To test whether EOs are strategically timed to the news cycle, we examine the relationship between the probability that an EO is signed on a given day, and a daily measure of 'news pressure'. Taking this into account, a president planning to issue a controversial EO may have an incentive to make it coincide with 'distracting' events. In turn, this depends on what other important events happen at the same time, and compete with EOs for news time (Eisensee and Strömberg 2007). The political cost of EOs is however ultimately determined by how much media attention they attract. Studies have shown that these concerns are shared by voters and can reduce the president’s popularity (Christenson and Kriner 2017, Reeves and Rogowski 2018). Because of this, they can generate controversy, with the president being accused of overstepping his constitutional prerogatives. Presidential EOs provide an ideal setting to study strategic behaviour, because the White House has complete discretion over their timing and content.ĮOs do not require the approval of Congress and are, in fact, often used by presidents to push measures that Congress opposes. We examine this question by studying the timing of executive orders (EOs) issued by US presidents over the past 40 years (Djourelova and Durante 2019). These anecdotes raise a suspicion: could these apparent coincidences be due to strategic behaviour? In other words, do politicians intentionally time controversial policies to coincide with important events that distract the media and the public, so as to minimize negative publicity? While it has been documented that corporate announcements (DellaVigna and Pollet 2009) and military operations (Durante and Zhuravskaya 2018) employ strategic timing, evidence whether politicians use similar tactics is lacking. On 13 July 1994, the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi passed an emergency decree that freed hundreds of politicians with pending corruption charges – on the day Italy qualified for the final of the FIFA World Cup. On 14 June 2018, the day of the inauguration of the 2018 FIFA World Cup that Russia was hosting, the Russian government announced a rise in the retirement age and an increase in value added tax. On 25 August 2017, one day before Hurricane Harvey struck Texas, President Trump pardoned a former sheriff accused of racial profiling and issued a ban against transgender soldiers in the military.
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