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The direct election of senators and the emergence of the modern presidency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2020

Thomas R. Gray ,
Jeffery A. Jenkins Open the ORCID record for Jeffery A. Jenkins [Opens in a new window]  and
Philip B.K. Potter
Thomas R. Gray
Affiliation:
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA
Jeffery A. Jenkins*
Affiliation:
Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Philip B.K. Potter
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jajenkins@usc.edu
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Abstract

Research on presidential power delineates between a modern era of relative autonomy and an earlier period of congressional dominance. What drove this change? Unlike prior arguments about presidential entrepreneurship and the rise of the United States as a global power, we attribute the emergence of the modern presidency partially to an institutional change—the adoption of direct election of senators that culminated in the 17th Amendment. With direct election, senators were selected by individual voters rather than state legislators. These senators answered to a new principal—the general public—that was (in the aggregate) less informed and less interested in foreign policy. As a result, senators had less incentive to constrain presidential foreign policy preferences. We find evidence for this shift in the relationship between the piecemeal adoption of direct election and senate votes to delegate foreign policy authority to the executive. The implication is that the direct election of senators played an underappreciated role in the emergence of the modern presidency.

Keywords

American politicsforeign policypresidency and executive politics
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 188 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/M0WBEM
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