

\chapter{Introduction} \label{CH1_Introduction}
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With administrative agencies at the core of policymaking in the United States \citep{yackee_politics_2019}, presidents naturally seek to make agencies responsive to them \citep{moe_politicized_1985}. One of the key mechanisms by which all presidents assert control over the administrative state, comprised of hundreds of agencies and millions of employees \citep{lewis_deconstructing_2019}, is by getting their people into leadership positions of executive agencies \citep{moe_politicized_1985,lewis_politics_2008}. \citeauthor{lewis_politics_2008} asserts this clearly: “of course, the president’s most important source of bureaucratic control is via personnel” (2008, p.7). Appointees head agencies, direct policy implementation, select priorities, make budgetary decisions, monitor civil servants, and convey the president’s vision to the agency \citep{moe_politicized_1985,wood_dynamics_1991,lewis_politics_2008,lewis_contemporary_2012,kinane_control_2019,kinane_control_2021,resh_appointee_2021}.

Although agency heads are an important asset to the president, the government faces a long ongoing and worsening vacancy crisis \citep{oconnell_vacant_2009,oconnell_staffing_2017,dull_continuity_2009,resh_appointee_2021}. PAS positions remained vacant 25 percent of the time on average between 1977 and 2005 \citep{oconnell_vacant_2009}. This trend continued through the Obama administration \citep{kinane_control_2021}. President Obama had higher levels of vacancies across his administration, compared to all of his most recent predecessors. This pattern only became more central to public and scholarly attention during the Trump administration, with Trump being criticized for “a cascade of … unfilled jobs [and] a vacuum of leadership” \citep{pettypiece_dhs_2020}.

The traditional nomination and confirmation process for presidential appointments, as enshrined in the Constitution, has long been costly to presidents. At every stage of the process to reach confirmation, from vetting to the final confirmation vote, presidents face costs. The vetting process alone requires hundreds of staff and includes hundreds of pages of materials, including an IRS waiver, a financial disclosure, and a detailed questionnaire \citep{wheaton_want_2016,service_presidential-transition-guide-2018pdf_2018}.\footnote{Once in office, the White House Personnel Office takes over this work from the transition. This office is in charge of finding and vetting over 4000 appointees, with approximately 1200 requiring Senate confirmation, to place across the federal government. Under the most recent administrations before the Trump administration, the office has had a limited staff of just under 100 \citep{oharrow_jr_behind_2018}. Under president Trump, the office was further depleted. The staff decreased to roughly 30 and was comprised of individuals with little to no experience outside of their work on the president’s campaign \citep{oharrow_jr_behind_2018}. Staff capacity places a constraint on how many nominations the president is able to make and how quickly they are able to make them.}  White House staff must then work on “greasing the wheels” of congressional committees and building support among key Senators to ensure a successful and timely confirmation.\footnote{Senate committees, and particularly committee chairs, are the primary drivers of Senate confirmation delays \citep{krause_confirmation_2022}. Therefore, presidents and their teams will be particularly focused on gaining the support of these influential gatekeepers.} 	

While these costs alone may make a president short on time and resources consider an alternate route of appointments, Senate delays and decreased confirmation rates have required presidents to further consider alternatives \citep{oconnell_shortening_2014}. Confirmation delays and failures have consistently increased over time. Exemplifying this trend, delays of confirmation and confirmation failure rates doubled between the Reagan and Obama administration \citep{oconnell_staffing_2017,service_senate_2020}. These trends persisted through the Trump administration and the beginning of the Biden administration. Despite having a Republican controlled Senate, it took the Senate 115 days on average to proceed from receiving a nomination to having a confirmation vote \citep{service_senate_2020}. Similarly, one year into his administration, President Joe Biden had only gotten roughly three-quarters as many nominees confirmed as Presidents Obama and George W. Bush \citep{service_joe_2022}. 

With the traditional route made more demanding and less fruitful, confirmation is often only sought immediately for the most important positions \citep{oconnell_vacant_2009}. Presidents have increasingly left the remaining broad swath of PAS positions vacant for extended periods of time \citep{oconnell_vacant_2009,dull_continuity_2009,resh_appointee_2021}. Presidents are selective in which positions they make nominations to and take extended periods of time before making a nomination, with the average delay of over one year during the first two years of the W. Bush, Obama, and Trump presidencies \citep{lewis_very_2021}. Therefore, a large proportion of positions remain vacant with no nomination from the president for hundreds of days \citep{hollibaugh_jr_when_2017}. 	 

Further, for many positions, presidents never make a nomination once a position becomes vacant. Exemplifying this trend, between 1996 and 2016, only 60\% of vacancies reported to the Government Accountability Office received subsequent nominations from the president \citep{kinane_control_2021}. President Trump continued this trend. At the end of his term, as of July 27, 2020, nearly 70 of 757 “key” presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed (PAS) positions had received no nomination from the president at any point in his administration \citep{post_donald_2020}. Additionally, almost 200 more positions were vacant, with more than 70 having received no nomination for the current vacancy \citep{post_donald_2020}. Presidents frustrated by the costs of vetting and selection \citep{hollibaugh_jr_vacancies_2015} and by the potential of delay and failure in the Senate frequently neglect the traditional appointments process. 

\section{Overview of Chapters}

With increasingly long delays in the confirmation process, high rejection rates, and heightened selectiveness in presidential nominations, the consequences of the “broken” appointments process has become a highly salient topic in American political discourse. Scholars generally agree that vacancies in bureaucratic leadership positions are detrimental to presidents’ ability to control administrative policymaking \citep[see e.g.,][]{oconnell_vacant_2009,bolton_organizational_2015,lewis_president_2018}. But if this assumption is true, why do presidents allow vacancies to persist? To address this puzzle, my dissertation presents a novel theory for how and when vacancies affect presidents’ ability to steer administrative policymaking, and what strategies they deploy to still assert control over the bureaucracy through the use of acting officials and other non-Senate confirmed appointees. 

In my first substantive chapter (Chapter 2), “Presidential Strategy Amidst the ‘Broken’ Appointments Process” (published in \textit{Presidential Studies Quarterly}), I examine when and how presidents actively take control of politically appointed positions once they become vacant. While the existing literature mostly focuses on nominations in isolation, I propose a unified theory of presidential appointments that fully incorporates their choices regarding both types of acting officials\footnote{Unlike the limited research on the matter, I distinguish between individuals who are automatically next in line for the position (or what I call “default” acting officials) from those who the president actively selects to temporarily lead (i.e., “non-default” acting officials). This distinction is crucial for understanding how presidents use acting officials as a strategic tool, rather than as a standing procedure for the continuity of government.} and nominations. I explain how presidents focus their limited time and resources to use non-default acting officials in a select group of positions—particularly, for agencies that are ideologically opposed to the president or that work in areas related to presidential campaign priorities, and for the highest tier of leadership. These positions represent the core needed to ensure agency compliance with the administration's agenda. While Senate confirmation provides greater benefits in the long-run, presidents leave default and non-default acting officials in place for long periods of time for many less central positions. To evaluate my expectations, I use new data on vacancies, acting official service and backgrounds, and presidential nominations from the last three administrations. Estimates from Markov multistate models are in alignment with my expectations. Altogether, these findings demonstrate that presidents strategically use vacancies and that non-default acting officials are a readily available substitute for controlling agency operations, particularly to bypass a contentious Senate confirmation process. 

In my second substantive chapter (Chapter 3), “Going for Goals: Presidential Appointments and Agency Goal Change” (published in \textit{Presidential Studies Quarterly}), I explain how presidents influence agency goals, which determine how agencies allocate their time and resources in policymaking. While existing work highlights the importance of goals for the operation and performance of agencies, scholars have not yet investigated how presidents and their appointees might manipulate these goals to pursue presidential policy agendas. Further, few studies have examined the efficacy of presidential appointments for shaping bureaucratic outcomes. In this chapter, I argue that agencies that the president exerts greater control over through Senate-confirmed appointments will experience more goal change. To evaluate my expectations, I use new data on agencies’ vacancies as well as their strategic and priority goals from the Obama and Trump administrations. I find that agencies without Senate-confirmed leadership will be less responsive to a new administration. Although this finding is consistent with conventional wisdom, it has not been widely proven empirically. This result suggests that any new administration must get their appointees in place immediately if they hope to achieve their policy goals and bring the long-term policy priorities of agencies in alignment with their agenda. Of course, presidents have other tools at their disposal to assert control outside of the traditional nomination and confirmation process, as I explore in my third chapter. 

My third substantive chapter (Chapter 4), “Vacancies and Presidential Influence Over the Administrative State in the United States”, explores the consequences of vacancies for presidential control over the bureaucracy. While some argue that vacancies limit presidential influence, recent scholarship contends they actually expand it. This chapter adjudicates these competing views by theorizing the conditions under which vacancies hinder or enable presidents’ goals. Specifically, I argue that the effect of vacancies on presidential influence is contingent on the level of control the president has over the agency through other tools of politicization. I test the theory by merging data from a three-wave survey of federal executives with new data on agency leadership during the Bush, Obama, and Trump presidencies. Consistent with my expectations, I find that vacancies are less limiting to bureaucrats’ perceptions of presidential influence for politicized agencies and those with multiple layers of political appointee oversight. These results suggest that through the unilateral placement of non-Senate confirmed appointees, presidents can assert control over agency policymaking despite constraint from the Senate in the appointments process. 

Altogether, this dissertation showcases the resilience of the president in responding to the vacancy crisis. Presidents, despite increasing costs of the nomination and confirmation process and constraint from the Senate, continue to exert significant control over administrative policymaking.  In fact, using the tools of acting officials and other non-Senate confirmed appointees, presidents are in some circumstances able to have even greater influence, without having to appease and deal with the checks of the legislative branch. This may serve to only further exacerbate the prominence and length of vacancies, with presidents strategically allowing vacancies to persist. As a result, the health and functioning of the administrative state will only stand to suffer \citep{piper_vacancies_2022}.