I am working on a variety of projects along multiple research lines. Below, I have created quick descriptions of my active research interests as well as providing lists of my current publications (with links) and those projects that I am currently working on.
I have a series of papers published with Joel Sievert regarding the use of presidential signing statements. Presidential signing statements are brief messages accompanying legislation that has passed through Congress and is being signed by the President. Such statements are used for a variety of purposes including expressing policy or constitutional concerns as well as praising aspects of the law or recognizing individuals who helped to pass the legislation.
My coauthor, Joel Sievert, and I have created a unique data set of over a thousand presidential signing statements along with accompanying information concerning political contexts and the specific piece of legislation. To date, our research suggests that such statements are a part of an ongoing inter-branch dialogue concerning the relative powers of each branch.
Joel and I have expanded our interests in inter-branch communication to include Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs), which are bill-specific presidential messages to Congress delivered during the legislative process. We have one paper published on the topic and multiple working papers. We are also working to connect our existing projects to include presidential veto messages.
Additionally, I have examined the role of presidential travel abroad (co-authored with TTU colleague Toby Rider) as an aspect of presidential policy making through personal diplomacy.
Presidents have a strong incentive to control executive agencies through the nomination of like-minded and responsive individuals to leadership posts. From the perspective of appointing presidents, personnel are policy. The Senate, however, must provide advice and consent for appointments to these key positions. While most nominees are successfully confirmed, this success rate tends to mask wide variation in the length of time it takes the Senate to make a decision. Delay of critical nominees can influence the character and capacity of an agency while hampering the policy ambitions of a president. In this way the power to delay can be as important as the power to reject a nominee.
Strategic delay of presidential nominations and recent developments in the nominations process were the topic of my dissertation entitled: "Winning the Waiting Game: Senatorial Delay in Executive Nominations." This project was the winner of the 2015 George C. Edwards III Dissertation Award and I have since expanded upon this work in a multitude of related directions.
My more recent work expands my interests in the executive nominations to judicial branch appointments and courts-related. This includes work on the appointment politics surrounding the selection (and dismissal) of United States Attorneys (co-authored with Boyd, Nelson, and Boldt) as well as appointments to the lower federal courts (co-authored with an MSU graduate student, Jonathan King).
My time spent as an APSA Congressional Fellow left me with an active interest in the operation of Congress as an institution. One of my key interests is how rules are used to manage limited floor time in the Senate. Not only is this related to my work on the motion to table in the Senate, but it also relates to my interest in how the "Nuclear Option" used in 2013, 2017, and 2019 by the Senate has altered the presidential nominations process.
A further interest of mine is the role of professional staff in Congress. Key questions concern how staff are used, what influence they have (if any) on productivity, and how staff use/resources have evolved over time.
King, Jonathan M., Ian Ostrander, and Jessica Schoenherr. Forthcoming. "Anchoring or Expanding: Gender and Judicial Nominations," Political Research Quarterly.
Koss, Joshua, Ian Ostrander, and Joel Sievert. 2024. "Analyzing Arguments in Executive Veto Messages." Presidential Studies Quarterly, 54(2): 162-180.
King, Jonathan M., Peter McAndrews, and Ian Ostrander. 2022. "President Trump and the Politics of Judicial Nominations." Justice System Journal, 43(4): 524-543.
Boyd, Nelson, Ostrander, Boldt. 2021. The Politics of Federal Prosecution. Oxford University Press.
Ostrander, Ian and Joel Sievert. 2020. "Presidential Communication During the Legislative Process," Social Science Quarterly, 101(3): 1165-1182.
King, Jonathan M. and Ian Ostrander. 2020. "Prioritizing Judicial Nominations After Presidential Transitions," Forthcoming in Presidential Studies Quarterly.
2019 Ostrander, Ian and Toby J. Rider. "Presidents Abroad: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy," Political Research Quarterly, 72(4): 835-848.
2016 Ostrander, Ian. "The Logic of Collective Inaction: Senatorial Delay in Executive Nominations." American Journal of Political Science, 60(4): 1063-1076.
2015 Ostrander, Ian. "Powering Down the Presidency: The Rise and Fall of Recess Appointments." Presidential Studies Quarterly, 45(3):558-572.
2013 Smith, Steven S., Ian Ostrander, and Christopher Pope. "Majority Party Power and Procedural Motions in the U.S. Senate" Legislative Studies Quarterly, 38(2):205-236.
2013 Ostrander, Ian and Joel Sievert. "The Logic of Presidential Signing Statements." Political Research Quarterly, 66(1): 140-152.
"Quick to Judge? Confirmation by Cloture in the Post Nuclear Senate," with Jonathan King. (Invited to Revise and Resubmit)
King, Jonathan M., Ian Ostrander, and Jessica Schoenherr. "Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Judicial Nominations."
King, Jonathan M., and Ian Ostrander. "Judicial Appointment Politics in the Biden Administration."
"The Evolution of the Executive Veto: 1792-2016," with Joel Sievert.
"Managers or Unitary Actors? Investigating the Effect of Staff on Legislative Productivity," with Anthony Madonna and Simon Williamson.
King, Jonathan M. and Ian Ostrander. Filling the Federal Bench: The Politics of Judicial Nominations. [Working Book Manuscript]
Replication and other data sets can be found in the links below. Please contact me for specific information if you can not find it below.
Presidential Signing Statements: Download "Public PSS Codebook.pdf" as well as "PSS Coding Carter Obama.xlsx" for data on presidential signing statements.
For presidential travel data, download the Base Travel Data Excel file for coding of presidential trips until 2016, the By Year Travel file for data aggregated by year and the Travel Codebook for details on coding procedure.