Elections, Mandates, and Governance

How will election winners and losers decide what the 2004 election “really” meant? How well will their interpretations reflect what the voters actually had in mind when they cast their ballots?
How do election outcomes shape the course of public policy? Do past performance, platforms, and campaign rhetoric provide a reliable basis for predicting the winners’ behavior in office?

On November 12, the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will hold a panel discussion on how the election results could shape the new Congress, which convenes in January, and President Bush’s second term. The event is the fifth and final in a series of roundtable discussions on the election sponsored by Brookings and Princeton.