Vicious Cycle: Presidential Decision Making in the American Political Economy. By Constantine J. Spiliotes. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. Pp. xv, 212. $39.95.

Extract

Constantine J. Spiliotes makes a substantial new contribution to the literature on presidential decision making. Spiliotes seeks to bring together two largely separate literatures: presidential studies and rational choice theory. This is a formidable task: Economists and rational-choice political scientists typically view traditional presidential studies as excessively anecdotal for the purpose of establishing generally applicable theories, and presidential-studies scholars typically view rational-choice models as excessively abstract and parsimonious for the purpose of understanding the complexities of the presidency.