Donald Trump and Institutional Change Strategies

Jordan T. Cash and Dave Bridge
Additional contact information
Jordan T. Cash: Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA
Dave Bridge: Department of Political Science, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798, USA

Laws, 2018, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: This article integrates three fields of study: the “regime politics” paradigm in law and courts, the “institutional change” approach in public policy, and the “unilateral presidency” literature. In doing so, we show how law, politics, and public policy are inextricably linked, and that researchers can borrow assumptions, methods, and theories from a variety of fields. We use Donald Trump’s early presidency to show how political actors (especially presidents) can use four different change strategies. In the case of Trump, we highlight: shifting of decision-making authority via insurrectionary displacement; the elimination of the individual mandate via subversive layering; a change in drone use policy via opportunistic conversion; and a gradual desensitization and change in school choice education policy via symbiotic drift. We conclude by offering lessons for all three literatures we incorporate, as well as a way forward for studying a presidential administration that many find difficult to analyze.

Keywords: institutional change; displacement; layering; conversion; drift; Trump; regime politics; unilateral presidency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/7/3/27/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/7/3/27/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:27-:d:156635

Access Statistics for this article

Laws is currently edited by Ms. Heather Liang

More articles in Laws from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().