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Executive Power (executive + power)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, Social Policy, and the Brazilian Elections of 2006

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2007
Wendy Hunter
ABSTRACT This article analyzes Luiz Inácio da Silva's resounding reelection victory in the wake of corruption scandals implicating his party and government. Voters with lower levels of economic security and schooling played a critical role in returning Lula to the presidency. Least prone to punish the president for corruption, poorer Brazilians were also the most readily persuaded by the provision of material benefits. Minimum wage increases and the income transfer program Bolsa Família expanded the purchasing power of the poor. Thus, executive power and central state resources allowed Lula to consolidate a social base that had responded only weakly to his earlier, party-based strategy of grassroots mobilization for progressive macrosocietal change. Although Lula won handily, the PT's delegation to Congress shrank for the first time, and the voting bases of president and party diverged. The PT benefited far less than the president himself from government investment in social policy. [source]

Public Confidence and Executive Power: The Symbiosis

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2008
Brian Steele
First page of article [source]

Delegation of Regulatory Powers in a Mixed Polity

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2002
Giandomenico Majone
It is a common place of academic and political discourse that the EC/EU, being neither a parliamentary democracy nor a separation-of-powers system, must be a sui generis polity. Tocqueville reminds us that the pool of original and historically tested constitutional models is fairly limited. But however limited, it contains more than the two systems of rule found among today's democratic nation states. During the three centuries preceding the rise of monarchical absolutism in Europe, the prevalent constitutional arrangement was ,mixed government',a system characterised by the presence in the legislature of the territorial rulers and of the ,estates' representing the main social and political interests in the polity. This paper argues that this model is applicable to the EC, as shown by the isomorphism of the central tenets of the mixed polity and the three basic Community principles: institutional balance, institutional autonomy and loyal cooperation among European institutions and Member States. The model is then applied to gain a better understanding of the delegation problem. As is well known, a crucial normative obstacle to the delegation of regulatory powers to independent European agencies is the principle of institutional balance. By way of contrast, separation-of-powers has not prevented the US Congress from delegating extensive rule-making powers to independent commissions and agencies. Comparison with the philosophy of mixed government explains this difference. The same philosophy suggests the direction of regulatory reform. The growing complexity of EC policy making should be matched by greater functional differentiation, and in particular by the explicit acknowledgement of an autonomous ,regulatory estate'. At a time when the Commission aspires to become the sole European executive, as in a parliamentary system, it is particularly important to stress the importance of separating the regulatory function from general executive power. The notion of a regulatory estate is meant to emphasise this need. [source]

The Governance of the European Union: The Potential for Multi-Level Control

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Colin Scott
In its White Paper on the Governance of the European Union the European Commission has adopted a narrow concept of governance which focuses almost exclusively on public institutions exercising legislative and executive power (in other words institutions of government). The article suggests that a theory of multi-level control in the EU would attend to greater variety both in the available governance institutions and the techniques of control. The deployment of an analysis grounded in theories of control suggests that the European Commission is substantially holding to a long-held preference for instruments of government premised on the exercise of hierarchical power. This reform path sits uneasily with revived concerns to render the governance of the EU more democratic. Equally it inhibits the generation of more efficient governance arrangements which place greater dependence on communities, competition, and design as alternative bases of control to hierarchy. Control theory suggests that the assertion of different reform agendas and institutional structures by other actors can check the more wayward (and arguably illegitimate) tendencies within the Commission plan, whilst drawing in alternative bases of control which, when combined, may yield technically superior governance solutions. [source]

The Appointment and Removal Process for judges in Argentina: The Role of Judicial Councils and Impeachment Juries in Promoting Judicial Independence

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2007
Rebecca Bill Chávez
ABSTRACT This article explores the conditions that allow judicial councils and impeachment juries to promote judicial autonomy. In theory, these bodies intervene in the appointment and removal of judges in order to reduce executive control over court composition, thereby promoting judicial independence. Using the case of Argentina at the federal and the subnational levels, this study demonstrates that competitive politics enhances the capacity of judicial councils and impeachment juries to bolster judicial autonomy. Interparty competition provides incentives for the executive to develop a meaningful system of checks and balances, which includes an independent judiciary that can check executive power. In contrast, monolithic party control,defined as a prolonged period of unified government under a highly disciplined party,permits the executive to maintain a monopoly on power and thereby control judicial appointments and removals. [source]

Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, Social Policy, and the Brazilian Elections of 2006

Presidential Power and Congressional Acquiescence in the "War" on Terrorism: A New Constitutional Equilibrium?

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2006
John E. Owens
U.S. presidents have expanded executive power in times of war and emergency, sometimes aggressively so. This article builds on Burnham's application of punctuated equilibria theory to suggest that the combination of President George W. Bush's presidentialist doctrine, the external shock of the 9/11 atrocities and the president's "war" on terror has consolidated a new, constitutional equilibrium between the president and the Congress. While some members of Congress contest the new order, the Congress collectively has acquiesced in its own marginalization. The article surveys a wide range of executive power assertions and legislative retreats AND argues that power assertions and consolidations generally draw on historical precedent and operate nonincrementally within a punctuated pattern. [source]

Presidential Authority to Gather Foreign Intelligence

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2007
BRUCE FEIN
President George W. Bush has claimed inherent constitutional authority to collect foreign intelligence on his say-so alone in contravention of the warrant requirements stipulated in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), as amended six times since 9/11. The constitutionality of FISA, however, is incontestable. It is justified by the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, section 8, clause 18 in light of the massive foreign intelligence abuses compiled during forty years of absolute executive power. FISA leaves the separation of powers undisturbed. It regulates only a microscopic percentage of foreign intelligence collection. To sustain President Bush's constitutional claims would "trust me" the measure of our civil liberties, not the checks and balances intended by the Constitution's architects. [source]

George Washington, Presidential Term Limits, and the Problem of Reluctant Political Leadership

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001
BRUCE G. PEABODY
The widespread view of the relationship between George Washington and the American custom of limited presidential service is misconceived. Conventional popular and scholarly accounts of the "two-term tradition" confuse both Washington's position on presidential term limits and the historical contours of this custom. The American convention limiting the number of terms a president could serve emerged less from Washington's views about political service than from deep-seated anxieties about centralized governing power (and specifically executive power). These concerns, along with an enduring American ambivalence about public service (reflected in Washington's retirement), continue to shape the character of both our political life and public discourse. [source]

Constitutionalism and Presidential Prerogative: Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian Perspectives

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2004
Clement Fatovic
Scholars, the courts, and the public have been ambivalent about prerogative, the power of presidents to take extraordinary actions without explicit legal authorization in emergencies, because it seems to defy core principles of liberal constitutionalism. This article examines the relation between prerogative and liberal constitutionalism by comparing the approaches of two Founders with different conceptions of executive power, Jefferson and Hamilton. Although they both endorsed a Lockean conception of prerogative that makes it possible to secure vital substantive ends that might be imperiled by strict adherence to ordinary legal forms in an emergency, they disagreed over the constitutionality of prerogative. Whereas Hamilton located the authority for prerogative within the implied powers of the Constitution, Jefferson expected presidents to admit wrongdoing and seek post-hoc approval from the public, a difference with important implications for both democracy and constitutional practice that can be traced back to ambiguities in Locke's theory of prerogative. [source]