In this paper, I examine under what conditions presidents succeed and under what conditions they fail in the legislative arena. I focus on the effects of cross-voting, and explain the variation in presidential legislative success. I claim that uncertainty about legislators' support for...

This article presents models of strategic behavior by agencies and courts where the ability to manipulate the instruments of decision making, rather than merely selecting policy choices, allows actors to insulate their policy choices from higher level review. The theory is based on the notion...

The ability of Congress to structure the institutional costs of agency and judicial decision making gives it considerable control over regulatory policy. The authors analyze the role of decision costs through models of agency-court interaction and consider the ability of Congress to manipulate...