Impeaching the President: Mapping the Political Landscape in the House of Representatives

Abstract

Abstract Our main objective is to explain why and under what conditions legislators (co)sponsor impeachment resolutions against the president of the United States. We examine the impact of political, institutional, and economic variables, suggested by presidency and impeachment scholarship, on the behavior of 2,044 legislators who were members of the House of Representatives between 1973 and 2019. To test these hypotheses, we use two-level logistic regressions and an original dataset of all presidential impeachment resolutions filed in the House during that period. Our primary findings are that impeachment resolutions against the president are driven by individual-level variables such as representatives’ ideological extremity and partisanship. Our analysis also shows that the occurrence of major presidential scandals incentivizes representatives to target the chief executive. Surprisingly, we find no statistical evidence for the effects of divided government, presidential approval, and macro-economic factors. Our results suggest that representatives use impeachment resolutions both for position taking and for rendering the president accountable.