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The topic of presidential-congressional relations is well studied, with scholars identifying party control as a strong predictor of presidential success in Congress. Although the research recognizes the importance of policy variation to explaining political processes, few have examined its impact on presidential success in Congress. This article holds that policy scope is important to explaining presidential success in Congress in that different policies engender different levels of conflict and participation in the legislative process. Using data on individual policy proposals from 1949 to 2006, I demonstrate that the policy scope of the president's legislative agenda not only affects the likelihood of presidential success, it also conditions the impact of expected effects on presidential success.
The relationship between the president and Congress is a central topic in the scientific study of politics. The literature is clear that a handful of variables strongly influence the likelihood of presidential success on legislation. Of these variables, party control of Congress is most important (Bond and Fleishet 1990), in that conditions of unified government increase, while conditions of divided government decrease presidential success, all else being equal. The president's approval ratings (Rivers and Rose 1985) and a favorable honeymoon (Domínguez 2005) period may also increase presidential success on legislation. In addition, presidential speeches tend to enhance the president's legislative success rate (Barrett 2004; Canes- Wrone 2001; Eshbaugh-Soha 2006; Kernell 1997).
One factor that is missing from these central works on presidential-congressional relations is policy and its impact on presidential success. This is not to say that no wotk has attempted to explore vatiation in presidential success in Congress by policy type; indeed, the research finds that policy matters to presidential success in Congress (see, among others, Canes-Wrone and De Marchi 2002; Light 1999; Shull 1983; Spitzer 1983). Peterson summarizes the role of policy clearly: "The president's role in legislative policy making . . . depend(s) on the type of policy under considerarion" (1990, 151). Whar is striking is that since Lowi (1972) recognized rhar "policy affects politics," policy has not remained an essential feature of this literature, and therefore scholars remain certain that policy matters, but not how or why it does.
There arguably are numerous reasons for this. First, no study unifies around a common characterization of policy...