POWRE: Confirmation Politics: New Perspectives on Legislative-Executive Gridlock

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The causes and consequences of political gridlock figure prominently in much recent research in the field of legislative politics. Most such research, however, focuses on conflict between Congress and the President and its impact on lawmaking and congressional investigations. This project builds on recent insights from legislative scholarship and applies them to a study of inter-branch conflict between Congress and the President over the political shape of the federal courts. Intra- and inter-branch conflict, it is argued, affect not only policy outcomes, but the shape of political institutions as well. The objectives of the project are to conduct a pilot study in which the feasibility of a new approach to modeling inter-branch conflict will be explored. The investigator will develop a new database on federal judicial nominations and will use the data to test a dynamic, institutional theory of political conflict. As a pilot study, the database will focus on appellate court judgeships, and will provide the first comprehensive collection of data on nominations and confirmation fate of circuit court nominees to the federal bench between 1947 and 1997. The impact of the project can be measured in several ways. First, the collection of data will enhance judicial scholars' ability to focus on judicial politics at the lower court level, rather than the more commonly studied Supreme Court. Second, it will expand other lower court databases. Third, it will provide a means for assessing recent empirical claims about changes in the political character of the nomination process. Fourth, it will enhance our theoretical understanding of the endogeneity of political institutions, adding to a newly emerging literature on the determinants of political institutions and their change over time. This POWRE grant will have an important impact on the investigator's professional development. It will enable the PI, currently at the Brookings Institution, to further develop her research agenda on the evolution of political institutions by expanding her substantive focus and her methodological approaches. Because Brookings scholars normally seek funding from external private foundations, and because such foundations are more interested in tangible policy recommendations than the development and testing of theories of politics, this award will be invaluable support for the PI's intellectual and professional development.