In recent years, scholars have expended considerable efforts to understand the executive appointment process and the forces influencing the choices made by the President and the Senate. However, some factors integral to theoretical models have not been well-integrated empirically, and other...

While the importance of political appointments is a matter of consensus, theorists and empiricists generally focus on different considerations, such as ideology and confirmation duration respectively. More recently, there have been efforts to integrate empirical and theoretical scholarship but,...

Scholars have seemingly established that constituents hold “out of step” legislators electorally accountable. Empirically, however, such claims have not been based on measures placing districts and perceptions of legislators’ preferences in the same space. We remedy this using the 2006 and...

Efforts to find empirical evidence that campaign money impacts policymaking choices have offered scant support for group influence. A possible explanation is that the hypothesis that those receiving campaign monies should adjust their policy choices to favor their donor requires the untenable...

We analyse a cheap-talk game where contrasting lobbies are asymmetrically informed. Equilibrium information transmission depends on each lobby's preference alignment with the legislator on the dimension of its expertise, and on the conflict of lobby interests. Full revelation is possible only...

While contemporary scholars generally view the Senate’s nominee approval role as impacting bureaucratic capacities and the president’s ability to realize campaign pledges, empiricists and theorists focus on different elements of bargaining. Since empiricists typically study...