Eye of the Beholder: Identifying Underlying Characteristics of Policy Success Across Presidential Administrations.

Abstract

Presidential power is approached in a systematic fashion in order to (1) facilitate the study of power across administrations; (2) identify the elements of power under ordinary circumstances not involving comm and ; (3) connect the exercise of power with its ends; and (4) determine the relative importance of personal and institutional factors in the exercise of power. Perceptions of the President's utilization of fifteen resources were measured for four cases of policy success and four cases of policy failure during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Power was hypothesized to be a function of the response of policy actors to a specific array of resources, present during all instances of success despite idiosyncratic characteristics of the two administrations. The data support this contention for a variety of resources targeted by the President in dealings with Congress, and for a smaller number of resources directed to dealings with the executive branch and the public. These findings provide the basis for the development of a deductive model of presidential power in the domestic policy arena, centering on five domains of effective resource use: executive branch efficiency, executive branch-congressional relations, presidential-congressional relations, pressure on Congress, and access to the public. The personal model of presidential power is found to be overstated, based on the prominent role of institutionally-derived resources in all cases of policy success. The use of this approach for the study of power in foreign policy matters is considered, and implications for the exercise of power are discussed.