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Legislative Productivity and Presidential Approval
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laws that solve five issues and five laws to solve those issues.
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However, it does rely on
people knowing and believing that something is being done. Thus, either the passage of
more major legislation or the engagement of more major issues could be seen as
confirmation of the theory. As such, we can state the following hypotheses:
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Hypothesis 3.1:
The passage of major legislation will lead to higher presidential approval.
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Hypothesis 3.2:
The more issues are successfully ‘dealt with’ legislatively, the higher presidential approval will be.
Hypothesis 3.3:
The state of the economy will be positively related to presidential approval. Greater growth in real disposable income will be positively related to approval; greater unemployment will be negatively related to approval.
The
Partisan theory espouses the notion that partisanship colors not only approval
of the president, but also how approval reacts to legislative activity by the president. The
6
Until this point, we have avoided a discussion of what ‘the production of major legislation’ is, and with
good reason. Numerous scholars have attempted to measure ‘major legislation.’ In this paper, I have chosen to utilize the measures produced by two of the more compelling recent works, David Mayhew’s Divided We Govern (1991), and Sarah Binder’s Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock (2003). The measures they employ have both characteristics to recommend them and flaws. A full description of these measures is beyond the scope of this paper; for such a discussion, see Jarvis (2003b). In this paper, I have used two measures of ‘the passage of major legislation.’ The first is Mayhew’s measure, which I have termed Bills Passed. This is simply the number of ‘important laws’ made during a Congress, as measured by Mayhew using both contemporary accounts and historical treatments. The second, Landmark Legislation, is also derived from Mayhew’s measure, but only counts those laws that Mayhew notes were identified by contemporary sources as being historically important (These are discussed in some more detail later in the text of this paper). For ‘issues dealt with,’ I have relied on Binder’s measure, which relies on issues discussed in New York Times editorials that are engaged more than tangentially by legislation that passes Congress. Those issues that are ‘dealt with’ in legislation are termed Issues Passed here; Binder’s composite measure that includes the number of issues that were not ‘dealt with’ (measured as Issues Failed/(Issues Passed +Issues Failed) is called Gridlock (Binder’s term). Again, measuring major legislation has spawned an entire literature; Jarvis (2003b) describes these measures in much more detail than there is space to here. Table A1 (in the appendix) summarizes this information.
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I have included the conventional wisdom (and a point on which there is great scholarly consensus) that
the state of the economy affects approval under the Retrospective theory rubric for two reasons. First, economic assessments are a key part in Fiorina’s (1981) argument. Second, the measures being used for the state of the economy are retrospective. These variables (and other ones used in models not displayed in this paper) all relate to the year prior to the NES survey. They are not ‘leading indicators’ of the future economy; rather, they are descriptions of what the past year’s economy was like.
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See fn 6 on the difference between the ‘passage of major legislation’ and ‘dealing with issues.’
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| | Authors: Jarvis, Matthew. |
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people knowing and believing that something is being done. Thus, either the passage of
more major legislation or the engagement of more major issues could be seen as
Hypothesis 3.1:
The passage of major legislation will lead to higher presidential
approval.
Hypothesis 3.2:
The more issues are successfully ‘dealt with’ legislatively, the
higher presidential approval will be.
Hypothesis 3.3:
The state of the economy will be positively related to presidential
approval. Greater growth in real disposable income will be
positively related to approval; greater unemployment will be
negatively related to approval.
The
Partisan theory espouses the notion that partisanship colors not only approval
of the president, but also how approval reacts to legislative activity by the president. The
6
Until this point, we have avoided a discussion of what ‘the production of major legislation’ is, and with
good reason. Numerous scholars have attempted to measure ‘major legislation.’ In this paper, I have
chosen to utilize the measures produced by two of the more compelling recent works, David Mayhew’s
Divided We Govern (1991), and Sarah Binder’s Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative
Gridlock (2003). The measures they employ have both characteristics to recommend them and flaws. A
full description of these measures is beyond the scope of this paper; for such a discussion, see Jarvis
(2003b). In this paper, I have used two measures of ‘the passage of major legislation.’ The first is
Mayhew’s measure, which I have termed Bills Passed. This is simply the number of ‘important laws’
made during a Congress, as measured by Mayhew using both contemporary accounts and historical
treatments. The second, Landmark Legislation, is also derived from Mayhew’s measure, but only counts
those laws that Mayhew notes were identified by contemporary sources as being historically important
(These are discussed in some more detail later in the text of this paper). For ‘issues dealt with,’ I have
relied on Binder’s measure, which relies on issues discussed in New York Times editorials that are engaged
more than tangentially by legislation that passes Congress. Those issues that are ‘dealt with’ in legislation
are termed Issues Passed here; Binder’s composite measure that includes the number of issues that were
not ‘dealt with’ (measured as Issues Failed/(Issues Passed +Issues Failed) is called Gridlock (Binder’s
term). Again, measuring major legislation has spawned an entire literature; Jarvis (2003b) describes these
measures in much more detail than there is space to here. Table A1 (in the appendix) summarizes this
information.
7
I have included the conventional wisdom (and a point on which there is great scholarly consensus) that
the state of the economy affects approval under the Retrospective theory rubric for two reasons. First,
economic assessments are a key part in Fiorina’s (1981) argument. Second, the measures being used for
the state of the economy are retrospective. These variables (and other ones used in models not displayed in
this paper) all relate to the year prior to the NES survey. They are not ‘leading indicators’ of the future
economy; rather, they are descriptions of what the past year’s economy was like.
8
See fn 6 on the difference between the ‘passage of major legislation’ and ‘dealing with issues.’
9
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