Do Presidents' Veto Threats Matter?

否决权是总统在应对反对派控制的国会方面取得成功的关键手段。它不仅允许总统阻止反对党通过其立法计划，而且可以将否决权作为讨价还价游戏的一个阶段，以迫使国会适应总统的偏好。最近的博弈论研究已经确定了基于否决的讨价还价可以扩展到总统修辞领域的条件，具体地说，否决威胁。当总统的偏好不确定时，否决威胁可以成为有效的工具，众所周知，他珍视自己的声誉，并公开他的威胁，以至于放弃会损害他的声望和他所在政党的选举前景。总而言之，目前的研究发现，在适当的条件下，否决威胁可能是重要的。这项研究提出了一个更具经验性的问题：总统的否决威胁通常重要吗？在建立了一个经验模型，让总统决定发送一个变量代价高昂之后，这项研究测试了自1981年以来征集的2000多项否决威胁对政策内容、立法失败率以及党派立法者点名行为的有效性。这项研究评估了在分裂的政府中制定总统议程的一个潜在的重要工具。它还创建并提供了关于否决权威胁的两个主要数据集的传播。第一张是2500页的行政政策声明的扫描图像，总统在其中威胁要否决国会正在审议的一项法案。第二个数据集表示所有编码的威胁及其协变量。

The veto is a key instrument of presidential success in dealing with an opposition-controlled Congress. Not only does it allow the president to prevent the opposition party from passing its legislative program, the veto can be enlisted as a stage in a bargaining game to force Congress to accommodate the president's preferences. Recent game theoretic research has identified conditions in which veto-based bargaining can be extended into the realm of presidential rhetoric specifically, veto threats. Veto threats can be effective instruments when the president's preferences are uncertain, he is known to value his reputation, and has publicized his threat to the extent that backing down would harm his prestige and his party's electoral prospects. In sum, current research has found that veto threats can under appropriate conditions matter. This research asks a more empirical question, do presidents' veto threats generally matter?After developing an empirical model that has presidents deciding to send a variable costly, this research test the effectiveness of the more than 2,000 veto threats enlisted since 1981 on the policy content and failure rate of legislation and the roll call behavior of partisan legislators. The research assesses a potentially important tool of presidency agenda setting in divided government. It also creates and provides for the dissemination of two major datasets of veto threats. The first consists of scanned images of 2500 pages of Statements of Administration Policy in which the president threatened to veto a bill under consideration in Congress. The second data set represents all coded threats and their covariates.