Presidents and Personal Goals

Existing theories of congressional politics emphasize partisan incentives for the behavior of formal party leaders in Congress. However, these theories do not persuasively explain important cases in which Speakers of the House have sought to influence legislative outcomes contrary to the policy preferences of their party. I argue that the majority party in the House allows the Speaker to act on behalf of several expectations for leadership that are unrelated or even contrary to partisan goals, including ones related to the agenda of the institutional presidency and the Speaker's personal preferences. As evidence for this claim, I introduce a data set of significant acts of legislative leadership by the Speaker since the 1940s, analyzing several cases from the data set. The findings suggest that our understanding of leadership in Congress may be improved by identifying the formal and informal duties and responsibilities of individual leaders and the broader contextual environment in which such leaders operate

Economics · House of Representatives · Incentive · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Public relations · Set (abstract data type · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law · Psychology · Public Administration · Social Psychology

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