Veto Rhetoric and Legislative Riders

Hans J. G. Hassell and Samuel Kernell

American Journal of Political Science, 2016, vol. 60, issue 4, 845-859

Abstract: Riders to appropriations bills have long been a favorite congressional instrument for forcing presidents to accept unwanted policies. To resist unwanted riders, presidents have increasingly resorted to veto threats. Are such threats credible, and do they influence legislation? To answer these questions, we analyze the legislative histories of hundreds of threatened and unthreatened riders from 1985 through 2008. We find that threats are effective in bringing the final legislation closer to the president's preferences. Threats achieve their success, in large part, by interrupting the textbook legislative process in the Senate—spawning filibusters, prompting leaders to punt bills to conference, and encouraging the use of other “unorthodox” procedures. Unlike conventional models that regard veto threats as minimally effective, the findings presented here depict veto rhetoric as integral to identifying critical riders separating the legislative parties that must be resolved in order to avoid gridlock and pass annual appropriations legislation.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12217

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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:4:p:845-859

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().