Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:15:36.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Error Correction, Attitude Persistence, and Executive Rewards and Punishments: A Behavioral Theory of Presidential Approval

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Charles W. Ostrom Jr.  and
Renée M. Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Beginning with Mueller's (1970) seminal work, researchers have wrestled with explanations of the movement of presidential approval over time. In his initial argument, Mueller states that

in tandem, the concepts underlying the coalition of minorities and rally round the flag variables predict that the president's popularity will continually decline over time and that international crises and similar events will explain short-term bumps and wiggles in this otherwise inexorable descent. (1970, 22)

From this basis, Mueller posits “… a general downward trend in each president's popularity” (1970, 19) that is linear and deterministic over the course of a term. Others later moved away from arguments of linearity (e.g., Stimson 1976) and from the coalition of minorities concept (e.g., Kemell 1978), but these early characterizations of approval's time path, perpetuated in the “myth of the inexorable descent,” remain to this day.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 4 , 1992 , pp. 127 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 1993 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amemiya, Takeshi. 1985. Advanced Econometrics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1988. Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel. 1987. “Alternative Dynamic Specifications of Popularity Functions.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Political Methodology Society, Durham, North Carolina.Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel. 1991. “The Economy and Presidential Approval: An Information-Theoretic Perspective.” In Economics and Politics: The Calculus of Support, ed. Norpoth, Helmut, Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Lafay, Jean-Dominique, 85–102. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel. 1992. “Comparing Dynamic Specifications: The Case of Presidential Approval.” Political Analysis 3: 51–87.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard A. 1991. Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard A., and Page, Benjamin I. 1975. “The Impact of Events on Presidential Popularity: The Johnson and Nixon Administrations.” In Perspectives on the Presidency, ed. Wildavsky, Aaron, 136–47. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Butler, David, and Stokes, Donald. 1969. Political Change in Britain. New York: St. Martins Press.Google Scholar
Chappell, Henry W. Jr., and Keech, William R. 1985. “A New View of Political Accountability for Economic Performance.” American Political Science Review 79: 10–27.Google Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, and Feldman, Stanley. 1986. “Emotional Reactions to the Economy.” American Journal of Political Science 30: 50–78.Google Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, Feldman, Stanley, and Knight, Kathleen. 1986. “Judging Inflation and Unemployment.” Journal of Politics 48: 565–88.Google Scholar
Dickey, David A., and Fuller, Wayne A. 1979. “Distribution of the Estimators for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 74: 427–31.Google Scholar
Dickey, David A., Bell, W. R., and Miller, R. B. 1986. “Unit Roots in Time Series Models.” American Statistician 40: 12–26.Google Scholar
Dickey, David A., and Pantula, Sastry G. 1987. “Determining the Order of Differencing in Autoregressive Processes.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 5: 455–61.Google Scholar
Engle, Robert F., Hendry, David H., and Richard, Jean-Francois. 1983. “Exogeneity.” Econometrica 51: 277–304.Google Scholar
Engle, Robert F., and Granger, C. W. J. 1987. “Cointegration and Error Correction: Representation, Estimation, and Testing.” Econometrica 49: 1057–72.Google Scholar
Engle, Robert F., and Yoo, Byung Sam. 1987. “Forecasting and Testing in Cointegrated Systems.” Journal of Econometrics 35: 143–59.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Freeman, John R. 1983. “Granger Causality and the Time Series Analysis of Political Relationships.” American Journal of Political Science 27: 327–58.Google Scholar
Goerlich, Francisco J. 1992. “A Note on the Distribution of the Least Squares Estimator of a Random Walk with a Linear Trend.” Economic Letters 38: 151–56.Google Scholar
Granger, Clive W. J. 1988. “Some Recent Developments in the Study of Causality.” Journal of Econometrics 39: 199–211.Google Scholar
Granger, Clive W.J., and Newbold, Paul. 1974. “Spurious Regressions in Econometrics.” Journal of Econometrics 2: 111–20.Google Scholar
Granger, Clive W.J., and Newbold, Paul. 1986. Forecasting Economic Time Series. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Granger, Clive W.J., and Hallman, Jeff. 1991. “Nonlinear Transformations of Integrated Time Series.” Journal of Time Series Analysis 12: 207–24.Google Scholar
Hall, S. G., and Brooks, S. J. 1986. “The Use of Prior Regressions in the Estimation of Error Correction Models.” Economic Letters 20: 33–37.Google Scholar
Hibbs, Douglas A. Jr. 1987. The American Political Economy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hibbs, Douglas A. Jr., Rivers, Douglas, and Vasilatos, Nicholas. 1982. “On the Demand for Economic Outcomes: Macroeconomic Performance and Mass Political Support.” Journal of Politics 34: 426–62.Google Scholar
Johansen, Soren. 1988. “Statistical Analysis of Cointegrating Vectors.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 12: 231–54.Google Scholar
Kernell, Samuel. 1978. “Explaining Presidential Popularity.” American Political Science Review 72: 506–22.Google Scholar
Kernell, Samuel, and Douglass, Hibbs Jr. 1981. “A Critical Threshold Model of Presidential Popularity.” In Contemporary Political Economy, ed. Hibbs, D. A. and Fassbender, J., 49–71. Elsevier: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Kiewiet, D. Roderick, and Rivers, Douglas. 1985. “The Economic Basis of Reagan's Approval.” In The New Direction in American Politics, ed. Chubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul E., 69–90. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Kwiatkowski, Denis, Phillips, P. C. B., Schmidt, Peter, and Shin, Yongcheol. 1992. “Testing the Null Hypothesis of Stationarity against the Alternative of a Unit Root.” Journal of Econometrics 54: 159–78.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore. 1985. The Personal President. Ithaca. N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, James G. 1991. “Critical Values for Cointegration Tests.” In Long Run Relationships: Readings in Cointegration, ed. Engle, Robert and Granger, C. W. J., 1–16. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacKuen, Michael. 1983. “Political Drama, Economic Conditions, and the Dynamics of Presidential Popularity.” American Journal of Political Science 27: 165–92.Google Scholar
MacKuen, Michael, Erikson, Robert S., and Stimson, James A. 1989. “Macropartisanship.” American Political Science Review 83: 1125–42.Google Scholar
Maddala, G. S. 1988. Introduction to Econometrics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Marra, Robin F., Ostrom, Charles W. Jr., and Simon, Dennis M. 1990. “Foreign Policy and Presidential Popularity: Creating Windows of Opportunity.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34: 588–623.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. 1970. “Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson.” American Political Science Review 65: 18–34.Google Scholar
Nelson, Charles R., and Plosser, Charles I. 1982. “Trends and Random Walks in Macroeconomic Time Series.” Journal of Monetary Economics 10: 139–62.Google Scholar
Neustadt, Richard. 1980. Presidential Power. 2d ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Newey, Whitney, and West, Kenneth. 1987. “A Simple Positive Semi-Definite, Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix.” Econometrica 55: 703–8.Google Scholar
Norpoth, Helmut, and Yantek, Thom. 1983. “Macroeconomic Conditions and Fluctuations of Presidential Popularity.” American Journal of Political Science 27: 785–807.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Charles W. Jr., and Simon, Dennis M. 1985. “Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity.” American Political Science Review 79: 334–58.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Charles W. Jr., and Simon, Dennis M. 1988. “The President's Public.” American Journal of Political Science 32: 1096–1119.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Charles W. Jr., and Simon, Dennis M. 1989. “The Man in the Teflon Suit.” Public Opinion Quarterly 53: 353–87.Google Scholar
Phillips, P. C. B. 1988a. “Reflections on Econometric Methodology.” Economic Record 64: 344–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, P. C. B. 1988b. “Regression Theory for Near-Integrated Time Series.” Econometrica 56: 1021–43.Google Scholar
Phillips, P. C. B. 1990. “To Criticize the Critics: An Objective Bayesian Analysis of Stochastic Trends.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper no. 950. Yale University.Google Scholar
Phillips, P. C. B. 1991. “Optimal Inference in Cointegrated Systems.” Econometrica 59: 283–306.Google Scholar
Phillips, P. C. B., and Perron, Pierre. 1988. “Testing for a Unit Root in Time Series Regression.” Biometrika 75: 335–46.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley. 1967. The Foundations of Scientific Inference. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Peter. 1990. “Dickey-Fuller Tests with Drift.” Advances in Econometrics 8: 161–200.Google Scholar
Sims, Christopher. 1980. “Macroeconomics and Reality.” Econometrica 48: 1–48.Google Scholar
Christopher, Sims. 1988. “Bayesian Skepticism on Unit Root Econometrics.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 12: 463–74.Google Scholar
Sims, Christopher, Stock, James H., and Watson, Mark W. 1990. “Inference in Linear Time Series Models with Some Unit Roots.” Econometrica 58: 113–44.Google Scholar
Sims, Christopher, and Uhlig, Harald. 1991. “Understanding Unit Rooters: A Helicopter Tour.” Econometrica 59: 1591–99.Google Scholar
Stimson, James. 1976. “Public Support for American Presidents.” Public Opinion Quarterly 40: 1–21.Google Scholar
Stock, James H. 1987. “Asymptotic Properties of Least Squares Estimators of Cointegrating Vectors.” Econometrica 55: 1035–56.Google Scholar
Stock, James H. 1988. “Testing for Common Trends.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 83: 1097–1107.Google Scholar
Stokes, Donald. 1963. “Spatial Models of Party Competition.” American Political Science Review 57: 368–77.Google Scholar
Terry, Sullivan. 1991. “The Bank Account Presidency.” American Journal of Political Science 35: 686–723.Google Scholar
Toda, H. Y., and Phillips, P. C. B. 1991. “Vector Autoregression and Causality.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper no. 977, Yale University.Google Scholar
Williams, John T. 1990. “Political Manipulation of Macroeconomic Policy.” American Political Science Review 84: 767–95.Google Scholar
Yantek, Thom. 1988. “Polity and Economy under Extreme Economic Conditions.” American Journal of Political Science 32: 196–216.Google Scholar