Coalitional Congruence and Presidential Influence

157 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985.The needs for theoretical and empirical research on presidential influence have been increasingly emphasized among students of the presidency. This study purports to add to the theory building efforts by constructing two illustrative models of presidential influence: the coalition model and the elite model.The coalition model focuses on the coalition building efforts of the recent presidents in the governing process as well as in the electoral campaigns. Presidents build their own coalitions to be nominated and elected. They also devote more of their energies to building coalitions crucial to adoption of their programs and policies. The coalition model suggests that the degree of congruence between electoral support and governing coalitions determines presidential influence. The role of a core support crystallized during campaigns for nomination and election and its successful translation into the governing process underlie the proposition. In contrast, the elite model negates the existence of the translation process, and suggests that this translation process is not necessary for the exercise of presidential power. The proposition derives from the lack of public control over the policy process.This study tests the models with the cases of Carter and Reagan presidencies. It defines coalitions, congruence, presidential influence, and measures them using election survey data, and Congressional roll-call votes data. The findings show: that there is some degree of translation; that the successful translation in terms of group characteristics of coalitions contributes to increased presidential influence.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD