Presidents have two major assets at their disposal when seeking to alter policy:executive orders and legislative action. There are certain advantages and disadvantagesto each course. Although presidency scholars have focused extensively on presidentialefforts in the legislative arena, little attention has been paid to how a president affectspolicy through direct action. Because executive orders have been under-researched, therehas been a dearth of theory development that adequately explains when presidents willact unilaterally through executive orders and when they will instead seek legislativeavenues to policy change.This project develops a parsimonious theory grounded in the transaction costsframework that explains how a president chooses between seeking congressional actionversus acting unilaterally through executive orders to accomplish policy change. Thetheory holds that when presidents desire policy change, they balance the transaction costsexecutive orders and legislative action present, selecting the course that presents thegreatest benefit after accounting for the transaction costs present.After outlining the theory, I test my predictions using an original data set. Eachexecutive order from 1946 to 2004 was read and examined for policy content. Unlikemost prior studies of presidential use of executive orders, this study only includes orders that affect policy in the data analyses. The series of empirical tests provide support formy theory: Presidents consider the transaction costs that executive orders and the pursuitof legislation pose and take the action that maximizes their utility when seeking policychange
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