Title
PRESIDENTIAL EFFECTIVENESS
Chapters
  1. Presidential Position - Analyzing the President's Place in the Constitutional System
  2. Structured Bargains - A Model of Presidential Bargaining
  3. The Patterns of Sway - LBJ's Influence Over Members of Congress
  4. Opportunity and Duty - External Demands on Presidential Influence
  5. Get the Music, Hear the Words - Patterns to LBJ's Presidential Persuasion

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Structured Bargains
A Model of Presidential Bargaining

Abstract

Using a new approach to assessing influence called presidential "sway," this chapter analyzes presidential effectiveness in the bargaining between members and the administration. Taking congressional predispositions as given and adding that information to the details derived from administration headcounts, the chapter first describes a structured bargaining process in which the administration proposes policy, bargains with members, settles on its strategic responses and gathers in final votes. Given the uncertainty inherent in structured bargains, the analysis highlights the importance of understanding member predispositions as a way of filtering member demands, i. e., separating genuine hesitation on the part of members from strategic bargaining (bluffing). The analysis also underscores how members' interests in maintaining a reputation for genuine bargaining helps the administration coordinate the policy strategies of its congressional supporters. Using these headcount encounters to make a series of snap-shots of the coalition-building process, the chapter then describes a typical initial congressional response. These initial patterns demonstrate that the administration began its efforts with something considerably smaller than a winning coalition of supporters. As expected, an administration pressing to make a difference, like LBJ's, would have to gather votes or lose outright. The patterns of initial support not only resemble the expectations of support generated by the model of predispositions, but that model also highlights especially divergent or unexpected responses from members. The analysis then examines these special responses in more detail, describing different kinds of bargaining responses and showing that they resemble attempts to pressure the administration with sophisticated bluffing strategies. Designed by members concerned with promoting reputations, the bluffing strategies present the administration not simply with congressional pressure, but they also minimize the number of cues the administration can receive that might give away their bluffing.

The chapter then exams several standard ideas about presidential support by looking at the patterns of initial support. For example, the evidence of initial bargaining positions clearly undermines the commonly held notion that congressional support reflects a distinction between domestic and foreign policy, the so-called "two-presidencies" response. The evidence does not support the notion that congressional support rallies around an administration on issues involving foreign relations. Taken together, the snap-shot of the initial bargaining suggests something important about the nature of productive administration strategies and effective presidential bargaining, e. g., administration's ought to minimize the coordination between members hence maximizing uncertainty and minimizing bluffing pressures. (28 pages)


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The Patterns of Sway
LBJ's Influence Over Members of Congress

Abstract

Continuing to exploit the headcount data, the chapter examines bargaining interactions in each frame of the coalition-building process. It identifies how the administration assessed its flexibility in coalition strategy, suggesting that even on critical administration bills, the President could adopt a number of potential strategies, each emphasizing a particular presidential advantage. It assesses, for example, the effectiveness of emphasizing the President's responsibilities as head of state. The data on final conversion demonstrates a plausible "two-presidencies" response. Thus, while they do not initially respond more favorably to foreign policy initiatives, congressional majorities eventually yield more readily to bargaining strategies emphasizing the President's responsibilities in that area. (32 pages)


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Opportunity and Duty
External Demands on Presidential Influence

Abstract

With the baseline of presidential sway established, this chapter explores the effect of external forces on presidential effectiveness, in effect establishing a second kind of baseline. The analysis divides external forces into two groups: opportunities and duties. First, "opportunity" includes events involving the state of the domestic economy or the world situation. Opportunity also involves those rhythms of the presidency and of the president's tenure which affect bargaining. Under opportunity, then, the chapter first explores the important patterns associated with succession following assassination. It demonstrates that an inheritor president often has an opportunity for effectiveness, while running an extraordinary risk of calamitous confrontation with Congress and ultimate failure. The chapter then covers the second element of presidential rhythm including such tenure effects as the so-called "honeymoon" and "lame duck" effects, momentum, and the "bank account" presidency. Using the headcount data, the analysis estimates the effect of each of these opportunity variables on initial support, compromise, conversion rates, and final support. Opportunity tends to affect levels of initial and final support without affecting the tendency for the administration to compromise or its effectiveness in securing conversions. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of tenure related patterns to initial support but its relatively unimportant role in affecting conversion rates. In fact, conversion effectiveness actually increases over LBJ's tenure.

"Duty" defines those responsibilities of the office, whether constitutional or statutory in origins, which draw the President's attention away from pursuing the administration's policies. The analysis assesses the demands of staff and "clerkship" on the administration and its impact on initial and final support as well as conversion. Duty definitely undermines initial support but underwrites administration conversion rates. (37 pages)


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Get the Music, Hear the Words
Patterns to LBJ's Presidential Persuasion

Abstract

Derived from standard bargaining theories, the chapter presents a theory of "concurrence," describing what the President says and does to get members to follow the administration's lead. Using hundreds of recorded phone conversations, the chapter determines which rhetorical strategies succeed in converting members. For example, rhetorical theory asserts that when presented with an issue involving conflict of interests, an effective persuader will attempt to reframe the issue by introducing considerations favorable to the persuader's own interests. Coding the conversations according to the level of conflict and covering the kinds of rhetorical strategies adopted suggests that the President did reframe issues wherever a conflict of interests arose. Typically, LBJ would emphasize foreign policy aspects of an issue. So, for example, he might connect farm export policies, a primarily domestic farm issue dominated by congressional coalitions of accommodation, to a defense policy, a primarily executive branch dominated issue involving the President's responsibilities as commander in chief. The model also predicts that a President would regularly utilize quid pro quo appeals in seeking commitments, despite the substantial anecdotal evidence which attests to the lack of such appeals.

By examining the taped conversations, the analysis then identifies how often members make commitments and how often they skirt the issue, avoiding making a direct commitment. It then develops a direct measure of presidential effectiveness based on this evidence. Establishing this measure of concurrence, the analysis then traces out all of the previous patterns to concurrence, e. g., whether tenure related forces like lame duck and the bank account presidency plays a role or whether opportunity and duty or public standing plays a role in concurrence. Though the data have important limitations, the analysis suggests that opportunity effects do exist, while tenure linked effects do not. (35 pages)


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