Will and Skill on Capitol Hill: How the President’s Reputation with Congress Impacts His Legislative Success

Authors

Bethany Bowra, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Political Science

First Advisor's Name

Kevin Evans

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Todd Makse

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Kyle Mattes

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

David Park

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

presidency, Congress, veto politics, interbranch relations, bargaining, reputation, Neustadt

Date of Defense

6-29-2023

Abstract

American political institutions have been shaped and influenced by the relationship between the president and Congress since the country’s founding. Factors like partisanship, divided government, and oversight have received a multitude of studies exploring how they affect interbranch relations. What we know less about is how Neustadt’s concept of professional reputation affects that relationship. This dissertation builds upon literature exploring the president’s reputation to develop a quantifiable measure of reputation we can apply across presidents and policy areas. Understanding reputation will provide a more complete picture of how the president moves in the legislative arena and will enable us to view interbranch relations through a new lens.

To build this measure of professional reputation, I built a dataset consisting of all Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs), White House communications, statements from members of Congress (MCs), and veto-threatened legislation between 2001 – 2021. Each chapter uses these data to analyze how the president builds his reputation in a variety of policy areas related to legislation introduced in Congress. I use the strength of threats contained in SAPs and volume of White House communications effort in that policy area as measures of the president’s reputation-building effort. My results indicate that presidents devote varying levels of reputation-building activities to different policy areas, with each choosing to spend more resources in certain areas over others.

Because reputation is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, I use congressional statements regarding the threatened bill or its policy area to measure perceptions of the president’s reputation-building activities. The analysis shows that MCs perceive the president to have a strong reputation in policy areas where he devotes more reputation-building activities.

Lastly, I compared the first and final versions of each veto-threatened bill to the president’s preferences as stated in the SAPs to determine whether a strong reputation increased the chances of policy moving in his direction. I found that Congress is more likely to alter legislation according to the president’s preferences, indicating that the president’s efforts to shape congressional behavior are sometimes effective and can influence the outcomes of public policy.

Identifier

FIDC011173

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3477-9975

Recommended Citation

Bowra, Bethany, "Will and Skill on Capitol Hill: How the President’s Reputation with Congress Impacts His Legislative Success" (2023). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5394.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5394