Public Opinion and Presidents’ Unilateral Policy Agendas

Abstract

Unilateral power is an important source of policy change for contemporary presidents. In contrast with scholarship that examines the institutional constraints on presidents’ exercise of unilateral authority, I consider presidents’ unilateral behavior in a framework of political accountability. I argue that presidents have incentives to incorporate the public's policy priorities in their unilateral agendas. I examine this account using panel data on executive orders and public opinion across issue areas from 1954 to 2018. Across a variety of model specifications and estimation strategies, I find evidence that patterns of executive action reflect the public's policy priorities. Presidents issue greater numbers of unilateral directives on issues that gain public salience, particularly on issues that are more familiar to the public and when issuing more policy‐significant directives. These findings suggest that accountability mechanisms structure how presidents exercise unilateral power and have normative implications for considering presidential unilateralism in a separation‐of‐powers system.

Divided Government, Strategic Substitution, and Presidential Unilateralism

“…The most important problem responses were associated with the issue area of each directive. Rogowski (Forthcoming) argues that presidents have incentives to address issues of public concern through executive orders, and thus it is possible that presidents may prefer to address these issues through executive orders (and proclamations) rather than other directive types in expectation that they will receive greater public attention for doing so. Fourth, we account for policy areas that are on the president's agenda and appear to be priority issues for the president ( Presidential priority ).…”