In the United States of America, the executive branch of the government holds the executive power. The President as directed under article two of the constitution gives executive orders. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the first executive office of the president (EOP) in 1939. The first change to executive power after 1933 comes through the 1951 twenty-second amendment of the U.S constitution, which limits the presidency to two terms and no person who has held office for more than two years of a term shall be elected president more than once. This restriction serves as a check on the power of any one person over the nation’s government.
The Congress held the executive power of the U.S before 1933. There is a shift to executive power led by the presidents, after President Franklin Roosevelt three-term rule. During his time, he issued over 3500 executive orders. The consecutive presidents issued other executive orders some of which were rejected by Congress or law. Since then, there has been an exponential expansion in presidential power mainly due to the matters of national security and foreign affairs that have risen over the years. The primary determinant of why executive power continues to expand lies within the constitutional indeterminacy of presidency, it does not specify how it is that laws are to be executed (Heidi Kitrosser, 2015). With the president as commander in chief of the armed forces, he has inherent power to act fast in times of national emergencies and military action. The president is also the director of clandestine organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. Every extraordinary use of power by one president expands the availability of executive branch power use by future presidents.
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The ever-changing dynamics in society leads to growth and expansion. The executive branch of government has grown over the years primarily due to the increase in the federal executive branch. The federal bureaucracies existing today are far more massive than those in the early 20th century are. With the president as the head, all powers of the administrative state befall on him. The executive branch has better access to information compared to the other forms of government due to its vast resources. The media has played a significant role in building the image of the president as the head of a nation, which imbues him tremendous and unique credibility. The general tendency toward an increase in executive power in the twenty-first century is attributable to factors, such as improvements in information technology, intensified electoral competition, and judicial decisions (Alasdair, 2017).
References
Alasdair Roberts. (2017). Globalization and the Growth of Executive Power: An Old Story. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 24 (2), Vol.24 No.2 497-512. doi:10.2979/indjglolegstu.24.2.0497
Kitrosser, H. (2015). Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the US Constitution University of Chicago Press
