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Change and Stability in the President’s Legislative
Policy Agenda, 1789-2002
By
Jeffrey E. Cohen
Professor of Political Science
Department of Political Science
Fordham University
441 E. Fordham Road
Bronx, NY 10458
ph: 718-817-3956
fax: 718-817-3972
[email protected]
Prepared for Delivery at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Princeton
University, November 16, 2006. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006
American Political Science Association (co-authored with Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha).
Abstract
How stable versus changeable is the president’s policy agenda? Can we measure the
degree of change versus stability? What factors account for whether the president’s agenda
continues previous policy initiatives or charts new directions in policy? We propose a model
in which presidents begin with a preference to maintain the policy agenda to which they
have already committed resources and attention. Second, as the policy status quo grows in
relative strength, the president’s agenda is less like to change and more like to remain stable.
Presidents change their policy agendas in response to environmental changes, which leads
them to re-evaluate policy problems and to reassess their political context. To test these
ideas, I use data on all presidential requests to Congress for legislation from 1789 through
2002. Analysis indicates first, as hypothesized, that the greater the resources that presidents
commit to prior issue areas and the stronger the policy status quo, the more stable the
president’s legislative policy agenda. The analysis also finds that presidential agenda change is
a response to changes in the external environment. The paper concludes with thoughts
about the study of presidential policy making and policy agendas.
1
Change and Stability in the President’s Legislative
Policy Agenda, 1789-2002
In his first State of the Union Address, on January 8th, 1964, Lyndon Johnson
presented to the nation an ambitious and expansive policy agenda. LBJ’s agenda, however,
was hardly novel or innovative. Rather, Johnson asked the nation to fulfill his predecessor’s
policy vision: “Let us carry forward the plans and programs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy . . .”
In contrast, when accepting his party’s nomination for the presidency in 1960 JFK argued
that it was time to change the policies of his predecessors: “[A}fter eight years of drugged
and fitful sleep, this nation needs strong, creative Democratic leadership in the White House.
. . it’s time for a change.” (July 15, 1960).
Like JFK, Ronald Reagan also entered office seeking change in the nation’s policy
priorities: “[I]t [is] time for a change . . . we've got to go in a different direction.” (January
20, 1981). But barely two years later (February 8, 1982), Reagan exhorted Congress and the
nation not to jettison his policies: “Our task is to persevere; to stay the course; to shun
retreat; to weather the temporary dislocations and pressures that must inevitably accompany
the restoration of national economic, fiscal, and military health.”1
1
Reagan would use the phrase “stay the course” 16 more times in public addresses in 1982. This tally
is based upon a key word search for the phrase “stay the course” from the Public Papers of the
President, University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, under the
direction of John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/. Also see C. Jones
(1994, pp. 167-180) for comparisons of the agenda orientations of presidents Truman through Bush
(I), using a somewhat different, but related typology of presidential agenda orientations: expansion,
consolidation, contraction, and fiscal. Consolidation is closely related to my use of the term stability
or continuity in presidential agendas.
2
Why do presidents sometimes try to steer policy in a new direction, but at other
times prefer to work on issues already on the policy agenda, that is, to maintain the policy
status quo? How stable versus changeable is the president’s agenda? Can we measure the
degree of stability versus change in presidential agendas? What accounts for the degree of
stability and change in presidential policy agendas? This paper addresses these questions.
This topic is important for several reasons. First, the president’s agenda affects the
agendas of Congress, mass media, and public (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Cohen, 1995,
1997; Hill, 1998; Edwards and Wood, 1999; Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake, 2004, 2005;
Kingdon, 1984; Wood and Peake, 1998; Young and Perkins, 2005).2 Thus, the presidential
decision to stay the course or change the policy agenda will ripple throughout the political
system. Second, presidential agenda building decisions seem to affect presidential successful
in gaining enactment for his policy goals (Bond and Fleisher, 1990, pp. 31-32, 230;
Covington, Wrighton, and Kinney, 1995; Cameron and Park, forthcoming; Edwards and
Barrett, 2000; Shipan, 2006).
Third, the topic of agenda building is substantively important in its own right,
providing us with an understanding of one type of presidential decision making. The
expanding literature on presidential agenda building has not addressed the question of
stability and change directly, although several studies touch on the issue. These studies,
however, seem at odds over whether it is more accurate to characterize the president’s
agenda at stable or changeable. Some studies emphasize changeability (Light, 1982), while
other emphasize the stable nature of presidential agendas (Jones, 1994, pp. 153-164). Others
2
Many of the above cited studies also find that these other actors can affect the president’s
agenda, and that often this direction of causality is often stronger than the president agenda
setting effect.
3
suggest that presidential agendas may sometimes exhibit stability and at other time
changeability (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Cohen, 1997; Conley, 2001; Edwards and
Wood, 1999; Hill, 1998; Wood and Peake; 1998), with environmental factors affecting the
degree of stability or change in the president’s agenda. These studies provide the
foundation for building a more comprehensive theory of stability and change in the
president’s policy agenda.
In this paper, we attempt to build such a theory and test it. The next sections review
the relevant literature and develop our theory of stability and change in the president’s
agenda. We then present the data use to test the theory, which consists of all presidential
requests to Congress for legislation from 1789 through 2002. Data analysis follows, while the
conclusion puts the findings into context and suggests directions for future research.
Perspectives on Stability and Change in
Presidential Policy Agendas
In recent years the study of policy agendas and presidential agendas in particular, has
expanded and evolved. With regard to the issue of stability and change in the president’s
agenda, we can roughly organize the literature into three sets, those that emphasis the
changeability, those that emphasize stability, and those that allow for both possibilities.
The President’s Agenda is Primarily Changeable
Light’s (1982) seminal study of presidential decision making with regard to agenda
building emphasizes the changeability of the president’s agenda. This is because Light tends
to focus on discrete issues and the presidential calculus concerning whether or not to include
them on his policy agenda. Each issue presents the president with a different decision
context. The decision context is often highly complex and varies considerably from issue to
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issue. As a result the president’s agenda is likely to exhibit much change. As Light says, the
president’s agenda will change “substantially from administration to administration,”
(1982, p. 10) but also within administrations, because “the context—or situation—
surrounding each domestic agenda decision is often in flux, creating a potentially
different style for every choice,” (p. 178), as well as across issues, as issues circulate onto
and off of the agenda (pp. 91-92; see Eshbaugh-Soha 2005).
Added to this mix is the variety of factors that enter into the president’s agenda
building decision process. Light contends that each of the following factors influence
change in the president’s yearly policy agenda: presidential capital, opportunities for
choice, calculating the benefits to be derived from advocating each issue, how much capital
will be required for the issue, whether the president has sufficient capital to pay that expense,
whether the issue will generate more capital or drain it off, and whether a policy will help a
president attain his goal(s)--electoral, historical, and programmatic (pp. 62-74).
The President’s Policy Agenda is Primarily Stable
Charles Jones (1994) contends that presidential agendas are highly stable and
resistant to change.3 To Jones, much of the president’s agenda is pre-ordained because the
president is forced to address certain issues and policies, particularly those coming from the
ongoing activities of government, “programs already on the books,” (p. 165). “The
president’s agenda—his list of priorities—is influenced by, and has to be fitted into, a larger
3
To be fair, Light also sees some stability: “The President’s domestic agenda does have several stable
characteristics. . . [It] is set very early in the term; . . . the timing of agenda requests affects ultimate
legislative success; and . . . the size of the domestic agenda varies directly with . . . presidential
‘capital.’”(p. 10).
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set of ongoing issues.” (p. 165).4 Only rarely will presidents “alter the agenda during their
terms of office.” (p. 181). To be able to do so requires sufficient political resources, a
situation that rarely exists according to Jones (p. 181).5
The President’s Agenda May Exhibit Both Stability and Change
Finally several studies imply that presidential agendas may exhibit either stability
or change. Presidential responsiveness to outer or environmental factors leads to this
effect. In as much as these environmental factors themselves change or remain stable and
the president responds to them, the president’s agenda will either change or remain pat.
For instance, Cohen (1997) and Hill (1998) find that presidents respond to public
opinion when building their agendas. Wood and Peake (1998) and Edwards and Wood
(1999) show that presidential agendas respond to the agendas of the news media and
Congress. Conley’s (2001) theory of mandates, while not directly a theory of presidential
agendas, has implications for stability and change in presidential agendas. Presidents use the
4
One can view Jones’ perspective as a special case of bureaucratic influence on presidential
decision making. Much of that literature views the bureaucratic-presidential relationship as one of
bureaucratic resistance to the president, bureaucratic autonomy and consequently focuses on the
techniques that presidents use to overcome bureaucratic resistance and non-compliance. This
literature is huge. The classic statement is Moe, 1985. See Whitford, 2005 and Lewis, 2004 for
recent studies and reviews. Krause (1999) however argues that one can also view the presidentbureaucratic relationship as one of mutual influence, with the bureaucracy at times informing and
influencing presidential decisions. In the theory below, bureaucratic influence becomes one factor
that may reduce agenda change and is consistent with Jones notion that agenda change is difficult
because presidents must attend to policies already on the books, which to some degree implies
paying attention to the bureaucracy.
5
Jones cites only two instances, Johnson in 1964-65 and Reagan in 1981 (p. 181). Jones does not
detail why presidents grant privileged status to ongoing government activities, beyond saying that
the “momentum to a working government . . . cannot be stopped or easily redirected,” (p. 165).
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opportunity to declare a mandate to further their policy agenda (also Jones, 1194, pp. 153164; also Peterson, et. a., 2003 and Grossback, et. al. 2005). Presidents can declare two types
of mandates: mandates of continuity and mandates of change,6 which roughly equate with
agenda stability and change. After decisive elections and when presidents think that Congress
will enact their proposals, presidents will declare that they possess a mandate.
More recently, Light (2000) argues in favor of a recent dynamic of changeability in
presidential agendas. As evidence, he shows that the policy agendas of George Herbert
Walker Bush and Bill Clinton lack the innovativeness characteristic of agendas offered by
Presidents Kennedy through Reagan and their agendas displayed more stability than agendas
of previous administrations. The increasing polarization of the parties, budget deficits, and
the institutionalization of policy making processes to explain this lack of innovation in
presidential agendas (see also Eshbaugh-Soha, 2005).
Finally, the work of Baumgartner and Jones (1993) and Jones and Baumgartner
(2005) allow for both stability and change in agendas, although they do not focus on
presidential agendas in particular. Their macro or systems perspective on agendas sees long
periods of stability with short burst of intense and major change. While allowing for agenda
change, they do not attempt to explain the timing of such change, one of the objectives in
this research.
Toward a Theory of Stability and Change
in Presidential Policy Agendas
6
Jones (1994, pp. 154-159) also makes this distinction, using the terms “mandates for change” and
“mandates for the status quo”.
7
The United States is a large, complex and heterogeneous nation, which produces a
hefty volume of issues seeking governmental attention. Getting onto a governmental agenda
is the first, and necessary, stage towards a public policy to address an issue. In the quest for
placement on a governmental agenda, many advocates seek presidential support for their
issue because the president is arguably the most influential policy maker. But the presidential
agenda is an especially scarce resource because the polity produces many more issues than
the president can accommodate on his agenda. Although presidents may expand the size and
scope of their agendas, they possess only a limited capacity to do so. Time constraints,
information processing capability limitations, and finite staff resources restrict presidential
ability to boundlessly expand their policy agendas (Jones and Baumgartner, 2005). Thus,
numerous issues that seek access to the president’s agenda will fail in that pursuit. This
process makes placement on the president’s agenda a valuable resource for an issue, while
also requiring that presidents be selective in the issues that they put onto their policy
agendas.
Given that there are more issues seeking agenda status than the president can
accommodate, how do they decide which ones to include on their agendas? The presidential
agenda building process starts first with the president’s previous policy agenda. Everything
else being equal, presidents prefer to continue working on the issues that are already on their
agendas. They may do so for a variety of reasons, because, for instance, they have made
policy commitments, have gained a reputation by advancing certain issues, use issues to build
support coalitions, possess policy expertise or interest in an issue area, among other reasons.
Plus, it is less costly in terms of decision making to continue the established agenda than to
change it. Changing the agenda may require deleting some issue areas from the existing
agenda, reshuffling presidential policy priorities, reallocating staff and other resources,
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learning about new issues, all decision making costs that presidents do not have to pay if the
established policy agenda remains in tack.
However, presidents do not consider all issue areas on the established agenda to be
of equal importance or priority. Some issue areas possess greater importance and hold a
higher priority status than others. When presidents decide that they must alter the
established agenda, those issue areas of less importance and lower priority are more likely to
be deleted from the presidents agenda in order to make room for new issues areas, issue
areas seeking a berth on the president’s policy agenda but not currently holding one.
Further, the ability of the president’s established policy agenda to resist change is in
part a function of the strength of the policy status quo. The strength of the policy status quo
comes from the commitment of governmental resources to issue areas, which reflects the
societal and political resources behind those issue areas. Those societal and political
resources, like wealth and votes, influence whether or not government takes action on
certain issue areas and how strongly government addresses and supports those issue areas.
Institutional actions by government, such as passing a law, creating an agency, allocating
funds, assigning staff and granting executive authority, are among the strongest actions that
government can take in support of an issue and its advocates. By institutionalizing support
for an issue through such means, a tangible bond is established between government and an
issue and its advocates. Both the issue’s advocates and governmental personnel assigned to
the issue area have an interest in maintaining their status in the policy status quo. Thus, they
are likely to resist change, including issues that seek access onto the president’s agenda,
because such access may in time threaten their issue’s placement in the policy status quo.
The stronger the policy status quo, the harder time new issue areas will have in getting onto
the president’s agenda. When the policy status quo is strong, the president’s agenda is likely
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to display stability rather than change. When the policy status quo is weaker, the prospect for
change in the president’s agenda accordingly will grow.
The major impetus for change in the president’s policy agenda comes from the
external environment. The external environment consists of the economy, other social
structures, political alignments and opinions, relations with other nations, and the like.
Presidents have strong motivations to respond to change in the external environment. For
policy motivated presidents, change in the external environment may indicate a problem that
needs to be addressed. Politically motivated presidents feel that they need to respond to
change in the external environment as a way to maintain and/or enhance their political
position, support, and resources. Thus, when the outer environment is quite and stable, the
president’s policy agenda will likewise be stable. A quiet environment sends no signals to the
president for him to respond to. In contrast, when the outer environment is in a state
change, presidents detect that change, and respond to it often by changing their policy
agendas. The next section details the data base use to test these ideas.
The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789-2002
We test our theory on the president’s legislative policy agenda, the president’s most
important among other types of agendas. Although presidents may make policy through
unilateral action means (e. g., executive orders), legislation is a more important and preferred
route for presidential policy making. Indeed, when presidential staffers speak of the
president’s agenda, they mean his legislative requests (Light 1982, p. 5). For this paper, the
president’s legislative policy agenda consists of presidential requests to Congress for
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legislative action, between 1789 through 2002, for a total of 13,800 submissions to Congress
over this time frame.7
Individual presidential requests pose complications for tracking stability and change
in the president’s agenda. How should we compare two requests at two points in time that
address the same problem but in a somewhat different fashion? For example, suppose a
president initially asked for a cabinet level department but facing opposition, changed his
request, asking instead for an independent agency? What if he asked for different budgetary
allocations? Should we treat these as two requests or one? How much difference must there
be between two requests before they are counted as two? Aggregating requests by issue area
helps solve this problem. (Here we use issue area and policy area interchangeably.) As
detailed below, fairly sharp lines can be drawn to distinguish issues areas and it is also
common to compare and/or define presidents by issue area activities and orientations, for
example, George H. W. Bush identifying himself the “education” president.
To code each request by issue area required a scheme or typology comprehensive
across issue areas, detailed enough to make reasonable distinctions, yet not so detailed as to
make coding impractical. Two candidates quickly emerged as the most suitable: the
Baumgartner-Jones (BJ) and the Katznelson-Lapinski (KL). Using either scheme would also
enable comparison from this study to studies employing these schemes. The two schemes
resemble each other, but the KL framework is broader, especially in an historical and
7
Here we combined two data sets: the Presidential Request file of the Historical Congressional-
Presidential Database for requests from 1789 through 1992 and an update of presidential requests,
provided by Professor Andrew Rudalevige Dickinson College, for 1993 through 2002. There are
14,188 total requests; private bills and requests that focus on District of Columbia are excluded,
leaving 13,800.
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comparative sense, including issue areas not contained in the BJ scheme. The BJ scheme was
developed for the period since the end of World War Two. Several issue areas, such IndianNative American removal, national boundaries, and admission of states to the Union, were
consequential in earlier periods, but absent or of less significance in the post-war era. Thus,
we use the KL scheme, but note that the two schemes closely resemble each other.
Especially for the more modern era the KL coding scheme can be reorganized into the BJ
categories with ease.8 The KL scheme is organized into three levels of aggregation or tiers.
Tier 1, the broadest, contains four categories—sovereignty, government organization and
scope, international relations, and domestic affairs. Importantly for our purposes, Tier 3, the
most specific, contains 70 different substantive policy classifications (See Appendix One for
details on the KL coding scheme).
Coding Procedures
Presidential requests may fall into more than one policy or issue area. For instance,
federal aid to schools could be considered either an education or federal/state relations issue.
Coding instructions allowed multiple coding for each request, but coders had to distinguish
between the primary and secondary substantive emphases of the request. The way that the
president packaged the request determined the primary emphasis when a request could span
several substantive areas. Thus, if the president issued a request in an “education message”
or if it were included with other education requests, as a part of a set of education requests,
8
One other especially useful characteristic of the KL scheme is that it list 70 “tier 3” policy areas, in
contrast to BJ’s 19, that is, it is more disaggregated than the BJ scheme. The 70 KL policy areas can
easily be aggregated into either the 19 BJ policy areas or the 14 KL “tier 2” policy areas. The greater
degree of disaggregation makes the KL scheme somewhat more flexible.
12
the request would be classified as primarily education. Analysis below focuses on the primary
policy area of the request.
Figure 1 presents the number of issue areas that appear on each president’s
legislative agenda, by congress.9 On average presidents make requests in 25 policy areas per
Congress, with a maximum of 48. Even very early presidents seem to make requests across a
fairly large number of policy areas despite the comparatively lower levels of federal
government activity at the time. During the first four congresses, for example, George
Washington made requests in 10 to 16 policy areas. On only three occasions have presidents
made requests for less than 10 policy areas. For the first 25 congresses, which contain these
three light scores, presidents requested congressional action for 14.6 policy areas, on average.
By these figures, even early presidents were concerned with a diversity of policy areas, which
runs to counter to the historical portrait that these early presidents were not active in public
policy (e. g., Milkis and Nelson, 1999).
Figure 1 About Here
Conceptualizing and Measuring Stability and Change
Stability and change are commonplace ideas, usually used as antonyms: as stability
increases, change decreases, and vice-versa. Nevertheless, there are two types of change in
presidential agendas, the deletion of old issues and the addition of new issues, which may
occur independently of each other and of the retention of old issues. Presidents, for
instance, may retain all of the issues on the previous agenda, while adding new issue areas.
9
Here issue areas for which the president made many requests and those with few or one count
equally. The distinction is between those issue areas that fail to make it onto the president’s agenda
from those that do, not the relative amount of weight of each issue area on the agenda.
13
Because the president’s agenda may contain both elements of stability and change that are
somewhat independent, we need separate indicators of stability and change.
Conceptually and operationally, stability is relatively straightforward. Conceptually,
an issue is stable if the current Congress retains that issue area from the previous Congress.
Operationally, we take account of the size of the previous year’s agenda. When the previous
agenda is large, a large number of issues may be carried over, yet the rate of carryover may
be small. When the previous agenda is small, only a small number of issues can be carried
over, even if the rate of carryover is high. For instance, consider two cases, one in which
there are 20 issues on the previous agenda and a second case with 10. Suppose in the first
case, 12 issues areas are retained, compared to 10 for the second case. If we compare the raw
count of retained issue areas, the first appears more stable (12 v. 10), but the rate of
carryover is much higher in the second than the first case (100% v. 60%). Given that the size
of the agenda can vary and presidents can expand the agenda to some degree, the rate of
carryover is the more meaningful measure of stability.
Formally, we define stability as:
100 *(Number of retained policy areas Congress t2/Number of Issue Areas Congress t1)
where t1 signifies the first congress of each pair of successive congresses and t2 denotes the
second congress. (Across the 107 congresses, there are 106 pairs.) This ratio is multiplied by
100 to allow interpretation in percentage terms. Figure 2 plots this stability series.
Figure 2 About Here
Measuring change requires accounting for both deletions and additions of issue areas
across congresses. Formally, change is defined as:
100 * {Number of Issue Area Additions + Number of Issue Area Deletions)/
(Number of Issue Areas Retained from Congress t1)}
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This change measure takes into account both deletions of issue areas from the previous
congress (t1) and the addition of issue areas in the second congress absent from the first
congress’s agenda. Presidents do not merely replace deleted issue areas with new ones. There
is a somewhat greater propensity to add new issue areas than delete existing ones (mean for
deletions = 7.0; mean for additions = 7.3), which accounts for the growth in the size of the
president’s agenda over time (Figure 1). Moreover, the correlation between deleted and
added issue areas is mild, although statistically significant (Pearson’s r = -.32, p = .001).
Like with stability, the size of the president’s agenda can affect the degree of change.
As the president’s agenda has grown, the opportunities to add, delete, or retain issue areas
have also increased, so we must control for agenda size. For the ratio’s base, one can not use
either the size of the past or current agendas, because each contains either deletions or
additions. Thus, we use the number of retentions. Like above, we multiply this ratio by 100
to produce a percentage: change as a percentage of retentions.
The two measures of presidential agenda dynamics, stability and change, as expected,
correlate strongly, but not perfectly (r = -.80, p = .000), confirming that the more stable the
president’s agenda, the less change, and visa versa. Still, one-third of the variance between
them does not overlap indicating some independence between stability and change in
presidential agendas.
Independent Variables
Presidents may pay relatively similar or different amounts of attention to issue areas.
Comparisons in the amount of attention that presidents pay across issues give us some sense
of the relative importance and priority of issues. When presidents concentrate their attention
on a subset of issues, those can be taken as his high priority issues. Those issue areas, in
contrast, which receive less attention we can take as the lower priority issues. Issue areas
15
receiving high levels of presidential attention are placed relatively securely on the president’s
agenda; those receiving low attention levels are placed more precariously on the agenda. It is
these low attention, low priority issues that may be displaced from the president’s agenda.
High attention levels may indicate presidential commitment of time and resources to the
issue area, and that the issue is a high priority, factors that will tend to secure that issue on
the agenda. However, when presidential attention relatively equal across issues areas, all are
of similar importance and priority to the president. When presidents pay relatively equal
attention to issues, the president’s agenda is likely resist change and be quite stable.
I measure relative presidential attention to issue areas with a Gini coefficient of
inequality. This coefficient uses the number of specific legislative requests that the president
made for each issue area during a particular Congress. The number of such requests can
range from zero (no requests) to many requests. Higher Gini coefficients (maximum 1.0)
indicate increasing inequality in presidential attention across issues. On these data, the
coefficient ranges from .65 to .98, with a mean of .82, indicating that in general presidents
concentrate their attention on a subset of issue areas. As the Gini coefficient declines, the
president’s attention spreads more evenly across issue areas; as it rises, the number of weakly
placed issue areas increases. Thus the hypothesis, that as the Gini coefficient declines, we
should see slower rates of change and greater stability in the president’s agenda.
To measure the strength of the policy status quo, I use federal revenues as a
percentage of GDP. Federal revenue as a fraction of the GDP taps measures the ability of
the federal government to extract resources from the nation and the willingness to employ
governmental approaches to address problems.10 It can also be viewed as an indirect measure
10
There are several alternative variables that come to mind, such as federal employees, government
outlays, and the deficit. We experimented with several versions of these variables. None prove to be
16
of the political strength of issues in the aggregate and their advocates. Our hypothesis is that
as this measure increases in value, we should see increasing stability and declining change in
the president’s agenda.
Six variables measure the outer environment: 1) change in the party of the president;
whether a war 2) starts or 3) ends during the congress; two economic indicators, 4) interest
rates and 5) inflation (both lagged one Congress; and 6) change in the percentage of seats
held by the president’s party. Hypothetically, when the party of the president changes, when
war breaks out or ends, and the higher the interest and inflation rates, the more change in
the outer environment, and thus, we will observe less stability and greater change in the
president’s agenda.
Presidents, political leaders, and observers of the political scene often read partisan
turnover in the presidency as public rejection of the incumbent administration and its
policies (Hershey, xxxx), as a fundamental change in the public mood. This provides the new
president with an incentive and opportunity to change the previous agenda. Partisan change
statistically significant. Each also poses other problems. Take federal employees. Prior to the mid1880s, annual counts of federal employees do not exist. To build a variable that dates earlier requires
interpolating, often across decade-wide spans. Further, no data on federal employment exists prior to
1816. Plus, by the 1960s, federal employment (as a percentage of the work force or population)
began to decline markedly, as the federal government increased direct grants-in-aid to state and local
governments, mandated those governments to implement some policies and programs, and
contracted out to non-governmental third parties many government operations and programs. These
practices create a picture of declining federal employment but expansion in federal policies. Outlays
as a percent of GDP correlates strongly with government receipts (r = .89), but is highly sensitive to
war and to entitlement spending in the post-1980 period and never reaches statistical significance.
17
is measured with a dummy variable, 1 = change in the president’s party, 0 = no change.
War outbreak or cessation may stimulate either a policy or political motivation for
the president to alter the existing agenda. From a policy perspective, the outbreak of war
threatens the survival of the state. As such it pushes all other policy areas, except those with
implications for winning the war, off of or down in priority on the agenda. The outbreak of
war may also affect the public mood. War may increase the feeling of threat or fear within
the public; consequently the public may look to the president to lead the nation during
wartime. And like the president, the public may feel that wining the war should be the
nation’s highest priority. This change in the public mood should also motivate presidents to
focus on the war, altering the agenda as a result.
Once the war ends, both the policy and public opinion environment may also
change. With the war’s end, advocates of issues and problems that were set aside during the
war may reassert themselves. Lack of attention during the war may have also led these issues
and problems to fester or worsen. Moreover, war often restructures society and the
economy, altering the relative balance and importance of different groups and economic
sectors. Groups that lacked power and access prior to the war may have gained political
access and influence during the war, as political leaders mobilized these groups behind the
war effort. Such restructuring leads to an environment that looks much different after the
war than before it. New issues and problems are created or noticed, which may motivate
change in the president’s agenda.
The cessation of war may also alter the public mood. After the end of a war, the
public may want to get back to normal, to deal with issues and problems other than those
associated with the war. This change in the public mood may also produce change in the
president’s agenda, in as much as he responds to the altered post-war climate of opinion. A
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dummy variable for the start of war is measured “1” if war breaks out during the Congress
and “0” others, for the eight major wars across this time period. The wars are: War of 1812,
Mexican-American, Civil War, Spanish American, World War I, World War II, Korea, and
Viet Nam. A similar dummy variable is used for the end of a war.11
Change in the economy may also lead to change in the president’s agenda, especially
when the economy worsens. Again both policy and political motivations may come into play
here. Presidents may feel a policy obligation to address economic woes. The state of the
economy is a key indicator of the health of the nation and many policies that the president
would like to pursue may depend upon a healthy economy. For instance, economy
contraction tends to lead to declines in federal revenues, which may impose budgetary
restrictions on policy implementation and growth.
But a weak economy may also create political incentives for the president to attend
to the economic ailment. Economic downturns and stresses may lead to public calls for the
government to address the economic problem and relieve the nation’s economic distress.
Political pressures, such as the president and his party’s election needs, as well as popularity
and public support, provide strong incentives for the president to appear responsive to these
public concerns during bad economic times. Presidents, consequently, may alter their
agendas.
Only two economic indicators are available for the entirety of U. S. history—
inflation and interest rates; the latter series begins in 1798.12 Inflation and interest rates,
11
The Gulf War is not included because of its brief duration.
12
We obtained these from EH.Net, maintained by Miami University and Wake Forest University at
http://eh.net/hmit/. At times the economy has also deflated. Across the 107 congresses there are 36
instances of deflation, all but two prior to 1940, and 27 prior to 1900. Both deflation and inflation
indicate monetary instability, thus we might hypothesize that deflation should affect the president’s
19
although broad indicators of the state of the economy with implications for the entire
economy initially affect different sectors of the economy. The inflation rate affects
consumers first, although inflation fears will also influence investors’ decisions. Interest
rates, in contrast, initially affect debtors and those seeking credit. High interest rates will
often lead to an economic slowdown. Theory does not yet tell us which of these variables
will affect the president’s agenda beyond the hypothesis that increases in both are signs of
economic distress, which should lead to higher rates of change and lower levels of stability in
the president’s agenda.
Analysis and Results
The temporal properties of a time series, such as nonstationarity and autocorrelation,
may affect analyses of such series. When present, such properties may lead to incorrect
casual attributions unless corrected. Diagnostics of the stability and change variables indicate
that while both are stationary,13 but each also exhibited serial correlation and
heteroskedasticity. To correct for heteroskedasticity, I employ ARCH time series regression.
The change model indicates an ARCH 2 process, with first order autoregression. The
stability model indicates AR(2) MA(2) time series process, plus an ARCH 1 heteroskedastic
process. Inspection of both dependent variables also indicates a structural break associated
agenda similarly to inflation. To test this idea we used the absolute value of the inflation index,
converting negative deflation values into positive values. However, this absolute value index was
never statistically significant, whereas the inflation index, which measures deflation as a negative
value, sometimes is significant. Thus, the analysis relies on the inflation index, not the absolute value
index.
13
The augmented Dickey-Fuller test for Change, with a trend and a constant, reports a test statistic
of -6.64 against a criterion value of -4.04 (.01 level). For Stability, the augmented Dickey-Fuller test,
with a trend and constant term, produces a test statistic of -11.61 against a criterion value of -4.04
(.01 level).
20
with the end of the Second World War. A dummy variable for this structural break is entered
into the estimated equations to capture this effect. Tables 1 presents reduced form ARCH
models for stability and change in the president’s agenda, where the insignificant variables
are excluded from the table.
Table 1 about Here
Factors Affecting Agenda Stability
Agenda stability is a function of four variables, while three, a new presidential party,
the end of war, and the Gini coefficient of inequality in presidential attention, fail to reach
statistical significance. Each of the significant variables holds the proper sign. Substantive
results indicate that the onset of war, low rates of change in the inflation and interest rates
are associated with greater stability in the president’s agenda, as hypothesized. Also as
hypothesized, as the proportion of federal revenues to GDP increases, the president’s
agenda displays greater stability.
When war breaks out, agenda stability declines by 4.7%, which is a considerable
impact compared to the average level of agenda stability of 68.7%. Each one percent
increase in interest rates reduces stability by 1.3%. At the average interest rate level (5.2%),
we can expect a 6.8% drop in agenda stability. When interest rates sink to their lowest level
(2.6%), agenda stability declines by about 3.4%, and when interest rates reach their peak
value (14.2%), agenda stability drops by 18.5%, considerably more than the impact of the
onset of war. Each one percentage change in the inflation rate translates into a .85% shift in
stability. At average inflation rates (1.6), the president’s agenda will shift only 1.4%. In
contrast, at the highest inflation rate (24.8%), the agenda will shift a mighty 21%.
Finally, as government receipts account for a larger fraction of the GDP, the
president’s agenda stabilizes. Each one percent increase in the receipt ratio leads to a .8%
21
increase in stability. Historically, the receipt ratio averages 7%, but has ranged from .55 to
20%, with the corresponding impact on the president’s agenda. Comparison across different
time periods is instructive. Across the 18th and 19th century, government receipts averaged
about 2.6% of GDP, rarely topping 6%. Thus, during the 18th and 19th centuries,
government receipts as a percent of GDP promote stability at an average rate of only 2.1%.
In comparison, from 1901 through 1932, government receipts averaged about 3.3%,
occasionally growing to 7.5%. Thus, during the early 20th century, government receipts will
promote agenda stability an average of only 2.6%, barely more than during the nation’s first
100 years.
In contrast, during the New Deal era (1933-1945), the average stood at 8.6%,
growing to as much as 20% during the Second World War. At the 8.6% average, the New
Deal era would promote stability at a rate of 6.9%, two to three times the rate of stability of
earlier years. Finally in the years since 1945, the average stood at 17.4%, within a relatively
tight range of 14.7 to 19.7%. With such an average, government receipts as a percentage of
GDP stabilize the agenda by about 14%, a considerable figure compared to the historical
rate of stability of 68%. In other words, a large component of the stability of the president’s
agenda is due to the great growth of government in the post-Second World War period. One
great irony here is that as government has expanded into new issue areas and new sectors of
the nation, the presidential agenda has become more stable.
Factors Affecting Agenda Change
Six variables of seven variables affect presidential policy agenda change. Only
the end of war seems to lack an affect on the degree of agenda change, paralleling its lack of
impact on agenda stability. All of the findings for agenda change mirror those for agenda
22
stability save one. Now the gini coefficient of inequality of presidential attention is
significantly associated with change in the president’s agenda.
Thus, we find that the arrival of a new president in office speeds up the rate of
agenda change by nearly 14%. When new parties take over government offices, they bring
with them new agenda priorities, deleting some of the priorities of the previous incumbent
party, and adding some new issues to the agenda. The onset of war has a comparable effect
on the agenda, changing it by 14% also.
Again the economic factors of inflation and interest rates seem to promote change.
Each 1 percent change in inflation rates is associated with a 1.35% change in the president’s
agenda. Thus, at the highest level of inflation (24.8%), the agenda will change by 33.5%,
compared to 2%, when inflation is at its average rate (1.6%). Interest rates have a
comparable effect of 1.5% on the president’s agenda for each percentage change in interest
rates. Thus, when interest rates rise to their maximum level (14.2), the president’s agenda will
display a rate of change of 22.7%, compared to 8.3% when interest rates are at their average
level and 4.2 when they are at their minimum level. Change in the president’s agenda seems
highly sensitive to changes in the economy. As economic distress and change are often
associated with the falling fortunes of those in office, it is not overly surprising to find the
president’s agenda similarly sensitive to economic tides.
However, the growth of government applies breaks to the rate of agenda change.
Each additional percent of government receipts as a percent of the GDP translates into a
decline of 2.1% in the rate of agenda change. In the modern era, when this ratio stood at
17.4%, the rate of agenda change could expect to slow by nearly 35%. Clearly, it is harder for
presidents to change policy as government enlarges and cements relations with sectors of the
society and polity through laws, policies, and spending.
23
Finally, as the president pays more attention to some issue areas than others, the rate
of change increases. On average presidential attention to issue areas is highly concentrated
(.82), which opens up the likelihood of altering presidential agenda priorities. It ranges from
a low of .65 to .98. In the era since 1945, presidential attention is still relatively concentrated
at .73, with a low of .65 and a high of .80. Such inequality in attention means that some
issues areas are receiving slight attention from the president. Their foothold on the agenda is
thus highly vulnerable.
Conclusions
This study has investigated patterns of stability and change in presidential agendas,
from 1789 through 2002. Stability and change in presidential agendas is important due to its
effects on the agendas of others, such as Congress, the mass public, and the mass media. By
understanding the properties of stability and change in presidential agendas we gain some
leverage in understanding broader patterns of policy change and development within the
American polity.
Factors internal to government, such as bureaucratic influence and previous agendas,
promote stability and limit change in the president’s agenda. In contrast, changes in the outer
environment stimulate change and undermine stability in the president’s agenda. The
implications of the bureaucracy on policy making and the president’s agenda are dual-sided
and somewhat ironic. Increasing bureaucratic capacity was necessary for government and the
president to attend to a greater array of issues (Skowronek, 1982). At the same time,
increasing bureaucratic capacity increased its influence on presidential decision making,
encouraging the president to stick to the issues already addressed by governmental policies,
while creating a barrier for new policies to gain presidential attention.
24
The influence of the presidential agenda process also displays some ironies. On the
one hand, past presidential agendas steer chief executives to attend to issues already on the
agenda, which again promotes some stability and erects barriers to presidential attention to
new issues. But the development of presidential policy making institutions and processes, a
major source of the sway of past agendas on presidential agenda building, have also
increased the capacity of the presidency to attend to a greater number of issues and topics
(Rudalevige, 2002). The ironies of bureaucratic and past agenda effects on the president’s
agenda help us account for both the growth in the issue scope of the president’s agenda,
along with it relative stability.
Although the growth of the federal bureaucracy and other presidential policy making
institutions provide presidents with greater policy making capacity, the major impetus for
change comes from the environment and presidential responsiveness to environmental
change. As Jones and Baumgartner (2005) argue, the agenda building process can be viewed
from a representation theory lens. Such is a useful way of interpreting this dynamic, and in
this sense, we can see the representation nature of the presidency.
When we couple the impact of the bureaucracy and previous agendas on the
president’s agenda with the effect of environmental factors on the president’s agenda, we
return to a point that Skowronek (1993) makes about modern presidents—that they can not
alter the agenda as much as previous presidents, that the opportunity to become a
reconstructive president has diminished. The long historical sweep of this study also enables
one to integrate American political development with more quantitative forms of empirical
research and theories of public policy making as the preceding paragraphs demonstrate.
Finally, this research has implications for how we understand policy dynamics. One
motivation of the Baumgartner and Jones (1993, 2005) research program was to account
25
theoretically for two seemingly contradictory observations about public policy dynamics—
the seeming stability of policy, with intermittent bursts of rapid and extreme change.
Punctuated equilibrium is their theory to account for both aspects of policy dynamics. The
research here offers another perspective on policy dynamics, that change need not only be of
as the extreme type found in Baumgartner and Jones, but may also be thought of in
continuous terms, from no change to small to large change, and all points in-between. The
interplay of internal governmental dynamics and external environmental change determines
the level of change that we will see in the president’s agenda, which will in turn affect the
amount of change in the larger political system.
This research and the data employed also reveal the benefit of studying the
presidency over long periods of time, and not merely since the onset of the modern
presidency (Woolley, 2005). By doing so, not only do we gain a better understanding of
presidential policy making dynamics, but also see the interrelationships of several important
processes, questions, and research traditions.
26
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30
60
50
30
20
10
106
103
97
100
94
91
88
85
82
79
76
73
70
67
64
61
58
55
52
49
46
43
40
37
34
31
28
25
22
19
16
13
7
10
4
0
1
Number of Policy Areas
40
Congress
Figure 1: Number of Policy Areas in Which the President Made At Least One
Legislative Request to Congress, 1st-107th Congresses.
31
500
100
Change
90
Stability
400
80
350
70
300
60
250
50
200
40
150
30
100
20
50
10
0
Percentage
Percentage
450
0
2
12
22
32
42
52
62
72
82
92
102
Figure 2: Presidential Agenda Change and Stability, By Congress Pair, 2nd to
107th Congresses (1789-2002)
32
Table 1. Impact of Governmental and Environmental Factors on Change
and Stability in the President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789-2002
Agenda Change
Agenda Stability
Variable
b
p*
New Party
13.82
.000
War Start
14.11
.060
War End
ns
Interest Rate Lag
1.58
.000
Inflation Lag
1.35
.000
Gini (Lagged)
262.72
.000
Govt. Revenue
-2.12
.003
Break Dummy
-.42.41
.000
Constant
-91.46
.001
AR1
.24
.001
AR2
MA2
ARCH 1
1.52
.000
ARCH 2
1.03
.000
ARCH Constant
1.58
.858
Wald Chi-sq (p)
771.82
.000
Log Likelihood
-530.28
.000
n
102
* one-tailed tests used because the direction is predicted
36
b
p*
ns
-4.73
ns
-1.31
-.85
ns
.80
12.11
67.81
.003
.000
.000
.067
.058
.000
.91
-.84
2.00
.000
.000
.000
10.40
1413.08
-382.45
102
.000
.000
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of Variables Used in the Analysis
Variable
Agenda Stability
Agenda Change
New Party
War Start
War End
Interest Rates
Inflation
Gini lagged
Govt. Revenues
Obs
106
106
107
109
109
102
107
106
106
Mean
68.65
118.12
.22
.07
.06
5.23
1.56
.82
7.14
36
Std. Dev.
16.44
94.02
.41
.26
.25
2.05
5.8
.08
6.74
Min
18.18
5
0
0
0
2.61
-12.32
.65
.55
Max
100
500
1
1
1
14.17
24.79
.98
20.24
Appendix 1: Policy Coding Scheme
Tier 1
Sovereignty
Tier 2
Liberty
Membership and
Nation
Civil Rights
Boundaries
Organization
and Scope
International
Affairs
Domestic
Affairs
Government
Organization
Representation
Constitutional
Amendments
Defense
Geopolitics
International
Political
Economy
Agriculture and
Food
Planning and
Resources
Tier 3
Loyalty and Expression; Religion; Privacy
Commemorations and National Culture
Immigration and Naturalization
African-Americans; Native Americans; Other Minorities;
Women; Voting Rights
Frontier Settlement; Indian Removal and Compensation; State
Admission/Union Composition; Territories and Colonies
Congressional Organization and Administration; Executive
Org. and Admin.; Impeachment/Misconduct; Judicial Org.
and Admin.
Census/Apportionment; Elections; Groups and Interests
Federalism and Terms of Office; Political Participation and
Rights; Other
Air Force Organization and Deployment; Army Org. and
Deploy.; Conscription and Enlistment; Militias; Naval Org.
and Deploy.; General Military Org; Military Installations;
Civil/Homeland Defense
Diplomacy/Intelligence; Foreign Aid; International Orgs.
Maritime; Trade/Tariffs; Economic International Orgs.
Agricultural Technology; Farmers/Farming Support; Fishing
and Livestock
Corporatism; Environment; Infrastructure and Public Works;
Natural Resources; Social Knowledge; Post Office;
Transportation; Wage and Price Controls; Interstate
Compacts/Federalism; Urban, Rural, Regional Development
Political
Appropriations; Multiple Agency; Business/Capital Markets;
Economy
Fiscal/Taxation; Labor Markets/Unions; Monetary; Economic
Regulation
Social Policy
Children/Youth; Crime; Disaster; Education;
Handicapped/Disabilities; Health (Civilian); Housing; Military
Pensions, Benefits; Public-Works and; Volunteer Employment;
Regulation-Social; Social Insurance; Transfers/Poverty
Source: Katznelson and Lapinski, 2006.
37