Congressional–executive relations have long been a favored stomping ground for institutional scholars. The dynamics established by the Article 1, Section 7 game have inspired ruminations on the roles that vetoes, presidential leadership and agenda setting, and interbranch bargaining play in the macropolicy production of the federal government. To this list, we add the observation that one crucial dimension of interbranch negotiations concerns the amount of leeway that Congress admits to the president in the execution of public laws. The model presented in Chapter 4 suggests that, as delegation becomes less attractive in terms of legislators' reelection concerns, Congress will substitute legislative policy making for agency policy making.

In the pages that follow, we test this basic proposition from a number of different angles. We examine whether (1) divided government leads to lower average levels of executive branch discretion; (2) individual members more often vote in favor of delegation to presidents of their own party as opposed to presidents of the opposite party; (3) actual or threatened vetoes increase executive discretion; (4) legislators rely more on federalism and judicial oversight to circumvent the executive during times of divided government; and (5) legislators give power to executive actors further from the president's direct control under divided government.