Presidential Defense: Decisions and Strategies to Preserve the Status Quo

    Authors

    E. K. Godwin;N. A. Ilderton

    Comments

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    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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