“There remains,” writes Michael T. Hayes in his provocative new book, “a pressing need to educate the public—specialists and nonspecialists alike—on what politics can accomplish, and at what speed” (p. 189). To this end, Hayes challenges what Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions, 1987) calls the tenets of “articulated rationality” (i.e., rational-comprehensive ideals) in the policy process. He vigorously asserts that the benefits of incrementalism (viz., its focus on “partisan mutual adjustment,” its understanding of “the importance of checks on the arbitrary abuse of power,” and “its ability to draw on the dispersion of knowledge throughout the political system” [p. 8]) exceed its costs (e.g., delay and incoherent policy outcomes). Moreover, on balance, “partisan mutual adjustment produces better [emphasis added] policy outcomes than any attempt at rational-comprehensive analysis” (p. 8).

The presidency, intended by the framers of the Constitution to be almost exclusively an executive and administrative office, has, in the course of a century and a quarter, not only augmented its executive and administrative authority, but also has acquired a marked political significance. To his constitutional powers the President has added the prerogatives of party leadership, which constitute him the organ for giving effect to the policies of his party at the same time that he exercises a potent influence in the formulation of those policies. The amazing growth of political parties in the United States and the perfection and strength of their organization have been the causes of astonished comment on the part of foreign observers. Moreover, ours has been, in the main, a country of two parties. In view of these facts, the President as party leader becomes a personage of incalculable political consequence. He possesses the political leadership of an English prime minister with the titular dignity which the prime minister lacks.

Since Jackson's time the presidency has achieved a representative character which is the natural result of the President's assumption of political leadership. He perhaps more accurately reflects the mind of the country at large than either of the houses of Congress. The Senate has been wanting in representative character, until the passage of the seventeenth amendment, because of the indirect mode of its election; while the Representatives, because the center of their interests is local rather than national and because their number has been a hindrance to decisive action, have distinctly lost in prestige. The President is able, and finds it to his advantage, to cultivate a nationalistic conception of his office.

The central problem in national executive organization for water resources is that of fitting the service of specialized Federal agencies to the task of promoting the unified development of entire drainage basins. While technical recognition of the interlocking character of water resources development grew rapidly after 1920 and found expression in basin-wide plans, the administrative organization was unable to keep pace. It now presents conspicuous weaknesses which have been described by the Hoover Commission and its Task Force on Natural Resources. Remedial action involving the combination of several existing agencies and the creation of a central board of review have been recommended. An effort also has been initiated to correlate and reconcile the disperse and often conflicting Federal policies upon which the agencies are operating.

What are the psychological, social, and political legacies of sexual violence in armed conflicts? While conventional wisdom expects the exclusion of survivors from their societies due to stigma, we advance a theory of sociopolitical mobilization among wartime sexual violence survivors and their households. Our theory emphasizes the value that people place on their communities in conflict-affected contexts and incorporates the psychosocial harms that survivor-households experience as well as their agency. We use an original survey from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to evaluate the theory. Analyses using list experiment measures of wartime sexual violence show that survivor-households engage in increased levels of social and political activities in their communities. Auxiliary analyses suggest that mobilization is driven by stigmatization and self-blame, a finding that resonates with social psychological research on exclusion and social reconnection.