Executive Orders and Presidential Power

This article reassesses the current paradigm of the presidential studies literature that holds that presidents have limited capacity to act unilaterally or make policy decisions on their own. I explore how presidents have used executive orders as a way of implementing significant policies unilaterally. Using an event-count analysis, I find that that the frequency of executive orders varies with substantive changes in the president's political environment. This evidence of a substantive component to order frequency shows that presidents can rely on their formal powers to make important policy decisions.