Canes-Wrone, Brandice 1971–

PERSONAL:

Born January 25, 1971, in Washington, DC; daughter of Michael and Mary Pat Canes; married David A. Wrone. Education: Princeton University, A.B. (magna cum laude) and certificates in political economy and music performance, 1993; Stanford University, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Princeton University, 214 Robertson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544. E-mail—cwrone@princeton.edu.

CAREER:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, assistant professor, 1998-2002; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, visiting assistant professor, 2001-02; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, associate professor, 2002-04; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, associate professor of politics and public affairs, 2004—.

MEMBER:

American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy Research Fellowship, 1992-93; Olin Foundation Fellowship in Law and Economics, Stanford University Law School, 1996; Patrick J. Fett Award, Midwest Political Science Association, 1997; Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results Fellowship, Environmental Protection Agency, 1997-98; Richard E. Neustadt Award for best book on the U.S. presidency, American Political Science Association, 2007, for Who Leads Whom?; Hoover visiting fellow, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Who Leads Whom? Presidents, Policy, and the Public, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Continuity and Change in House Elections, edited by David W. Brady, John F. Cogan, and Morris P. Fiorina. Stanford University Press (Palo Alto, CA), 2000; The Macropolitics of Congress, edited by Scott Adler and John Lapinksi. Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2006; Economics of Administrative Law, edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman. Edward Elgar Press (Cheltenham, England), 2007; and New Directions in Studying the History of Congress, edited by David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, Stanford University Press. Contributor of academic articles to journals, including Journal of Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Congress and the Presidency: A Journal of Capital Studies, and Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Member of editorial board, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2003—, Public Choice, 2004—, American Journal of Political Science, 2006—, and Journal of Politics, 2007—.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Who Leads Whom? Presidents, Policy, and the Public, political scientist Brandice Canes-Wrone looks at the relationship between popular opinion and policymaking in the American republic. She asks whether public policy is created by the large democratic masses who communicate their desires to the leadership through polls, or is it the creation of a small group of elites who then try to impose that policy on the American public. "Canes-Wrone's central questions are: how does presidential polling and presidential public appeals (i.e., going public) affect policymaking?," reported James N. Druckman in the Public Opinion Quarterly. "Do presidents slavishly follow polls, regardless of long-term societal interests? Or do presidents use polls and appeals to manipulate an unknowing populace?" "Putting the parts of the book together, the bottom line is that public opinion affects the direction of policy, and presidential involvement in public opinion shapes its exact role," Druckman concluded. "But, according to Canes-Wrone, the president does not manipulate public preferences by going public; rather, he highlights certain issues, making them salient, and as a result, public opinion subsequently has an impact on these issues (because Congress follows opinion on these salient issues)."

One conclusion that Canes-Wrone draws from her analysis is that the best future role for presidents is not one of strong demagogic leadership, but instead a facilitator-type role. In an examination of the last fifty years of the presidency (from the Eisenhower to the George W. Bush administration), Canes-Wrone promotes two theories—both based on a presidential-facilitator model—about the ways in which presidential elites and the general populace interact: she calls them "Public Appeals Theory" and "Conditional Pandering Theory." Public Appeals Theory suggests that presidents can increase their impact on legislative agendas by taking their cases directly to the public. By bringing these issues to prominence, presidents can increase public support and that, in turn, has an impact on Congress—ideally, increasing Congressional support for the president's issue. "Presidents since Dwight Eisenhower have been more likely to appeal on popular domestic issues," according to Richard Sobel in a Political Science Quarterly review, "but they can also affect public opinion initially against them in foreign policy. Bill Clinton's appeal about sending troops to Bosnia turned initially unpopular opinion around in polls and congressional action after his November 1995 speech."

Conditional Pandering Theory, on the other hand, suggests that presidents rarely support popular policies they believe would be bad for the country. "When a president is clearly popular or unpopular, he does not support detrimental popular policies," Sobel declared. "If no election approaches, he will not cater to approval unless he agrees with a policy." "Taken together," stated Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha in the Presidential Studies Quarterly, "the president's public appeals further the will of the majority in a democracy through the adoption of legislation, without promoting the deleterious effects of demagoguery on societal welfare. Indeed, Canes-Wrone argues convincingly that limited pandering does not result in bad public policy, because presidents still only tend to publicize those popular policies that they believe will improve societal welfare." The author points out at least two examples in which presidents pandered to popular opinion in opposition to their own concept of the public good: President Carter's retreat from his pro-human-rights approach to foreign policy, and President Reagan's adoption of contingency taxes in 1983 during his first term in office. "This book," concluded Druckman, "is a major contribution to an understanding of the role of public opinion in policymaking and the role of elites in influencing that relationship. It also is very well written and honest insofar as Canes-Wrone carefully confronts results that do not follow her predictions." "It is," the Public Opinion Quarterly reviewer continued, "a book that should be read by all scholars interested in how democracies function."