Presidential legislative activity: Using quantifiable measures to explore leadership in the *American system.

摘要

As with much of the discipline of political science, studies of the presidency have changed over time from largely historical and biographical explorations to more methodologically rigorous ones. Explorations of the presidency can greatly benefit from the development of a typology of presidential activities. This would allow us to actually see what presidents do. This paper develops such a typology, and uses samples from the Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon administrations to explore questions about presidential behavior. The data confirm much of the heretofore descriptive and anecdotal evidence on such things as levels of presidential activity and travel, but dispute the popular conception of presidents being legislators first and foremost. One advantage to this approach is the ability to explore commonalities across presidencies, instead of labeling each administration as somehow unique. For example, some support exists for the notion that presidents invest more time in legislative, social, and ceremonial activities in election years than in non-election years. Another advantage is the ability to explore empirically the president's relationship with Congress. A regression analysis of activity determines that contact with individual members of Congress is driven primarily by their status within the hierarchy and secondarily by partisan concerns. Finally, there is also some evidence that contact with Congress varies directly with a president's legislative success.