South Carolina Essay

The belief that South Carolina’s governor has weak gubernatorial powers has been a common perception since pre-revolutionary South Carolina. Although the powers of the governor were greatly limited in the beginning of South Carolina’s history, those powers have slowly, but drastically increased over time. Today, South Carolina’s governor is considered to have moderate formal powers as compared to other governors in the United States. The governor has the ability to be extremely powerful if they efficiently exercise both their formal and informal powers.

Dating back to 1670, the first governors in pre-revolutionary South Carolina had little executive authority and were appointed by the Carolina Proprietors (Carter and Young 224). These early

This strengthened the power of the governor by increasing the amount of time the governor was able to propose and implement programs. The increased progression of gubernatorial powers continued during Governor Carroll Campbell’s term. The budgetary statues were revised during his term to allow the governor to solicit agency requests and submit an executive budget (Carter and Young 228). Governor Campbell successfully exercised his informal powers by helping the state recover after Hurricane Huge. Because of his speedy actions, the governor’s office was established as the crisis manager (Carter and Young 228). Campbell is also responsible for reorganizing the state bureaucracy and consolidating over a hundred-forty agencies during his term. Thirteen of these agencies now reported directly to the governor, and became known as the cabinet government (Carter and Young 228). This is the first time the governor of South Carolina exercised direct control over many state agencies and had the ability to appoint and remove their leadership. Campbell’s predecessor, Governor Beasley, formed his agencies into policy groups in order to manage the flow of legislation and programs (Carter and Young 228). This resulted in more deliberate policy

Informal powers of a governor are the individual attributes that a governor uses in order to influence policies and make changes (Carter and Young 229). These include the governor’s approach to communicating with the legislature, their use of the media, and communications with the public. Governor’s use their informal powers to persuade the political process and promote their agendas. When these powers are used effectively, it can significantly help the governor in their pursuance of policy changes. The success of Governor Riley, Campbell, and Beasley are examples of these powers being used effectively. However, if these informal powers are not used properly, it can be extremely damaging to a governor. An example of improperly used informal powers include Governor Mark Sanford’s use of pigs in the state house in order to attack the Grand Assembly and discourage pork