Summary Of Deliver The People's Message By Julia Azari

On November 10th 2016, I attended the Hartigan Lecture given by Julia Azari, an 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.” Dr. Azari assessed what changed the 2016 election changed and what it revealed. She explained what a political mandate is and when they are used. Mandates are the authority granted to candidate or party when they have earned the approval to continue or pursue certain policies by their constituency. She explained that when the presidency has a high approval rating and party polarization is low, mandates are less frequently used and tend instead to employ broad themes. But, mandates are used when the presidency loses legitimacy. The concept of a government having a legitimate mandate to govern via the fair winning of a democratic election is a central idea of representative democracy.
Further, Dr. Azari presented a chart of Pew Research Center’s results of conducted surveys that illustrated the increase in partisanship of elections between people aligning to

Azari explained that when parties are shut out of power, the conversations about how to respond can lead to change. After the two terms of George W. Bush’s presidency, the divisions between his party’s more establishment wing and its populist sect had begun to emerge. While the traditional wing of the Republican Party stressed economic issues and business concerns, cultural issues such as same-sex marriage and immigration reform motivated the populist faction. During the Obama administration, the Democratic party has moved to the left on economic and social issues. As with George W. Bush, Barack Obama will not be succeeded by a president of the same party. In fact, his successor will be one with no prior elected public office experience