JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 146.The economy being the key to presidential popularity, what is the economic intelligence inspiring the approval judgments of American voters? According to one school of thought, the public relies on the current performance of the economy (the retrospective voter), while a rival makes the case for expectations about the future economy (the prospective voter). I conduct a time-series analysis combining consumer surveys and presidential approval polls . The results unequivocally reject the prospective claim and confirm the retrospective one. Depending on the measure used, economic expectations either prove too sensitive to political interventions (change in the White House, wars, and scandals) to shape presidential approval; or else, economic expectations do no more than encapsulate information about the current state of the economy. The research bears out the wisdom and the fairness of the retrospective calculus. To judge a president's performance in office is not a question about things to come but about things done.Just as fashions keep changing, political science now and then discards old designs to make room for new ones. For that to happen, it is not necessary that the old stuff has worn out or no longer fits; the novelty appeal of something different may suffice, especially if an envied neighbor sports the new attire. To be sure, the pace of change is faster in fashion than in science, and the latter, of course, is more than a matter of taste. The adoption of a new research paradigm requires theoretical justification and empirical vindication. The new must prove its superiority to the old beyond a reasonable doubt, as is required for conviction in a court of law. Still, scholarship is not immune to fashion and fatigue.In recent years the study of electoral behavior has eagerly embraced a theory that depicts the average voter as a prospective decision maker. American voters, accordingly, key on future prospects instead of relying on past performance for their political choices. In adopting the prospective theory, political science has taken a cue from an idea captivating economics-"rational expectations" (Muth 1961; Lucas and Sargent 1981). As in economics, advocates of the importance of expectations in political science challenge the established wisdom of the "retrospective" theory.
Presidents and the Prospective Voter
777Instead of portraying the electorate as a "rational god of vengeance and reward," 1 the prospective theory claims that voters make political decisions based on their assessments of future conditions. The scholarly brief for "prospective" behavior describes the mass public as quite sophisticated, knowledgeable, and farsighted. I...
