Title

Presidential Defense: Decisions and Strategies to Preserve the Status Quo

Authors

Authors

E. K. Godwin;N. A. Ilderton

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

Abbreviated Journal Title

Polit. Res. Q.

Keywords

Congress; presidency; bureaucracy; divided government; CONGRESSIONAL INFLUENCE; POLITICAL CONTROL; DIVIDED GOVERNMENT; APPROVAL; BUREAUCRACY; DYNAMICS; SUPPORT; SUCCESS; POLICY; POWER; Political Science

Abstract

Theories of presidential success find that political disunity reduces the President's effectiveness by restricting his authority to generate new policies. We maintain that focusing solely on policy change neglects the influence exerted by the President when he defends his policy agenda by preventing unfavorable changes to the status quo. We develop a new theory of presidential success that predicts that certain political environments raise the resource costs to the President of policy change. During these times, the President shifts political resources to defending the status quo. We empirically test our predictions in both legislative and regulatory lawmaking, and find strong support for our theory.

Journal Title

Political Research Quarterly

Volume

67

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

715

Last Page

728

WOS Identifier

WOS:000344804000001

ISSN

1065-9129

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