10.1177/1532673X04264308 ARTICLE AMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH / January 2005 DeRouen et al. / PRESIDENTIAL MANDATES AND THE SENATE PRESIDENTIAL MANDATES AND THE DYNAMICS OF SENATE ADVICE AND CONSENT, 1885-1996 KARL DEROUEN JR. University of Alabama JEFFREY S. PEAKE Bowling Green State University KENNETH WARD Texas State University We examine the dynamics of Senate advice and consent for executive branch nominations from 1885 to 1996 using multinomial logit and hazard analysis. We add to the literature by considering the importance of elections on the process. In particular, we assess how presidential mandates might influence the duration and success of nominations to the executive branch. The analysis captures political nuances previously unconsidered that follow from the different ways that nom- inations terminate, whether through confirmation, rejection or withdrawal by the president, or expiration. As shown previously, divided government matters, especially during periods of ideo- logical polarization in the Senate. Nominations fail more often and take longer. However, percep- tions of electoral mandate strengthen the president’s position vis-à-vis the Senate, smoothing the president’s path to a more effective transition and staffing of the federal bureaucracy. Keywords: executive branch nominations; presidential transitions; electoral mandates; presidential-congressional relations Staffing the political appointees of an administration is critical for effective presidential transitions and assumptions of power. Success- fully organizing the administration is vitally important for the new chief executive’s policy success (Burke, 2000; Jones, 1994), as appoint- Authors’Note: The authors especially thank B. Dan Wood for his contributions to an earlier ver- sion of the manuscript and Nolan McCarty for providing the nominations data used in the analy- sis. They also thank Texas State University and the University of Canterbury for additional grant funding. Rayana Gonzales, Ariana Olldashi, and Reymundo Chapa provided invaluable research assistance. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in Savannah, Georgia, November 2002. Authors’names are listed alphabetically indicating equal contribution. AMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH, Vol. 33 No. 1, January 2005106-131 DOI: 10.1177/1532673X04264308 © 2005 Sage Publications 106