Published May 1985
| public
Journal Article
Passing the president's program: Public opinion and presidential influence in Congress
- Creators
- Rivers, Douglas
- Rose, Nancy L.
Abstract
Correlations between legislative support scores and presidential popularity do not accurately reflect the relationship between public opinion and presidential influence in Congress. Presidents make strategic choices to expend their public prestige to obtain congressional approval of programmatic initiatives. Previous studies have ignored such choices as well as other features of the strategic environment which tend to lower the apparent legislative success rates of popular presidents. A model of presidential and congressional behavior is proposed, and it is estimated that a 1 percent increase in a president's public support level increases the president's legislative approval rate by approximately 1 percent (holding program size fixed).
Additional Information
© 1985 Midwest Political Science Association. Manuscript submitted 26 March 1984; Final manuscript received 29 October 1984. The authors would like to thank Douglas Hibbs, Samuel Kernell, Arthur Maass, Richard Neustadt, and the editor for their helpful comments. Earlier versions were presented at the 1981 Midwest Political Science Association and 1983 Western Political Science Association meetings and at seminars at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. The National Science Foundation provided research support under grant SES-8309994. Formerly SSWP 549.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 83178
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20171113-162513740
- SES-8309994
- NSF
- Created
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2017-11-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field