Preemptive Pressure: Tracing SAPs as a New Measure of Presidential Influence in Legislating American Foreign Policy

How effective are presidential challenges in shaping the final content of foreign policy bills in the US? While the Presidents’ use of the most obvious challenge – the veto – has been studied extensively, this paper argues that preemptive executive communications to Congress are a subtler, less politically costly and more targeted tool that remains understudied – especially in foreign policy where Presidents are most vocal. Delivered at a strategic intervention point along the legislative process, these messages convey the Presidents’ position and pinpoint specific provisions that they find objectionable. The aim of this paper is to provide the first comprehensive study of the impact of Statements of Administration Policy (SAP) and the conditions for their success in altering the legislative output preemptively. It argues that Presidents rely on these communications as avenues for their efforts to pressure Congress to adopt desired changes and that they do so with distinct assertiveness in settings of divided government. Empirically, this paper covers all National Defense Authorization Acts, 1985-2020 – a law with strong foreign policy implications that must be passed annually, hence ensuring comparability over time. The analysis offers a clear image of an understudied tool of presidential influence and gauges the extent of presidential power in designing foreign policy legislation by comparing the respective NDAAs’ content prior to and after presidential interventions by means of SAPs. Regression analyses assess how standard contextual factors appear to moderate the extent as well as the success of presidential challenges. The analysis shows that presidential assertiveness in SAPs intensifies in settings of divided government while these challenges become more pronounced as well as more successful over time. These findings advance our understanding of the playingfield of legislating foreign policy in the US.