The Administrative Governor and the Parties Environment

This dissertation examines how political parties impact an executive’s decision to engage in administrative policymaking. Specifically, it explores how five dimensions of a state’s parties environment (control, fragility, competition, polarization, and factionalism) influence a governor’s use of executive orders as either substitutes or complements to legislative policymaking. This study proposes a contingent theory of administrative policymaking that suggests executive orders are used both as substitute and complementary goods depending on whether the governor’s party also controls the legislature. The theory is tested by employing multi-level modeling on an original dataset of 21,433 gubernatorial executive orders issued by 95 governors serving between 1993 and 2010. During periods of divided government, the nature of a state’s political parties is shown to incentivize governors to use executive orders as substitutes to legislative policymaking. Alternately, during periods of unified government the nature of a state’s political parties has no significant impact on the use of executive orders. A case study of mental health reform in New Jersey reveals evidence of complementary use during periods of unified government. This case illustrates that in certain hospitable environments administrative actions can be successfully coupled with legislative actions to produce coordinated and directed policy change.