The President's First Moves: The Dynamics of Agenda Construction, 1968-2022

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Skowronek, Stephen

Abstract

Abstract: When scholars address presidential agenda setting in American politics, they focus on how presidents go about getting what they want. We know far less about the prior step: how presidents decide what they want (agenda construction). Moreover, prior work that has dealt with the establishment of presidential priorities has focused on the external constraints imposed on presidential choice by public opinion and Congress. I contend, by contrast, that presidents have considerable agency in determining their domestic policy priorities. They rely on their agency to establish who they are and where they want to take the nation, putting forward their own "political projects." I situate this agency in the selection of agenda items and the manner and sequence in which presidents pursue them, focusing on the start of presidents' terms. Failing to account for this "power of initiative and origination" leaves us with an underspecified understanding of presidential decisionmaking that obscures the consequentiality of leadership in driving important policy outcomes and configuring the contours of the American polity. I develop this argument by exploring presidential leadership in the modern era, beginning with Richard Nixon and ending with Joe Biden, building out my case studies through archival research and interviews with senior administration personnel. I find not only that presidents maintain a "self-assertive" posture in relation to their external environs but that presidents of comparatively weaker political standing are most likely to buck inherited orthodoxies and adopt sprawling agendas that showcase their ideological innovation - what I term an "authority paradox." The consistency of these practices across time drives political instability. Presidents routinely overpromise and underdeliver, pledging changes they are seldom equipped to enact. They fail to satisfy expectations for their leadership and lay down the bases of their own repudiation. The nation is thus left more agitated than secure.

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