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Presidents have long invoked electoral mandates to justify the use of executive power. In Delivering the People’s Message, Julia R. Azari draws on an original dataset of more than 1,500 presidential communications, as well as primary documents from six presidential libraries, to systematically examine choices made by presidents ranging from Herbert Hoover in 1928 to Barack Obama during his 2008 election. Azari argues that Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 marked a shift from the modern presidency formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to what she identifies as a more partisan era for the presidency. This partisan model is a form of governance in which the president appears to require a popular mandate in order to manage unruly and deeply contrary elements within his own party and succeed in the face of staunch resistance from the opposition party. Azari finds that when the presidency enjoys high public esteem and party polarization is low, mandate rhetoric is less frequent and employs broad themes. By contrast, presidents turn to mandate rhetoric when the office loses legitimacy, as in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam and during periods of intense polarization. In the twenty-first century, these two factors have converged. As a result, presidents rely on mandate rhetoric to defend their choices to supporters and critics alike, simultaneously creating unrealistic expectations about the electoral promises they will be able to fulfill.
Julia R. Azari is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. She is coeditor of The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party.
"By evaluating Republicans and Democrats in each chapter Azari ensures that attention is not on party or personality but on the presidency.... Thus Azari's work exemplifies the strengths of what she terms presidency studies, a scholarly venture that is interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, that employs diverse methods of inquiry, and that advances news that merits attention. This is an excellent book."
Mary E. Stuckey, Georgia State University, author of Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda:
"In this insightful analysis, Julia R. Azari locates the increase in mandate talk in the heightened partisanship characterizing national government beginning in the Reagan administration. In the process, she illuminates the ways in which presidents wield specific rhetorical forms—in this case the claim of a 'mandate'—in order to find political leverage over an increasingly recalcitrant system of governance. She adds to our understanding of both presidential rhetoric and the institution of the presidency. Historians, political scientists, and rhetoricians with an interest in the presidency and national politics will find much of value in this thoughtful work."
Nicole Mellow, Williams College, author of The State of Disunion: Regional Sources of Modern American Partisanship:
"Julia R. Azari has discovered an interesting pattern to presidents' use of mandate rhetoric across time, and she offers a new and ambitious interpretation to account for its use. Azari argues that changes in the use of mandate rhetoric are responsive to changes in the institutional and party system landscapes. These are large, complex, and intertwined phenomena, and Azari does an able and compelling job in suggesting how the political context affects presidents' construction of the mandate. In an age of high partisanship, when politicians seek every advantage to advance their agenda, understanding the strategy behind mandate rhetoric is vitally important, and Azari's work goes a long way toward revealing these strategies."
Andrew Busch, Crown Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow, Claremont McKenna College, co-author of After Hope and Change: The 2012 Elections and American Politics:
"In Delivering the People's Message, Julia R. Azari tackles the issue of presidential mandate talk, tracing its development through four stages from the Progressive era to the current day. She particularly focuses on the correlation between the growth of mandate talk and the decline in presidential legitimacy. Azari illuminates and supports her argument with useful quantitative data."
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