Agenda Setting from the Oval Office: An Experimental Examination of Presidential Influence over the Public Agenda

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan cues can help presidents further increase public perceptions of issue importance, though such cues are unlikely to spur increased support. Over the years, scholars have asserted that U.S. presidents play an important role at the agenda setting stage of the policy making process (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Cohen, 1995, 1997; Downs, 1972; Kingdon, 1995; Light, 1991). Given their formal position atop the hierarchy of the executive branch and high visibility in the media, it makes sense that presidents would have ‘‘a presumptive right to play a leading role in identifying and defining the problems that command governmental attention’’ (Cobb & Elder, 1972, p. 182; Jones, 1994; Kingdon, 1995). Nevertheless, despite a vibrant and growing literature, important questions linger concerning the full extent to which presidents can be influential agenda setters. In a recent critical overview of presidential agenda-setting research, Wood (2009) points out that, ‘‘Although it seems evident that presidents should All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jose D. Villalobos, Political Science Department, University of Texas at El Paso, Benedict Hall 111, 500W. University Avenue, El Paso, TX, 79968, USA. E-mail: jdvillalobos2@utep.edu at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from be influential agenda setters at both the systemic and institutional levels, hard scientific evidence showing that presidents are influential agenda setters is limited’’ (p. 109). Among the quantitative studies that systematically examine the agenda-setting ability of presidents, most scholarly work has been restricted to time series research designs. Even though time series analyses have proved to be highly valuable in contributing to the accumulation of scientific knowledge in this area of research, limitations in historical data often oblige scholars to resort to using short time periods, a small sample of issues, and a few administrations (see Lawrence, 2004, p. 17). As a viable alternative to time series research, Wood (2009, p. 117) posits that scholars should look to experimental designs for further exploring presidential influence in agenda setting. Building on and extending the literature on presidential agenda setting, and addressing the call for alternative research designs in this area of scholarship, this study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, while taking into consideration several key factors that may condition such effects. Specifically, we consider three central factors that influence public reactions to presidential policy initiatives at the agenda setting stage: Issue salience, policy domain, and the type of cue (bipartisan versus partisan) that presidents use in their messages to the public. Our experimental study focuses on issue salience, policy domain, and presidential cueing for several reasons. To begin with, past studies tend to examine either low salience issues (e.g., trade or foreign aid) or high salience issues (e.g., the economy or a military intervention), but often fail to compare the two. In addition, although presidential agenda setting in domestic policy has been widely examined, foreign policy agenda setting has been relatively overlooked (but see Andrade & Young, 1996; Peake, 2001; Wood & Peake, 1998). Among the few works that do look at foreign policy, they mostly do so without systematically comparing it to the domestic policy domain. Therein, scholars who examine presidential influence on the foreign policy agenda generally investigate media coverage and congressional attention to issues rather than public attention (but see Cohen, 1995, 1997; Hill, 1998; Lawrence, 2004). Building on these works, we consider the conditioning effects of high and low salience issues across both policy domains with regards to presidential influence on the public agenda. Most studies also tend to overlook how presidential use of bipartisan or partisan cues in their public appeals may influence the public agenda. Although Ragsdale (1987) finds that non-partisan speeches can have a positive impact on presidential approval, her study does not test the impact of presidential speeches on issue salience or public support for policy action. Other studies focus instead on how other informational cues, such as source cues I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H 22 at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from (e.g., whether a president endorses a policy), elite cues (e.g., signaling elite consensus or dissent), or voting cues (e.g., political party affiliation) affect evaluations of presidential performance, voting behavior, etc. (see, for example, Hetherington, 2001; Sigelman, 1980; Sigelman & Sigelman, 1981). To address this gap in the literature, we take into consideration how focusing on broad (bipartisan) or narrow (partisan) constituencies may further condition the effect presidential appeals may have on public perceptions of issue salience and support for policy action. In all, by bringing together the key factors of issue salience, policy domain, and presidential cueing within an experimental setting, this study advances the debate over whether and to what extent presidents can effectively influence public perceptions of issue importance and garner support for policy action. Our findings provide new insights on how presidents can refine their use of public appeals to help maximize their potential as agenda setters. Presidential Agenda Setting and the Mass Public Agenda setting generally refers to ‘‘the process whereby matters of concern for the political system become defined as policy problems for consideration on political agendas’’ (Wood, 2009, p. 108). This process involves an ongoing competition among numerous issue proponents to gain the attention of media outlets, the public, and policy elites (Dearing & Rogers, 1996, p. 2). At the outset, in addressing the extent to which presidents can influence the agenda-setting process, scholars asserted that ‘‘no other single actor in the political system has quite the capability of the president to set agendas’’ (Kingdon, 1995, p. 23; see also Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Cobb & Elder, 1972; Schattschneider, 1960). However, more recent scholarly works argue that presidential influence in agenda setting is inherently weak due the difficulty of attaining agenda space within a highly competitive and dynamic environment (e.g., Edwards & Wood, 1999; Wood & Peake, 1998). Such scholarly investigations have helped stimulate a vibrant and growing literature on presidential agenda-setting influence over (a) political institutions, particularly Congress (e.g., Edwards & Barrett, 2000; Bond & Fleisher, 1990), (b) the media (e.g., Edwards & Wood, 1999; Peake & Esbaugh-Soha, 2008; Wood & Peake, 1998), and (c) public opinion (e.g., Behr & Iyengar, 1985; Cohen, 1995, 1997; Hill, 1998; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Lawrence, 2004). Building on the latter vein of this area of research, our study examines the impact of presidential public appeals on public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action. In doing so, we provide additional evidence and new insights to the literature concerning presidential influence on the public agenda. A G E N D A S E T T I N G F R O M T H E O V A L O F F I C E 23 at U niersity of T exas at E l Paso on M arch 3, 2012 http://ijpoordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Influence of Presidential Public Appeals on Perceptions of