Lauren Silver POLS 540 The Presidency 10-29-09

Edwards and Wood address the question of whether and to what extent the
president affects the attention patternsthe policy agendasof important institutional
actors in the political system, including congress and the media. In turn, they assess the
influence of congress and the media on the president as well. Prior research on the
presidents ability to influence the policy agenda has turned up mixed results. cholars
ha!e found that the president is able to influence media stories under certain
circumstances but not under others. It also has been demonstrated that the president is
able to influence the publics agenda !ia the tate of the "nion address. #dditionally,
scholars ha!e suggested for quite some time that the President exerts a considerable
amount of influence on the policy agenda of members of $ongress.
%he authors focus on presidential, congressional, and media attention on fi!e
policy issues from &'() to&'')* "+o!iet and #rab+Israeli relations ,foreign policy-,
crime, education, and health care ,domestic policy-. .ore specifically, Edwards and
Wood in!estigate the direction of influence among the president, the media, and $ongress
in terms of what issues rise to the top of their respecti!e agendasassuming that
influence could !ery well wor/ in both directions between the president and the media
and $ongress. "sing the Public Papers of the President, the authors
operationali0e1measure the presidents agenda by counting the number of paragraphs per
wee/ for each year that is 2de!oted3 to some aspect of the fi!e policy areas.
4esults of a !ector autoregression analysis re!eal, o!erall, that presidential,
media, and congressional attention are, in large part, due to 2inertial forces3the fact
that the president, the media, and $ongress must deal with certain issues due to
institutional routines that transcend changes in policy priorities and that constrain their
Lauren Silver POLS 540 The Presidency 10-29-09
ability to focus attention elsewhere ,e.g., the media and crime reporting, the president and
budgeting, and congressional hearings, etc.-. #dditionally, presidential attention does not
strongly affect either congressional or media attention to foreign policy issues while the
president appears to be 2reacti!e3 to the media for both foreign policy issues. 5or
domestic policy, $ongress is slightly influenced by the media when it comes to crime and
health care while media attention to crime appears to, in turn, influence presidential
attention on crime. 5inally, the president influences media attention on health care
,howe!er, the authors ac/nowledge that this finding is due primarily to the $linton
administration- and responds to as well as stimulates media attention on education. .any
of these findings, howe!er, are dependent upon particular time periods* 26presidential
influence on the media and $ongress is strongly dependent on the time frame of the
analysis.3 %o that end, Edwards and Wood conclude that 2under special circumstances
presidents mo!e issues onto the agenda of other institutions3 and under these
circumstances 2operate as issue entrepreneurs.3
Edwards and Wood ma/e some interesting conclusions, howe!er, their
interpretation of the studys findings seem a bit suspect gi!en the number of ca!eats they
propose, especially their claim that presidential influence depends on the time frame of
analysis and whether special circumstances exist. %hey fail to specify what these special
circumstances are and, thus, fail to identify a set of factors that are li/ely to predict
presidential influence.