The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons

Abstract

This article investigates the policy opportunities in presidential honeymoons. Specifically, after reviewing a standard (pivotal politics) model of lawmaking where presidents' election results are treated as exogenous, we develop a (honeymoon politics) model in which a president's election results are treated as endogenous—that is, where legislators' positions factor in the president's electoral results among their constituents. Applying both models to every newly elected president and corresponding Senate since 1932, comparative statics show that presidents' policy-making prospects always improve in “honeymoon” settings, though this effect varies depending on lawmakers' preference distribution, presidents' electoral coalition, and the threshold required to invoke cloture.