I find that a presidential executive order that took back military equipment from local police had no detectable impact on crime or officer safety. I then use 3.6 million archived inventory records to show previous studies that find favorable effects for military equipment are likely biased by unobserved attrition and weapons transfers.
Kenneth Lowande
- Assistant Professor, University of Michgian
- lowande@umich.edu
I am an assistant professor of political science and public policy (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan and a faculty associate in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research.
Before coming to Michigan, I was a fellow in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, and then at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University.
I study American political institutions, with particular interest in presidential power, congressional oversight, and bureaucratic policymaking. I maintain this page to make ongoing projects, data, and studies open and available. Please contact me if you have questions about my work.
I study American political institutions, with particular interest in presidential power, congressional oversight, and bureaucratic policymaking. I maintain this page to make ongoing projects, data, and studies open and available. Please contact me if you have questions about my work.
Research
Peer-Reviewed
Analyzing unilateral initiatives at the policy-level from 1993-2016, I show that conventional arguments about when presidents act alone are not supported, and propose thinking of these actions as ``false fronts'' -- moves designed primarily to attract media attention that have little net impact on policy outcomes.
We show that members of Congress who disagree with new rules proposed by the EPA use procedural requests to delay the process, and that these requests are concentrated among members with more experienced staff.
Following the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US, we field a nationwide audit experiment of license granting offices, and find no evidence of discrimination against same-sex couples.
Using records of constituent-service by members of Congress, we find that women, racial/ethnic minorities, and veterans are more likely to work on behalf of constituents with whom they share identities.
I find that executive agencies tend to prioritize the oversight requests of members of the majority party in Congress, but that agencies with more political appointees tend to favor members of the president's party.
In contrast to patterns found in public hearings, I find that ideological disagreements have little impact on how vigorously members of Congress oversee executive agencies in private (e.g., through letters and calls).
In an analysis of unilateral revisions to tariffs and quotas, we find evidence that U.S. presidents use the legal authority granted to them by Congress to favor politicallly valuable states and industries with protectionist orders.
Presidents make policy without the explicit consent of Congress, but must get cooperation from unelected officials. I show how this basic agency problem complicates the apparent appeal of unilateralism, using gun violence research and post-9/11 security as examples.
We show that major revisions in tariff policies by Congress typically led to dramatic losses by the majority party in next election. Our findings provide an additional explanation for the eventual delegation of broad trade authority to the president.
We find that the direct, popular election of Senators led increased oversight of the executive branch when the Senate and presidency were controlled by different parties. This suggests that historically, oversight has partly motivated by partisan politics.
We show that members of Congress on appropriations committees syphon off billions from mandatory programs in order to fund discretionary projects, and that this accounting trick is a strategic response to budget rules meant to reduce government spending.
Editor-Reviewed
We review the academic literature on presidential unilateralism and make recommendations for future research.
We review the academic literature on legislative productivity and make recommendations future research.
In a survey experiment on the regulation of commercial drones, we show that the way government makes policy matters for whether the public approves of it.
In a review of President Obama's first term, we argue he has successfully used administrative tools to serve party goals.
In Progress
We survey experts in the fields of law, social science, and the humanities in order to estimate how much discretion presidents have in 54 policy areas. We then compare these measures to similar measures derived from the judgements of the public, in order to measure the gap between their expectations and the true scope of presidents' authority.
We field a nationally representative, pre-registered survey to measure public tolerance for unilateral executive actions in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. We find executive action does not depress support for policies, regardless of the local-level severity of the crisis.