Brandon Rottinghaus
Biographic Data
| ID | 827465 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brandon Rottinghaus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brandon |
| FAMILY NAME | Rottinghaus |
| SIGNATURE | ROTTINGHAUS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Houston |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6603-3321 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 266 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
All About Location: The Geographic Politics of District Office Placement
Field offices for Members of Congress allow staff to engage in casework and solve local problems. Office locations are forms of representation and a strategic political choice to harness voters. Utilizing archived websites to track the physical location of Members of the U.S. House’s district offices from 2012–2020, we explore whether redistricting and representative identity lead to changes in the location of district offices for newly elected H…
Assessing Presidential Greatness in a Polarized Moment: Analyzing the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Survey
This article presents the findings of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. which aimed to rank presidential greatness from George Washington to Joe Biden. Respondents rated each president revealing notable trends in historical rankings. Abraham Lincoln topped the list with an average rating of 95.03, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt (90.83) and George Washington (90.32). In contrast, Donald Trump received the lowest score at 10…
Worse than Watergate? The lasting impact of the Nixon scandal
Every major scandal is compared to Watergate by the media. All presidents face scandals big and small, but for 50 years, Watergate has been the scandal to which all scandals before and after are measured. After five decades, how does the Watergate scandal rank relative to other major presidential scandals stretching back to the late 1800s? Using an expert survey of scholars of the presidency, we probe where Watergate ranks in the pantheon of pres…
Dear President Nixon: Re-examining public correspondence during the Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal remains a tumultuous and troubling time in American presidential history. Leading to the first and to date, only presidential resignation from office, the events of this period exemplify the political and societal consequences of corruption and misuse of power. This article provides a renewed look into the lasting legacy of Watergate by examining letters addressed to President Richard Nixon by members of the public during th…
What causes threats directed at the president
What puts the president in the crosshairs of threats? By examining a new data set of threats made against the president in the incoming White House mail from 1961 to 1965, this study argues that domestic and international events, especially politically controversial issues, serve as a provocation for political threats. We find that outside civil rights events more than approval or economic conditions drive threats to the White House. Although lim…
Intensity (and backlash) of opinion on civil rights and presidential responsiveness
Intense policy demanders will reward or punish elected officials depending on whether outcomes mesh with their preferences. In this article, we examine opinion intensity as manifested in public opinion mail (using unexplored data) to assess the impact of this opinion on civil rights policy approval during the pivotal year 1964. The more President Lyndon Johnson spoke about civil rights, the less supportive opinion mail he got the following week. …
Do Scandals Matter
Political science research is conflicted about the impact of political scandals on survival in office. Scholars have found strong negative impacts to some scandals but others have found minimal or no effects. The literature has explored several consequences but no one work examines them collectively. This article examines presidential, gubernatorial, and Congressional scandals from 1972 to 2021 to assess the impact of scandal in a polarizing Amer…
Conspiratorial thinking in the Latino community on the 2020 election
Political knowledge is the cornerstone of a functional representative democracy, but belief in conspiracy theories disrupts that connection and may be dangerous with consequences for democracy. Pundits and politicians have speculated about the cause and effect of misinformation and conspiracy theories, but no work has examined what causes beliefs in conspiracy theories or misinformation among Latinos specifically. In a unique survey of Texas Lati…
The quiet revolution”: Convenience voting, vote centers, and turnout in Texas elections
Polling place consolidation makes administering voting easier but scholars question the effect on turnout. Vote centers (which consolidate polling locations) are theoretically less expensive to administer and convenient for many voters, but less is known about the impacts on specific racial communities or across election cycles. Using Texas’ registered voters’ list from the Secretary of State’s Voting Division, this paper uses Geographic Informat…
Presidential “Pitches” and White House Pressure: Interpersonal Presidential Persuasion in a Shared Lawmaking Environment
Bargaining is a critical component to exercising shared lawmaking powers. Conventional wisdom holds that presidents are effective at personally persuading members of Congress to support favored legislation, but recent scholarship shows when and how they get involved matters. Yet, we know less about specifically how presidents bargain with members of Congress and which types of interpersonal presidential communication frames persuade members of Co…
Constituent Approval and Presidential Support: The Mediating Effect of Party and Chamber
Approval affects congressional support for the president, with a reelection motivation the main linkage mechanism. Yet, the literature has not fully explored this linkage due to theoretical barriers and serious data limitations. Using a new theory and novel data, we argue that the impact of the reelection motivation should vary with contextual factors. This paper identifies two such factors rarely explored together: member party and chamber. We h…
Presidential Greatness in a Polarized Era: Results from the Latest Presidential Greatness Survey
For generations, scholars have used surveys to examine presidential greatness. However, the rising tide of politicization calls these ratings into question. Can those who study the presidency offer fair judgments regardless of their political affiliation? Does their affiliation alter judgments of presidential greatness in historical or contemporary terms? Using a 2018 expert survey of political scientists who study the presidency, we find that pa…
Vote centers and turnout by election type in Texas
The use of vote centers—specific locations in a county where all voters will vote—is on the rise nationwide, as more than a dozen states used this process by 2018. More states are moving toward using voting centers to remedy the problem of low voter turnout, with the assumption that the centralization of voting to several core county locations will increase voter accessibility. What we have less clear information about is the effect of vote cente…
Exercising Unilateral Discretion: Presidential Justifications of Unilateral Powers in a Shared Powers System
There is a puzzle in the literature on presidential unilateral power that, on one hand, presents executive orders as the outcome of presidential prerogative but on the other hand identifies delegated discretion as a limit to presidential action. To address this question, we examine the use of delegated authority in unilateral orders from 1951 to 2009 and relate these to the ideological underpinnings of the institutions delegating and overseeing t…
Constituent Approval, Electoral Marginality, and Congressional Support for the President
Controversy exists concerning the effects of approval on congressional support for the president. One source of confusion is the paucity of constituent‐level data for testing the approval–support hypothesis. This study applies multilevel regression poststratification techniques on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study from 2006 through 2012 to estimate constituent approval for both the House and Senate at the member level. Using these data…
The Cost of Doing Business: Congressional Requests, Cost, and Allocation of Presidential Resources
Executive-legislative interactions operate with cost-benefit trade-offs. Presidents possess several material options in granting Congressional requests to leverage Congressional support but must also marshal these scarce resources. We argue presidents should strategically grant requests from members of Congress for a range of executive actions based upon the cost of the request and the political context. Using an original data set of nearly 4,000…
Presidential Greatness and Political Science: Assessing the 2014 Apsa Presidents and Executive Politics Section Presidential Greatness Survey
Debates about presidential greatness have been with us for decades, facilitated in part by numerous systematic surveys of scholars with expertise in American history and politics. Nevertheless, the voice of political scientists in this debate has been relatively muted when compared particularly with the role that historians have had in making these determinations. This article introduces and assesses results of a recent effort to capture the atti…
The Institutional Effects of Executive Scandals
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Lewinsky, Enron, Bridgegate: according to the popular media, executive scandals are ubiquitous. Although individual scandals persist in the public memory and as the subject of academic study, how do we understand the impacts of executive indiscretion or malfeasance as a whole? What effect, if any, do scandals have on political polarization, governance, and, most importantly, democratic accountability? Recognizing the impor…
Unilateral Orders as Constituency Outreach: Executive Orders, Proclamations, and the Public Presidency
Scholarship on the unilateral presidency has focused on presidential policy making with the stroke of a pen. However, such studies overlook the influence that the public presidency can have on shaping the president's unilateral strategies. Our research question seeks to link these two elements by exploring the following question: under what conditions do presidents issue executive orders and proclamations as part of their public presidency? Using…
Assessing the Unilateral Presidency: Constraints and Contingencies
As political battles about public policy give way to legal confrontations over the separation of powers system in the United States, scholars, journalists, and politicians continue to exchange barb
Political Scandal in American Politics: Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
In Lieu of Legislation: Executive Unilateral Preemption or Support during the Legislative Process
In the legislative process, presidents may negotiate with Congress or use unilateral action as a bargaining tool. When presidents issue a unilateral order during the legislative process, do these orders “preempt” or “support” legislation? We match unilateral orders with related legislative activity and find presidents are more likely to use unilateral orders to “preempt” legislation when the issue is on the president’s agenda or in the second hal…
Reexamining the Use of Unilateral Orders: Source of Authority and the Power to Act Alone
Recent debate on the use of unilateral presidential directives suggests that a president’s ability to shape and act without the consent of Congress is largely unchecked by traditional institutional arrangements while other research shows that presidents are more likely to be restrained by Congress. This article contributes to this debate by examining the source of authority used in unilateral orders. Using a new database of unilateral orders and …
Monkey Business: The Effect of Scandals on Presidential Primary Nominations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Surviving Scandal: The Institutional and Political Dynamics of National and State Executive Scandals
Which factors shorten or lengthen the survival of a scandal involving a chief executive? Using new data tracking scandals involving presidents and governors from 1972 to 2011, I chart the duration of each political, personal, and financial scandal faced by an elected official, their staff, or nominees. I specifically examine institutional, political, and economic factors to investigate what factors quicken a “negative” end to a scandal. National …
The Power of Decree: Presidential Use of Executive Proclamations, 1977-2005
Recent scholarship on unilateral presidential actions has recast our understanding of modern presidential policy making. However, our knowledge on this issue remains incomplete. In this article, the authors expand the literature on the unilateral presidency by exploring presidential proclamations from 1977 to 2005 (Presidents Carter to Bush) and identifying the importance of these tools as a policy-making instrument in expanding presidential powe…
Rethinking Presidential Responsiveness: The Public Presidency and Rhetorical Congruency, 1953–2001
Several studies have examined the relationship between presidential action and public opinion; however, few explore a direct and continuous connection between presidential rhetoric and public opinion. To measure presidential rhetorical congruence with opinion, I construct a data set of matched opinion and policy statements from Presidents Eisenhower to Clinton. Confirming expectations (while contradicting others), I find no differences in congrue…
When the President Goes Public: The Consequences of Communication Mode for Opinion Change across Issue Types and Groups
Evidence is mounting that presidents find difficulty in leading public opinion. However, focusing on presidential ability to lead mass opinion may underestimate the degree to which presidents are able to rally key groups on political and personal characteristics. In this article, the authors use an experimental design to test the effect of communication mode across issue types and groups. From three of President Bush’s speeches on Iraq (the State…
Stonewalling and Suspicion during Presidential Scandals
Scholars possess little theoretical understanding of how presidents behave during scandals. Existing presidential scholarship has focused on “offensive” communication, aimed at achieving legislative or policy goals, whereas the authors’ interest is in “defensive” communication. Using a game-theoretic signaling model of the president–media relationship, the authors identify conditions affecting White House stonewalling and media feeding frenzies. …
Strategic Leaders: Determining Successful Presidential Opinion Leadership Tactics Through Public Appeals
Most scholars find presidents generally fail at moving the public's views on policy; however, although presidents may fail at opinion leadership at the aggregate level, examining specific communication tactics may yield a more nuanced view of when presidents succeed or fail at leadership. In this article, using a comprehensive data set spanning 1953 to 2001, several strategic communication tactics through which the president might influence tempo…
The Politics of Requesting Appointments: Congressional Requests in the Appointment and Nomination Process
There is persistent debate about who most influences the federal appointment process, especially whether the executive branch staffs the federal bureaucracy with individuals loyal to the White House or relies on the process as an accommodation to important political players, especially members of Congress. Yet, people still know little about the role members of Congress play in the process of shaping the prenomination environment. In this article…
Unilateral Orders as Constituency Outreach: Executive Orders, Proclamations, and the Public Presidency
Scholarship on the unilateral presidency has focused on presidential policy making with the stroke of a pen. However, such studies overlook the influence that the public presidency can have on shaping the president's unilateral strategies. Our research question seeks to link these two elements by exploring the following question: under what conditions do presidents issue executive orders and proclamations as part of their public presidency? Using…
In Lieu of Legislation: Executive Unilateral Preemption or Support during the Legislative Process
In the legislative process, presidents may negotiate with Congress or use unilateral action as a bargaining tool. When presidents issue a unilateral order during the legislative process, do these orders “preempt” or “support” legislation? We match unilateral orders with related legislative activity and find presidents are more likely to use unilateral orders to “preempt” legislation when the issue is on the president’s agenda or in the second hal…
Presidential Leadership on Foreign Policy, Opinion Polling, and the Possible Limits of “Crafted Talk
The strategy of "crafted talk" (or framing) suggests that a politician uses public opinion to anticipate the most alluring, language to convince the public to follow a politician's own preferred policy (CitationJacobs & Shapiro, 2000). This manipulatory behavior by presidents has important consequences in the realm of constructing foreign policy, especially if the policy involves military service personnel, international prestige, or foreign conf…
Monkey Business: The Effect of Scandals on Presidential Primary Nominations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Historical Presidency: The Development of Unilateral Power and the Problem of the Power to Warn: W ashington through M c K inley
The scholarly turn to the unilateral presidency has expanded our understanding of the presidency and executive power, but, to date, this body of work has focused on presidents since the N ew D eal. This is somewhat surprising, given that many of the most well‐known unilateral orders were issued before 1900. Rather than being isolated events, they are part of a longer list of unilateral presidential orders among early presidents that, as a group, …
"Following the "Mail Hawks: Alternative Measures of Public Opinion on Vietnam in the Johnson White House
Scholars argue that public opinion grew in importance during the Vietnam conflict, yet most find President Johnson was not responsive to public opinion during the War. We amplify these theories by demonstrating the practical value of public opinion mail sent to the White House on Vietnam, reshaping theories about the constraining role of public opinion in foreign policy. We find that the White House mail, but not opinion polling, favoring escalat…
Presidential Position Taking and the Puzzle of Representation
A significant debate rages in the literature. Although going public success is a function of mass public support for a policy, presidents respond to partisan liberalism in their public rhetoric. This presents a puzzle: how do presidents reconcile their need to target policies that are popular with the mass public to go public successfully, when they respond primarily to partisan opinion in their speeches? Our comparison of the president's policy …
Skeletons in White House Closets: A Discussion of Modern Presidential Scandals
SCOTT BASINGER is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston. His current research is on political scandals and their electoral consequences. He has published articles in leading journals including American Political Science Review, Congress & the Presidency, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Political Research Quarterly. BRANDON ROTTINGHAUS is an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston…
Do Scandals Matter
Political science research is conflicted about the impact of political scandals on survival in office. Scholars have found strong negative impacts to some scandals but others have found minimal or no effects. The literature has explored several consequences but no one work examines them collectively. This article examines presidential, gubernatorial, and Congressional scandals from 1972 to 2021 to assess the impact of scandal in a polarizing Amer…
Reexamining the Use of Unilateral Orders: Source of Authority and the Power to Act Alone
Recent debate on the use of unilateral presidential directives suggests that a president’s ability to shape and act without the consent of Congress is largely unchecked by traditional institutional arrangements while other research shows that presidents are more likely to be restrained by Congress. This article contributes to this debate by examining the source of authority used in unilateral orders. Using a new database of unilateral orders and …
Surviving Scandal: The Institutional and Political Dynamics of National and State Executive Scandals
Which factors shorten or lengthen the survival of a scandal involving a chief executive? Using new data tracking scandals involving presidents and governors from 1972 to 2011, I chart the duration of each political, personal, and financial scandal faced by an elected official, their staff, or nominees. I specifically examine institutional, political, and economic factors to investigate what factors quicken a “negative” end to a scandal. National …
Polls and Elections: Revisiting Midterm Visits: Why the Type of Visit Matters
In this article, we reassess the findings of where presidents visit during midterm elections from 1954 to 2010, with data that, for the first time, segments presidential visits into “rallies,” fundraisers, and “virtual” campaigning. On one hand, our findings reflect what others have found—when aggregating all visits together, the total Electoral College votes and the previous state‐level winning percentage of the president in the state affect the…
Exorcising Scandal in the White House: Presidential Polling in Times of Crisis
Several important works have addressed the issue of scandal in the White House; however, no study has used internal White House archival polling data to explore the phenomenon of presidential recovery from scandal. In this research note, we expand the analysis of presidential polling and connect these internal procedures to times of scandal in the White House across two presidents and three scandals. We identify four questions the White House is …
Constituent Approval and Presidential Support: The Mediating Effect of Party and Chamber
Approval affects congressional support for the president, with a reelection motivation the main linkage mechanism. Yet, the literature has not fully explored this linkage due to theoretical barriers and serious data limitations. Using a new theory and novel data, we argue that the impact of the reelection motivation should vary with contextual factors. This paper identifies two such factors rarely explored together: member party and chamber. We h…
Constituent Approval, Electoral Marginality, and Congressional Support for the President
Controversy exists concerning the effects of approval on congressional support for the president. One source of confusion is the paucity of constituent‐level data for testing the approval–support hypothesis. This study applies multilevel regression poststratification techniques on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study from 2006 through 2012 to estimate constituent approval for both the House and Senate at the member level. Using these data…
Counting Congress In: Patterns of Success in Judicial Nomination Requests by Members of Congress to Presidents Eisenhower and Ford
The power to nominate and confirm federal judges is shared by Congress and the president, yet few works explicitly address the role that Congress plays in shaping the preselection pool for judicial nominees. In this article, we illuminate this debate by exploring judicial nomination requests from Members of Congress to the Eisenhower and Ford Administrations. In explaining who is nominated, the characteristics of the nominee matter more than the …
The quiet revolution”: Convenience voting, vote centers, and turnout in Texas elections
Polling place consolidation makes administering voting easier but scholars question the effect on turnout. Vote centers (which consolidate polling locations) are theoretically less expensive to administer and convenient for many voters, but less is known about the impacts on specific racial communities or across election cycles. Using Texas’ registered voters’ list from the Secretary of State’s Voting Division, this paper uses Geographic Informat…
Vote centers and turnout by election type in Texas
The use of vote centers—specific locations in a county where all voters will vote—is on the rise nationwide, as more than a dozen states used this process by 2018. More states are moving toward using voting centers to remedy the problem of low voter turnout, with the assumption that the centralization of voting to several core county locations will increase voter accessibility. What we have less clear information about is the effect of vote cente…
Political Scandal in American Politics: Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Limited to Follow: The Early Public Opinion Apparatus of the Herbert Hoover White House
This article adds to the recent literature on the development and institutionalization of the public opinion apparatus in the White House by exploring the internal process for gauging public opinion during the administration of Herbert Hoover. Although descriptions of the public opinion polling apparatus, which developed in the White House under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, are rich, there are few analytical descriptions of the early public o…
Reassessing Public Opinion Polling in the Truman Administration
Amending popular, scholarly, and primary source accounts of the utilization of public opinion polling in the Truman White House, evidence uncovered at the Truman Library indicates that public opinion polling was consulted by the administration staff on selected issues primarily to adapt rhetorical strategy, maintain political information on key electoral and governing groups, and shape campaign strategy during the 1948 election. This evidence is …
Reassessing Public Opinion Polling in the Truman Administration
Amending popular, scholarly, and primary source accounts of the utilization of public opinion polling in the Truman White House, evidence uncovered at the Truman Library indicates that public opinion polling was consulted by the administration staff on selected issues primarily to adapt rhetorical strategy, maintain political information on key electoral and governing groups, and shape campaign strategy during the 1948 election. This evidence is …
Rivaling the PRI: The Image Management of Vicente Fox and the Use of Public Opinion Polling in the 2000 Mexican Election
This research examines the data from private polls conducted during Vicente Fox's presidential campaign through the lenses of the "modernization" of campaigning, the creation of image in the modern Mexican presidency, and the survey tools used by the campaign to achieve a historic presidential victory in 2000. Fox's campaign team used polling to determine the potential of the Mexican public to be persuaded by an opposition candidate, to provide a…
Exorcising Scandal in the White House: Presidential Polling in Times of Crisis
Several important works have addressed the issue of scandal in the White House; however, no study has used internal White House archival polling data to explore the phenomenon of presidential recovery from scandal. In this research note, we expand the analysis of presidential polling and connect these internal procedures to times of scandal in the White House across two presidents and three scandals. We identify four questions the White House is …
Dear Mr. President”: The Institutionalization and Politicization of Public Opinion Mail in the White House
Journal Article “Dear Mr. President”: The Institutionalization and Politicization of Public Opinion Mail in the White House Get access Brandon Rottinghaus Brandon Rottinghaus BRANDON ROTTINGHAUS is an assistant professor of political science and Director of the Bureau of Public Affairs Research at the University of Idaho. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 121, Issue 3, Fal…
Saving the Reagan Presidency: Trust is the Coin of the Realm by David M. Abshire
New Data and New Directions in Interbranch Lobbying: Congressional Mail Summaries of the George H.W. Bush White House
This article analyzes a unique new set of data (compiled originally by the Bush White House) using mail written to President Bush from members of Congress during the 101st and 102nd Congresses to explore interbranch lobbying. We argue that these data illuminate the relationship between the president and Congress in a new and informative way. We use this data to inform our view of the shared power arrangements (identified as "tandem institutions")…
Rethinking Presidential Responsiveness: The Public Presidency and Rhetorical Congruency, 1953–2001
Several studies have examined the relationship between presidential action and public opinion; however, few explore a direct and continuous connection between presidential rhetoric and public opinion. To measure presidential rhetorical congruence with opinion, I construct a data set of matched opinion and policy statements from Presidents Eisenhower to Clinton. Confirming expectations (while contradicting others), I find no differences in congrue…
The President's Speeches: Beyond Going Public – By Matthew Eshbaugh‐Soha
Voting behind bars: Explaining variation in international enfranchisement practices
"Following the "Mail Hawks: Alternative Measures of Public Opinion on Vietnam in the Johnson White House
Scholars argue that public opinion grew in importance during the Vietnam conflict, yet most find President Johnson was not responsive to public opinion during the War. We amplify these theories by demonstrating the practical value of public opinion mail sent to the White House on Vietnam, reshaping theories about the constraining role of public opinion in foreign policy. We find that the White House mail, but not opinion polling, favoring escalat…
The Power of Decree: Presidential Use of Executive Proclamations, 1977-2005
Recent scholarship on unilateral presidential actions has recast our understanding of modern presidential policy making. However, our knowledge on this issue remains incomplete. In this article, the authors expand the literature on the unilateral presidency by exploring presidential proclamations from 1977 to 2005 (Presidents Carter to Bush) and identifying the importance of these tools as a policy-making instrument in expanding presidential powe…
Opening the President's Mailbag: The Nixon Administration's Rhetorical Use of Public Opinion Mail
In this article, I extend the empirical discussion of the instrumental value of public opinion by exploring the uses of public opinion mail to advance the political goals of the Nixon White House, in particular in their rhetorical construction of public opinion. I draw on internal archival material from the Nixon White House demonstrating the Nixon administration's desire to use public opinion mail for rhetorical purposes and combine this archiva…
Managing the Presidents Message: The White House Communications Operation by Martha Joynt Kumar
Journal Article Managing the Presidents Message: The White House Communications Operation by Martha Joynt Kumar Get access Managing the President_s Message: The White House Communications Operationby Martha Joynt Kumar. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 384 pp. $35.00. Brandon Rottinghaus Brandon Rottinghaus University of Houston Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterl…
Presidential Leadership on Foreign Policy, Opinion Polling, and the Possible Limits of “Crafted Talk
The strategy of "crafted talk" (or framing) suggests that a politician uses public opinion to anticipate the most alluring, language to convince the public to follow a politician's own preferred policy (CitationJacobs & Shapiro, 2000). This manipulatory behavior by presidents has important consequences in the realm of constructing foreign policy, especially if the policy involves military service personnel, international prestige, or foreign conf…
The Importance of Being Early: Presidential Primary Front-Loading and the Impact of the Proposed Western Regional Primary
Every state wants to be “the” state that selects the next president. Every state wants the attention of the presidential candidates and wants its voters to have a say in the presidential nomination process. But since the early 1980s, presidential nomination events in more and more states have essentially been meaningless as the parties' nominations have effectively been wrapped up before citizens have cast their primary ballots or attended their …
The Law: Presidential Proclamation 6920: Using Executive Power to Set a New Direction for the Management of National Monuments
Scholars in recent years have been interested in the use of presidential proclamations, but the scope and implications of their use have yet to be fully examined. Specifically, the Antiquities Act of 1906 granted the president broad discretionary authority to proclaim national monuments. Presidents have used this power, often despite the consternation of Congress, to implement changes in public policy. In this context, when President Clinton issu…
Following the Rules? Candidate Strategy in Presidential Primaries
Objectives. The competitiveness of the 2008 presidential primaries in both the Republican and Democratic parties has prompted a reconsideration of the role of delegate‐selection rules in influencing the strategic behavior of presidential candidates. Using advertising and candidate state‐visit data from the 2004 and 2008 presidential nominating campaigns, we reexamine the strategies presidential candidates use when competing for the nomination of …
Strategic Leaders: Determining Successful Presidential Opinion Leadership Tactics Through Public Appeals
Most scholars find presidents generally fail at moving the public's views on policy; however, although presidents may fail at opinion leadership at the aggregate level, examining specific communication tactics may yield a more nuanced view of when presidents succeed or fail at leadership. In this article, using a comprehensive data set spanning 1953 to 2001, several strategic communication tactics through which the president might influence tempo…
Proclaiming Trade Policy: Delegated Unilateral Powers” and the Limits on Presidential Unilateral Enactment of Trade Policy
This article examines presidential proclamations on trade policy, a category of presidential unilateral power that we call delegated unilateral power that is used frequently in creating or modifying trade policy, between the period 1974 and 2006 and tests the boundaries of the explanations predicted by the unilateral powers literature. We also find that the use of proclamations on trade policy is independent of the partisan balance in Congress. T…
Counting Congress In: Patterns of Success in Judicial Nomination Requests by Members of Congress to Presidents Eisenhower and Ford
The power to nominate and confirm federal judges is shared by Congress and the president, yet few works explicitly address the role that Congress plays in shaping the preselection pool for judicial nominees. In this article, we illuminate this debate by exploring judicial nomination requests from Members of Congress to the Eisenhower and Ford Administrations. In explaining who is nominated, the characteristics of the nominee matter more than the …
Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ ersity Press
What Predicts Trends in the White House Mail: The Macro Causes of Mass Political Letter Writing to the Chief Executive
There is voluminous survey evidence identifying which, when, and how individuals contact elected officials, but there is less evidence by way of external validation. The goal in this exploratory article is to investigate and extend the empirical trends in letter writing to the chief executive to validate the causes of political letter writing. Using a longitudinal series of heretofore unutilized data spanning 1953 to 1984 collected at individual …
Polls and Elections: Revisiting Midterm Visits: Why the Type of Visit Matters
In this article, we reassess the findings of where presidents visit during midterm elections from 1954 to 2010, with data that, for the first time, segments presidential visits into “rallies,” fundraisers, and “virtual” campaigning. On one hand, our findings reflect what others have found—when aggregating all visits together, the total Electoral College votes and the previous state‐level winning percentage of the president in the state affect the…
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