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Replication Data for: Public Opinion and Presidents' Unilateral Policy Agendas

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Public Opinion and Presidents' Unilateral Policy Agendas
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KXDRXB
 
Creator Rogowski, Jon
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Unilateral power is an increasingly important source of policy change for contemporary presidents. In contrast with scholarship that examines the institutional constraints on presidents' exercise of unilateral authority, I consider presidents' unilateral behavior in a framework of political accountability. I argue that presidents have incentives to incorporate the public's policy priorities in their unilateral agendas. I examine this account using panel data on executive orders and public opinion across issue areas from 1954 to 2018. Across a variety of model specifications and estimation strategies, I find evidence that patterns of executive action reflect the public's policy priorities. Presidents issue greater numbers of unilateral directives on issues that gain public salience, particularly on issues that are more familiar to the public and among more policy-significant directives. These findings suggest that accountability mechanisms structure how presidents exercise unilateral power and have normative implications for considering presidential unilateralism in a separation-of-powers system.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Presidents
Unilateral action
Public opinion
Responsiveness
Issue salience
 
Contributor Rogowski, Jon
 
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