Adam L. Warber

Belonging, Behaving, and Believing: Assessing the Role of Religion on Presidential Approval

We operationalize three dimensions of religion—religious affiliation, religious commitment, and religious belief—to offer a detailed analysis of how religion affects presidential approval ratings. Using data from the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 American National Election Studies, we demonstrate that operationalizing religion as a rudimentary Protestant—Catholic affiliation dichotomy masks its influence on presidential approval. We find that religious affiliation, even when measured more precisely than with a Protestant—Catholic dichotomy, contributes less to models of presidential approval than do measures of religious commitment and (especially) orthodoxy of religious belief.

Public Outreach, Executive Orders, and the Unilateral Presidency

Scholars have traditionally and loosely defined executive orders as presidential directives that instruct bureaucrats about how to implement policy. In contrast, proclamations are thought to be used by presidents to address policy matters regarding the general public. This has been an assumption that scholars have accepted without empirical evidence. We have long known that presidents strategically pursue policy to build support among numerous groups, such as African Americans, religious organizations, women, educators, and labor unions. Presidency scholars also know that executive orders are an expedient tool that an administration utilizes to pursue its policy agenda. As a result, why should we assume that the exclusive target population of executive orders is members of the federal bureaucracy? This is the first study to explore whether and how presidents from 1936 through 2008 use executive orders to target specific populations with policy.

The Mainline Protestant Vote

Since the founding of the United States, religion has played a significant role in shaping both presidential elections and fundamental debates about public policy (Fowler et al. 2004; Wald 2003). For over two centuries, mainline Protestants have been one of the more visible and influential religious voices in American politics. Accordingly, they have had their political preferences taken seriously by elected officials throughout American history. During the twentieth century, Mainline Protestants traditionally favored the economic conservatism of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon while also eschewing the strict moral conservatism of presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Mainline Protestants’ ties to the Republican Party were solid and strong until the 1980s (Layman 2001; Manza and Brooks 1999, 2002), when the Republicans began emphasizing a policy agenda of moral conservatism alongside economic conservatism, much to the dismay of some mainline Protestants. By 2004, a drift among mainline Protestant laity toward the Democratic Party had become evident (Kohut et al. 2000; Leege et al. 2002). This partisan shift most likely has occurred as a reaction against the recent alliance between the Republican Party and evangelical Protestants.

The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency: Whipple, Chris. New York, NY: Crown, 2017. 365 pages.

The presidents chief of staff has played an essential White House role since the Eisenhower administration. Chiefs of staff not only oversee the daily operations of the White House staff, but they...

28 (hardcover).

Political scientists, historians, students of communication studies and political rhetoric, and journalists write many books on the American presidency every year. Although these studies add incrementally to our understanding of executive branch politics, very few new books fundamentally reshape scholarly thinking about the presidency. With The Particularistic President, Douglas Kriner and Andrew Reeves have written a book that meets this threshold, providing a systematic and empirical analysis of presidential efforts to target key constituencies in the electorate with public policy and federal resources. A common view held by scholars is that members of Congress represent the narrow constituencies that voted them into office by rewarding them with federal policies and funding in the form of pork barrel politics. Conventional wisdom also holds that, although presidents may seek to reward constituencies that supported them politically, chief executives sitting in the Oval Office have an obligation to represent the nation at large. According to Professors Kriner and Reeves, this latter type of presidential representation refers to the “universalistic” presidency, and is generally a myth in American politics. Instead, the authors provide strong empirical evidence that a “particularistic” presidency best represents political reality, where a president targets and rewards specific constituencies with public policy and federal funds in various states that are crucial supporters of his administration. Therefore, the core argument in this book is “. . . that electoral and partisan incentives combine to encourage presidents to pursue policies across a range of issues that systematically target benefits to politically valuable constituencies” (2). The authors explain that presidents target three key constituencies for federal largesse in order to reward them for political support. Those constituencies are comprised of “ . . . swing states, core states, and constituencies represented by co-partisans in Congress” (45). Based on an analysis of these different groups, the authors produce a multitude of findings to support the presence of a strategic “particularistic” presidency. For example, the authors find that those counties within core and swing states that experience a natural disaster receive a larger share of federal relief funds than other counties that are also in need of assistance (108–109). In addition, presidents tend to be more influential participants than members of Congress in dispensing a disproportionate amount of federal resources to various constituencies (134). Finally, a