The President’s Domestic Agenda, Divided Government, and the Relationship to the Public Agenda

Authors

  • Jeff Cummins

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2007.27.0.269-294

Abstract

Initial research on presidential agenda-setting suggested the president can focus the public’s attention on certain policy issues, while subsequent research has concluded the president may be more limited in his agenda-setting capacity and that a reciprocal relationship may exist between the president and the public. The purpose of this paper is to address this research in three ways. First, I update and extend the time period studied in the earlier research, 1953-1989, by including an additional 11 years of data. Second, I explore three substantive policy areas within domestic policy, crime, education, and health and social welfare, which were previously not examined, to determine the reciprocal nature of the relationship and whether the president’s influence has diminished. Third, I investigate a factor in presidential agenda setting that has heretofore been ignored in the literature— divided government. Time series analysis of annual data reveal that a reciprocal relationship exists, the president has significant influence over the public agenda in all three areas, and that divided government makes the president’s agenda-setting job more difficult.

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Published

2007-01-01

Issue

Vol. 27: Winter 2006-2007

Section

Articles

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