The inlfluence of mandates on the battle for policy control between the president and congress

This thesis examines how presidential mandates influence how the president and Congress interact to make policy. Do mandate elections make the president more likely to push his agenda through Congress, and do they make Congress more likely to respond to the presidents agenda wishes? The study includes divided government, mandate claiming, mandate, honeymoon, and presidential approval ratings as variables, as well as fixed effects to count for differences among individual presidents. This thesis recognizes the varying nature of mandates throughout the presidents term, and accounts for this with presidential approval ratings. The thesis finds that when the president has a mandate, Congress is more likely to respond to his agenda, and the president is more likely to assertively push his agenda through Congress. Also, the analysis finds that individual presidents do matter: presidents do have varying levels of assertiveness, and varying levels of success with Congress.