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Notes on the Presidency in the Political Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Stephen Skowronek
Stephen Skowronek
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The American presidency reflects nothing so clearly as the idiosyncrasies of personality and circumstance. The discrete dynamics of the men and their times are naturally pronounced; the general dynamics that define the institution in time, correspondingly obscured. This makes thematic analysis of the presidency peculiarly dependent on uncovering broad-ranging patterns in institutional history. By isolating different historical regularities we can locate different dimensions of the problem and significance of presidential action.

Type
Notes and Exchanges
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 286 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

This article was prepared in part under a grant from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. I owe special thanks to Michael Lacey, Karen Orren, John Petrocik, Paul Quirk, and Michael Nelson for their help and advice.

1. A recent and important exception is Rockman, Bert A., The Leadership Question: The Presidency and the American System (New York: Praeger, 1984)Google Scholar.

2. Greenstein, Fred I., “The Need for an Early Appraisal of the Reagan Presidency,” in The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment ed. Greenstein, Fred I. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 3Google Scholar. A more fully developed statement of the modern presidency perspective can be found in Greenstein, Fred I., “Continuity and Change in the Modern Presidency,” in The New American Political System ed. King, Anthony (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), 45–86Google Scholar.

3. The enduring significance of the constitutional structure has been most thoroughly explored in the works of Louis Fisher. See, for example, Fisher, Louis, The Constitution between Friends: Congress, the President and the Law (New York: St. Martin's, 1978)Google Scholar. Recent efforts to revive the constitutional presidency as an analytic construct include Pious, Richard, The American Presidency (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 18–85Google Scholar; Bessette, Joseph M. and Tulis, Jeffrey, The Presidency in the Constitutional Order (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Pyle, Christopher H. and Pious, Richard, The President, Congress, and the Constitution: Power and Legitimacy in American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

4. The paradox of change-without-development in American politics has been explored by Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe,” Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 93–139Google Scholar. This paradox has been specifically drawn with regard to the constitutional presidency by Jeffrey Tulis. Tulis speaks of a “second” or modern “constitutional presidency” in the following way: “All presidents face the same institutional dilemma. Under the auspices of the second constitution, presidents must continually craft rhetoric that pleases their popular audience. But while presidents are always in a position to promise more, the only additional resource they have to secure their promises is public opinion itself. Because Congress retains the independent status conferred upon it by the first constitution, it can resist the president.” Tulis, Jeffrey, “The Two Constitutional Presidencies,” in The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Nelson, Michael, (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), 82Google Scholar.

5. I have drawn these terms from Edward Shils's discussion of the “charisma of office” in traditional and legal rational societies. See Shils, Edward, The Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 119–42Google Scholar. My usage of “political order” deserves some clarification at this point for there are two closely related ideas implied by the term that need to be distinguished. First, we may speak of the historical political orders or political regimes that have dominated state/society relations in America for relatively long periods of time as durable arrangements of political interests, ideas, and institutions. In this way, scholars have traditionally spoken of the Jeffersonian era and the Jacksonian era as coherent and distinctive orders, and contemporary scholars have spoken of the New Deal political order extending over the modern period. I will so far as practical use the term regime to refer to these historical orders. At a more abstract level, it is possible to speak of the political order in terms of the regularities that have underscored the sequential generation and degeneration of these historical regimes. In this sense, the historical regimes are the materials out of which an overarching conception of political order as an analytic construct can be derived. Thus, to modify Shils's terms a bit, it might be more accurate to speak of the presidency in the political order as a “regime”-shattering, “regime”-affirming, “regime”-creating institution. The order is found in the recurrent patterns of regime change. It is this historically abstracted and analytic usage of the term political order that parallels the “modern” order and “constitutional order” as heuristic constructs drawn from presidential history.

6. See Skowronek, Stephen, “Presidential Leadership in Political Time,” in The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Nelson, Michael (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), 87–132Google Scholar.

7. Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar. Neustadt, of course, downplays the significance of formal constitutional powers as a resource in presidential leadership. Still his presentation of the informal sources of political power available to the president takes its point of departure from the fixed and enduring constitutional structure of separate institutions sharing powers.

8. Greenstein, Fred I., The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982)Google Scholar.

9. The precise placement and status of electoral realignments have become mired in controversy in recent years. Though drawing on this scheme, these notes shift the discussion to a different level. Election results will be taken to be one aspect of the opportunity structure for presidential leadership. In considering political regimes as relatively enduring sets of coalition interests, ideas, and institutions, attention is focused on elite perceptions and allegiances. The significance of the presidency in the dynamics of the regime cycles is suggested in somewhat different ways by Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H., Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980)Google Scholar; and Sundquist, James L., The Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1973)Google Scholar. See also Chubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul, eds., The New Direction in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985)Google Scholar.

10. For other recent attempts to focus on recurrent patterns of presidential leadership see Barber, James David, The Pulse of Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980)Google Scholar; and Hargrove, Erwin C. and Nelson, Michael, Presidents, Politics, and Policy (New York: Knopf, 1984)Google Scholar.

11. Greenstein, Hidden-Hand Presidency.

12. On Roosevelt's futile struggle to reconcile regime maintenance with reform see especially Cooper, John Milton, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 114–18, 143–64Google Scholar.