No abstract

ince Richard Neustadt's pathbreaking Presidential Power was published in 1960, researchers have attempted to describe and measure presidential power, or more specifically, influence (Edwards 1980a(Edwards , 1976Bond and Fleisher 1984;Rivers and Rose 1985). Edwards (1989) has provided the most extensive empirical investigation of presidential influence. He measures influence as the congruence of presidential positions with congressional votes and then correlates this indicator of success with the resource popular support. We examine presidential influence in the broader context of the multiple roles of the president in policymaking. We analyze the impact of distinct measures of preferences, resources, and persuasion on activities marking sequential stages of the policy process using calendar years 1953-85 as the unit of analysis.We define the central aspect of influence as the conversion of preferences into government outputs. To examine influence, we first extend previous research by identifying a set of indicators of government activity for each stage in the policy process. Second, we examine the extent to which presidential preferences influence these government actions. We assume that such influence is a function of presidential resources. That is, relationships of influence are conditioned by popular and elite support and responsiveness. Third, we incorporate a preliminary single indicator of persuasion into the model. Persuasion is expected to act as an additional presidential resource of the conversion of preferences into governmental actions, a linkage that is also conditioned by resources. The analysis examines direct, indirect, and conditional relationships that describe the president's influence in policy making. As a heuristic, the policy process provides the context for

This article examines the policy attention and ideological congruence between solicitors general and their appointing presidents. It builds on previous research by presenting an alternative way of measuring presidential policy preferences that varies within administrations and offers an empirical test of the congruence between presidents and their appointees. Presidential attention to four policy areas and the ideological direction of that attention through their public statements is examined to see whether chief executives' rhetoric corresponds to the filing of discretionary amicus curiae briefs by solicitors general. We find that presidential statements are an important predictor of discretionary solicitor general behavior. Thus, solicitors general are responsive to the policy attentiveness and the ideological preferences of the chief executives who appoint them.

No abstract

Focusing on the issue of civil rights, this study examines the relationship between policy preferences of presidents and the votes of the Supreme Court justices they appointed. Through content analysis of presidential statements, relatively systematic measures of civil rights policy views for five recent presidents were obtained and compared with the voting records on civil rights of justices they appointed to the Supreme Court. The findings suggest that although a correspondence exists between presidential preferences and judicial votes, presidents have been only moderately successful in appointing justices whose votes reflect presidential preferences.