Presidential Position Taking and the Puzzle of Representation
Year: 2011
Type: preprint
Abstract: A significant debate rages in the literature. On the one hand, Canes-Wrone (2006) maintains that presidential position taking is a function of existing popular support for a policy. On the other hand, Wood (2009) demonstrates that presidential liberalism is highly responsive to partisan liberalism, not the majority preferences of the public. This presents a puzzle in the literature: if presidents must target policies that are popular with the mass public to go public successfully, but are responsive primarily to partisan public opinion, how do presidents accomplish both to reconcile these countervailing findings? We think that neither answer is definitive given these studies’ systematic examinations of broad measures. We contend that additional examination of presidents’ specific policy priorities is warranted to explore whether either or both of these perspectives is correct. In this article, we examine a list of the president’s policy proposals from 1989 through 2008, compare it with both mass and partisan public opinion to determine to which opinion the president’s policy positions are responsive. Our findings have important implications for presidential representation, adding to our understanding of who the president has in mind when he attempts to achieve his policy goals.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Institutions: University of North Texas, University of Houston
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3124388783