Democracy Matters - Episode 53: Does The President Have a Mandate?

Does President Joe Biden have a mandate to enact his policies and agenda? Why are presidents drawn to mandate rhetoric? What can we learn from presidential communications about the logic of presidential mandates? How do popular and media conceptions of mandates differ from those of presidents and their teams? Although political scientists have been pretty adamant that mandates aren’t real, the idea of an electoral mandate remains powerful.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Julia Azari, associate professor of political science at Marquette University. Her research interests include the American presidency, political parties and political rhetoric. She is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. She hosts a sister podcast in the Democracy Group, “Politics In Question,” and is also a contributor to FiveThirtyEight.

Links in this episode:

• Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.
• Is There A Chance The Winner In 2020 Will Be Able To Credibly Claim A Mandate?
• Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara
• Jose D. Villalobos, Justin S. Vaughn, and Julia R. Azari, "Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress," Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (September 2012): 549-576.
• Politics In Question