of national politics in the United States. What the Constitution sought to institute—a system of checks and balances—divided government has taken to extremes: institutional divisions so deep that national challenges like balancing the federal budget or effectively regulating the nation's savings and loans have become insurmountable. In original essays written especially for this volume, eight of the leading scholars in American government address the causes and consequences of divided party control. Their essays, written with a student audience in mind, take up such timely questions as: Why do voters consistently elect Republican presidents and Democratic congresses? How does divided control shape national policy on crucial issues such as the declaration of war? How have presidents adapted their leadership strategies to the circumstance of divided government? And, how has Congress responded in the way it writes laws and oversees departmental performance? These issues and a host of others are addressed in this compact yet comprehensive volume. The distinguished lineup of contributors promises to make this book "must" reading for both novice and serious students of elections, Congress, and the presidency.

Is congressional politics a team sport? The rise of congressional partisanship poses several puzzles for those seeking to understand how Congress works. This book reveals and assesses these puzzles, notably, why would self-elected members delegate power to leaders? Why has congressional partisanship risen without any comparable change in electoral partisanship? Why would copartisans support party positions if leaders cannot enforce compliance? Finally, what are the effects of congressional parties? Congress, Parties, & Puzzles combines a strong theoretical framework with engaging illustrations and case studies so students can think more critically about how parties affect Congress and how voters should assess their elected officials.

Gridlock is not a modern legislative condition. Although the term is said to have entered the American political lexicon after the 1980 elections, Alexander Hamilton complained about it more than two hundred years ago. In many ways, stalemate seems endemic to American politics. Constitutional skeptics even suggest that the framers intentionally designed the Constitution to guarantee gridlock. In Stalemate, Sarah Binder examines the causes and consequences of gridlock, focusing on the ability of Congress to broach and secure policy compromise on significant national issues. Reviewing more than fifty years of legislative history, Binder measures the frequency of deadlock during that time and offers concrete advice for policymakers interested in improving the institutional capacity of Congress. Binder begins by revisiting the notion of "framers' intent," investigating whether gridlock was the preferred outcome of those who designed the American system of separated powers. Her research suggests that frequent policy gridlock might instead be an unintended consequence of constitutional design. Next, she explores the ways in which elections and institutions together shape the capacity of Congress and the president to make public law. She examines two facets of its institutional evolution: the emergence of the Senate as a coequal legislative partner of the House and the insertion of political parties into a legislative arena originally devoid of parties. Finally, she offers a new empirical approach for testing accounts of policy stalemate during the decades since World War II. These measurements reveal patterns in legislative performance during the second half of the twentieth century, showing the frequency of policy deadlock and the legislative stages at which it has most often emerged in the postwar period. Binder uses the new measure of stalemate to explain empirical patterns in the frequency of gridlock. The results weave together the effects of institu

A study of the consequences of partisan communication on the stability of unified government of the United States.

Jeffrey E. Cohen looks at U.S. presidents' legislative proposals to Congress from 1789 to 2002, analyzing why presidents submit one proposal rather than another and what Congress does with the proposals. He investigates trends in presidential requests to Congress, the substantive policies of the proposals, and the presidential decision process in building legislative agendas.

The presidential-congressional relationship is the most important and vivid of all the inter-branch relationships. It defines presidential activities, priorities, and successes. No president, from Eisenhower to Nixon to Reagan, has been able to ignore or denigrate that relationship. Presidential Relations with Congress provides a succinct analysis of contemporary presidential-congressional relations in the post-World War II era. Richard S. Conley underscores what scholars have learned about presidents’ interactions with Congress over time, the factors that account for success, and the methodologies that can measure success. He weaves the “bargaining,” “institutional constraint,” and “personality” perspectives of presidential relations with Congress alongside case studies of individual presidents’ approaches, including agenda success, veto politics, and Supreme Court nominations. Presidential Relations with Congress emphasizes the changing nature of internal dynamics in Congress, as well as the importance of party control of both the White House and Capitol Hill. This engaging addition to the Presidential Briefings series provides students, scholars, and observers of presidential politics with an accessible and readable tool for analyzing and evaluating presidents’ varied styles, successes, and failures in their relationships with Congress. Each chapter features specific examples of past presidents’ approaches to influencing Congress.