Political Parties

• Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), esp. chs. 2, 7-8

• Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (2002)
James L. Sundquist (1983), Dynamics of the Party System
• Martin P. Wattenberg (1998), The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Interest Groups
• Baumgartner and Leech, Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and
Political Science (1998)
• E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (1960)
• Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism, Second Edition (1979)
• Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (1965)

State/Urban

• Robert Dahl, Who Governs, 1961.

• Robert S. Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, and John P. McIver, Statehouse Democracy: Public
Opinion and Policy in the American States, 1993 (Cambridge University Press).
• Rodney E. Hero, Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics (1998 Oxford
University Press).
• John Pelissero, Cities, Politics, and Policy: A Comparative Analysis (2003, Congressional
Quarterly Press).

Presidential Politics

 James David Barber, Presidential Character (2008)

• James Ceaser, Presidential Selection (1979)
• William Howell, Power Without Persuasion (2003)
 Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink (1972)
 Charles Jones, The Presidency in a Separated System (2005)
• Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties (1993)
• Terry Moe, "The Politicized Presidency," in John Chubb and Paul Peterson, The New
Direction in American Politics (1985)

Political Parties

1) Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), esp. chs. 2, 7-8

 2) Mayhew; Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (2002)
Synthesizes the important literature on realignments/elections (Key 1955; Schattschneider
1960; Sundquist 1983; Burnham 1965, 67, 70) to come up with fifteen distinct claims about
political reality based on these major works:
1) Voting patterns show a few specified regaling elections; 2) realignments
occur with regularity/periodicity; 3) they occur about every 30 years; 4)
strengthening/weakening of party identification leads to realignments; 5)
voter concern/turnout unusually high in these elections; 6) realignments
marked by turmoil in presidential nominating conventions; 7) good showings
by 3rd parties tend to stimulate (at the very least take place just before)
realignments; 8) realignments feature voter cleavages over interests,
ideologies, and issues which replace previous cleavages; 9) elections at
realignment junctures are marked by insurgent-led ideological polarization;
10) US House realignment elections hinge on national issues, non-realigning
elections on local ones; 11) election realignments are associated with major
changes in government policy; 12) electoral realignments bring on long spans
of unified party control of gov’t - House, Senate, presidency - and such spans
are a precondition of major policy innovation; 13) electoral realignments are
distinctively associated with “redistribute policies” (initiatives of class wide
impact such as Social Security); 14) the American public expresses itself
effectively and consequently during electoral realignments, but not
otherwise; 15) there existed a “System of 1896” (Schattschneider (1960): aka
“The Progressive Era” ;the period in American political history from about
1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican party, excepting the
1912 split in which Democrats seized power for eight years; central domestic
issues concerned government regulation of railroads and large corporations
("trusts"), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need
for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections,
direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government,
women's suffrage, and control of immigration.

All fifteen claims are examined one by one and assessed for their empirical validity and
“illuminative power.” He concludes that these assumptions do not hold up well and that the
causes, precursors, defining properties, measures, indicators, concomitants, and consequences
associated with realignments and critical elections do not line up on the historical calendar the
way they should. What then, he asks, can we generalize about American electoral history?

Mayhew offers three alternative concepts to consider when studying elections:

Contingency (elections are not contingency-free; in fact many of their outcomes rely
improbable such as economic crises or terrorists attacks; elections and their underlying causes
are not usefully sortable into generation-long spans); and Short-Term Strategy (parties and
candidates may accommodate major impulses from the electorate without any tell-tale signs of
realignment appearing in elections; elections are more influenced by immediate voter concerns
than realignment literature admits); and Valence Issues (Stokes 1966; those that are uniformly
disliked by all voters, like corruption; Mayhew argues that closer examination reveals most
elections hinge on these, not on position-issues).

Mayhew also offers alternative narratives than economic-dualism (farmer-labor coalitions

vs. merchants/capitalists) described by realignment theorists. There is bellicosity (times of war
bring about divisions in the electorate); race (intrudes into elections, party strategies, and
policy making); and economic growth (voters tend to reward governments for rises in per capita
income and penalize them for slumps in that category).

3) James L. Sundquist (1983), Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment
of Political Parties in the US

This edition, like the first published ten years earlier, uses the lessons of major political
party realignments in the 1850s, 1890s, and 1930s to develop a theory of party realignment.
He applies this theory to the American political scene up through the midterm elections of
1982. In his update, Sudquist argues while the de-alignment of party loyalties and attachments
has taken place, no realignments have occurred (as yet) as would be expected from earlier
cases.

Three generally recognized critical realignments (Civil War Era; 1890s; 1930s) are marked by
a change in the terms of the party conflict and the party coalition, but Sundquist does not find
such a shift in the part balance existing in the wake of Reagan’s landslide victory in the 1980
election, an indication to scholars and journalists alike that “it is plainly the end of an era.”
Sundquist criticizes the heavy reliance on election data to determine the presence of
realignments and instead emphasizes party registration data and public opinion polls (despite
their admitted weaknesses). Sundquist argues that several things have to be present before an
election can be considered realignment; among them: a new political issue(s) shatters the party
system’s characteristic inertia (ie slavery, hardship of farmers/inequality of wealth; Great
Depression solutions); such issue(s) must cut across the existing line of party cleavage; issue(s)
must dominate political debate and polarize the community, resulting in passion and high voter
interest/turnout; major political groups must take distinct and opposing policy positions; and
when moderate centrists have lost control of one or both of the major parties.

Sundquist asks if the “Reagan Revolution” of 1980 signaled a major realignment of the party
system and if disgruntled Democrats (who had left the party temporarily to support George
Wallace in 1968) finally become Republicans? Not according to his analysis. Evidence for this
conclusion includes poll results showing the GOP had lost ground among likely voters and
sweeping gains in the House for Democrats in November of 1982. After two years in office
Reagan had not duplicated the feat of FDR in forging a new majority coalition and the analogy
to 1932’s realignment had failed. The “protest vote” of 1980 had not been solidified into a
durable Republican alliance.
 4) Martin P. Wattenberg (1998), The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

The Decline of American Political Parties argues that the political salience of parties has
declined significantly, with growing numbers of voters feeling indifference toward both parties
and no longer viewing partisanship as a significant or even meaningful form of self-
identification. According to Wattenberg, this has resulted largely from changes in electoral
rules, in particular the decision by both parties to award delegates to their nominating
conventions on the basis of the results of primary elections rather than on the basis of decisions
by party leaders, and in the manner in which campaigns have been conducted, such as the
declining role of the parties in funding campaigns given their increasingly high cost in the
television era, that have made them more candidate-centered. Thus, mentions of parties in
campaign advertisements, other forms of political communication, and in media coverage have
declined significantly in recent decades and voters have become increasingly likely to split their
tickets. This has occurred despite the fact that the number of voters perceiving significant
differences between the parties actually increased in the 1980s as the parties became more
ideologically polarized. Moreover, this phenomenon cannot be attributed to increases in the
average educational attainment of voters (as better educated voters have been no more likely
to split their tickets than less educated voters) or to generational replacement (as ticket
splitting has increased among older voters as well).

Interest Groups

1) Baumgartner and Leech (1998) - argues that while interest groups were once viewed by
scholars as the most important factor in the American political system, they are now
seen as a marginal influence not because of their diminishing power but because of
changes in the approach to their study by political scientists. By reviewing hundreds of
books and articles from the 1940s onward, the authors show how methodological and
conceptual problems have distracted researchers, thus making interest groups appear
less relevant than they are. From the publisher: “The authors begin by explaining how
the group approach to politics became dominant forty years ago in reaction to the
constitutional-legal approach that preceded it. They show how it fell into decline in the
1970s as scholars ignored the impact of groups on government to focus on more
quantifiable but narrower subjects, such as collective-action dilemmas and the dynamics
of recruitment. Another major problem stems from the dearth of systematic data on
interest groups that is available to scholars of, say, political behavior or international
relations. As a result, despite intense research activity, we still know very little about
 how groups influence day-to-day governing. Baumgartner and Leech argue that scholars
need to develop a more coherent set of research questions, focus on large-scale studies,
and pay more attention to the context of group behavior. Their book will give new
impetus and direction to a field that has been in the academic wilderness too long.”

The book provides no original data or hypothesis, but is rather a meta-analysis of work done
in the field to construct, what they feel, would be the best approach. They argue that scholarly
research on interest groups can be divided into areas of advance (research on mobilization and
membership; group lobbying; policy subsystems; issue networks; coalitions; and cross-national
studies of group-state relations) and areas of confusion (quantitative research on the impact of
PAC contributions and activities on Congressional policy). “Confusion” occurs when lots of
research amounts to little increase in actual knowledge as scholars analyze only a few issues
and groups, fail to use universal or comparable measures, definitions, and concepts and do not
account for “contextual factors” such as issue salience and degree of conflict and consensus
among groups. The book is criticized for not practicing what it preaches: while it advocates a
research agenda, it does not execute it.

They also recognize areas of avoidance - available research avenues scholars have yet to
exploit. This is due mainly to too many research questions and a lack of viable approaches to
solving research questions. This has led to many unaddressed empirical questions: are
common group tactics useful? How have groups embraced changes in technology? How have
groups impacted changes in presidential administrations or partisan control of Congress?

*Above are the main take-aways from the book but I would suggest consulting it for a nice
review of pretty much all literature done on interests groups since the 1940s.*

2) Schattschneider (1960) - "The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus
sings with a strong upper-class accent." Schattschneider criticizes group theory for
trying to explain too much and assuming that government merely ratifies the existing
balance of power among groups. The outcome of a controversy is often determined by
the success or failure of efforts to enlarge its scope and that the conflicts among private
groups are taken into the legislative arena by those groups seeking to alter the power
balance. Pressure groups fail to represent the lower income groups. A vigorously
competitive party system offers the semi-sovereign people their best chance for a role
in the decision-making process, while one party politics tends to vest political power in
the hands of those people who already have economic power. 40% of adult citizens do
not vote. They will vote only if they perceive clearer differences between parties.

Schattschneider criticizes political scientists and philosophers for falsely portraying

American citizens as ignorant about politics - while studies at the time showed their lack of
knowledge about such matters, he denies the conventional attitude that democracy was
designed to make voters “think about politics the way a US senator would.” He instead argues
that it is the job of the representatives to think about political matters for the people, as
average citizens cannot be reasonably expected to know enough about politics to actually
govern. Democracy should be redefined, he argues, so that people with knowledge and
confidence about the matters are the decision-makers.

That being said, interest groups, or “pressure groups,” have redefined the interests of the
people to be pro-business and bias toward the upper class. His disdain for these groups is clear
in this work. He uses data to show that business and the upper-classes are more likely to
organize for politics; that they have greater political resources (money, prestige); and that their
small numbers tend to dominate interest-group politics. He estimates that about “90 percent
of the people cannot get into the ‘pressure system,’” a phrase he uses to describe interest
group politics. He rejects the assumption that the interests of these groups represent those of
the whole community and proposes a conception of democracy characterized by strife - the
struggle between private interest and social interests. A major problem in this dilemma, he
notes, is that those who would be best served by the social interests are the nonvoters, who
are generally drawn from the young, poor, and racial minorities. For them, the direction of
politics has been already set by traditional interest groups and non-programmatic parties that
do not represent their interests. He warns, “the present boycott *ie non-participation] has
brought the political system very near to something like the limit of tolerance of passive
abstention,” as the failure of parties and leadership to define and push the values of a vast
segment of the nation had left them powerless and forced them to reject democratic means.
Disadvantaged classes simply gave up on the political process.

He argues the best solution to this crisis in democracy is a vigorously competitive party
system, as opposed to competing interest groups - that will give the people their best chance
for a role in the decision-making process. He concludes that the “role of the people in the
political system is determined largely by the conflict system, for it is conflict that involves the
people in politics and the nature of conflict determines the nature of public involvement.” He
offers a solution that involves redefining democracy to distinguish between the “democratic
and antidemocratic elements” as it was once defined as lumping the two together, but we can
see by the usurpation of the democratic process by “pressure groups” that this is no longer the
case. This will draw light to the issues and hopefully increase competition as, “above
everything, the people are powerless if the political enterprise is not competitive.” His
normative definition of democracy, offered at the book’s end is: “democracy is a competitive
political system in which competing leaders and organizations define the alternatives of public
policy in such a way that that the public can participate in the decision-making process.” He
also concludes that “conflict, competition, organization, leadership, and responsibly are the
ingredients of a working definition of democracy.”

3) The End of Liberalism (Lowi; 2nd Ed. 1979)

In this book Lowi argues that the liberal conception of politics in America has eroded to a
form of interest-group liberalism in which Congress has abdicated its role as a representative of
the people, instead delegating much of this power to special interest groups. This IGL is
accomplished mainly through the rise of the administrative state, in which basic interests
become dominated by organizations who are willing and able to use their newly found power.
IGL features organized interest groups emerging from every sector of our lives to work both in
concert with one another and in contention to opposing interests. The role of government in
the IGL model is to insure access to the most well organized groups and to ratify the
agreements and adjustments already worked out among the competing leaders. It is the
interest groups, not Congress, who formulate public policy. Congress becomes a mere rubber
stamp for the proposals of the interest groups. There is also a fusion of private interest groups
and government bureaucracies, thanks in part to the expanding administrative state, as we
observe the “ethical and conceptual mingling of the notion of organized private groups with the
notions of local government and self-government” (p. 54).

The appeal of IGL is that it appears to be providing governmental operations with a sense of
stability and increased representation as many diverse groups are heard. Lowi contends,
however, that genuine flexibility, democratic forms, and even legitimacy are all sacrificed. IGL
disdains formalism (especially in the form of law) because it extends representation to the
administrative agencies, not the courts or legislatures. IGL wants to prevent any such law that
restricts broad delegations of power to the executive agencies that would interfere with its
“administrative representation.” Interest groups, like the National Association of County
Agricultural Agents, work in conjunction with government entities such as the Department of
Agriculture to shape policy and then push their agendas on congressional committees or
subcommittees who in turn develop policy favorable to the interest groups. Here it is the
interest group, not the constituents, that is designing policy. This process precludes any real
representative substance.

As mentioned above, IGL is especially hostile to law. Laws interfere with the political
process as they can abruptly change the rules of the game. Law hinders a major feature IGL;
the delegation of power - which is when “a legislature confers upon an administrative agency
certain tasks and powers the legislature would and could itself exercise if that were not
impracticable. Delegations can be narrow or broad, but the practice under the liberal state has
most generally and consistently been broad” (p. 92). This is a key process by which IGL has
supplanted traditional liberalism. This phenomenon began mainly in the 1930s as the national
government began to take on regulatory functions. The New Deal started this shift to an
executive-centered government as the national government took on regulatory powers and
needed a plethora of executive bureaucratic agencies to handle such operations. “The federal
government literally grew by delegation. Although Congress continued to posses the
lawmaking authority, it delegated that authority increasingly in statute after statute to an
agency in the Executive Branch or to the president, who had the power to sub-delegate to an
agency…*this+ delegation was recognized for what it really was - administrative delegation” (p.
274). Soon we saw delegation of all authority (executive, legislative, and judicial) in a single
administrative body (Lowi points specifically to the Interstate Commerce Act, p. 96).

Lowi calls this shift to interest-group liberalism “The Second Republic of the United States.”
Executive power, administrative expertise, and interest-group wisdom have all supplanted state
and local lawmaking and congressional deliberation for setting the nation’s course.
Republicans and Democrats alike have sought broad discretion and sponsored-interest
representation in areas such as wage and price control, agriculture, energy, commerce,
consumer safety, and the environment. The national government monopolizes a private
activity and authorizes an administrative agency to operate it without legal guidelines. This
state of permanent receivership has led to programs like Medicare and Medicaid: the
government can control a part of the economy (health care) by underwriting a private sector
but without actually operating it.

Interest-group liberalism corrupts democratic government by confusing expectations about

democratic institutions; renders government impotent; demoralizes government and corrupts
government by weakening its formal procedures (p. 295-298).

4) Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (1965)

Here Olson challenges the conventional assumption that “groups of people with common
interests attempt to further those common interests,” a view that is based on the
understanding that the individuals in such groups are acting out of self interest. His goal of the
book is to challenge the conventional wisdom that “if the members of some group have a
common interest or objective, and if they would all be better off if that objective were
achieved…the individuals of that group would, if they were rational and self-interested, act to
achieve that objective” unless they are coerced to or induced by some “separate and selective
incentive.”

Instead, Olson argues that “rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their
common or group interest” because of rationality and self-interest. He adds that individuals in
any group attempting collective action will have incentives to "free ride" on the efforts of
others if the group is working to provide public goods. Individuals will not “free ride” in groups
which provide benefits only to active participants. “Public goods” are those that are non-
excludable, such as military defense, and therefore cannot be doled out to nor withheld from
specific individuals. The selfish person, therefore, will have no incentive to act in accordance
with the group’s efforts if s/he can get something for nothing.

Olson’s study focuses specifically on labor unions, arguing that while these groups may be
beneficial for laborers who join them, most will not join unless there is some form of selective
(individual) incentive. Why join a labor group and pay union fees if you will be able to enjoy the
benefits without doing so? One way to circumvent this problem is forced unionization through
legislation, which eliminates free-riders but raises concerns over the coercive use of
government power to in effect control what groups people join. Government is essentially
telling workers that union membership is now a “non-excludable good,” along the lines of
other government services all enjoy without direct consent. This coercive pressure of course
problematic because workers may feel unfairly treated and may resist government attempts to
compel them to accept a non-excludable good. A more effective means, argues Olson, is
offering selective incentives to those who join. Consider groups like the NRA who offer
magazine subscriptions or special events for its members. Olson does make very convincing
arguments about the difficulties in organizing people. Certainly, many people do not want to
invest resources into an effort that they will gain the benefit of regardless of their effort.

Olson’s work had a significant impact on interest group literature as it showed “how wrong
the pluralists were to ignore questions of mobilization and internal maintenance…creating a
whole set of research questions that the pluralists had wrongly taken for granted: how groups
mobilize and maintain themselves.” Before this work, the predominant topics of studies of
interest groups were done on lobbying in the legislature or bureaucracy and normative essays
on pluralism and groups. After 1965, the focus shifted to the topic of internal operations.
Olson’s work took the focus off of external activities of groups and placed it on the internal
dynamics of group membership and maintenance. Especially lost in this shift was the study of
lobbying.

His book also highlighted a critical flaw in the pluralist assumption that “all potential groups
would have an equal chance of participating in the pressure system. “ Smaller, business-
oriented groups were able to organize more easily than groups with many potential members
seeking only collective benefits. “Consumers would never rival producers as interest groups” as
the poor and disadvantaged would never be able to overcome the obstacles to mobilization.
(See Baumgartner and Leech, 1998, p. 64-73.)

State/Urban

1) Dahl (1961) Who Governs? - I sent out a rather lengthy summary of this book a while
ago. Let me know if you need it again.

2) Erikson et. al (1993) - The importance of public opinion in the determination of public
policy is the subject of considerable debate. Professors Erikson, Wright, and McIver
make the argument that state policies are highly responsive to public opinion, and they
show how the institutions of state politics work to achieve this high level of
responsiveness. They analyze state policies from the 1930s to the present, drawing from
and contributing to major lines of research on American politics. Their conclusions are
applied to central questions of democratic theory, and affirm the robust character of
state institutions.

In Statehouse Democracy, Erikson, Wright, and McIver analyze the linkage between the
ideological views of the general public and elites in each state and the policy outputs of the
legislature. Although this book is not primarily focused on the legislature, a careful reading of it
provides important insights about legislative elections, the role of parties in the legislature, and
the representative system. The book is important because it demonstrates the possibility of
making a major contribution to our understanding of state elections, legislatures, and policy-
making by undertaking a comparative study of nearly all the states (48 of them), using existing
data. Skillful use of opinion surveys and policy data enable Erikson, Wright, and Mclver to clarify
how and why states differ in policy making.

The authors use empirical data (“state ideological preferences” determined by 13-years of
cumulative surveys of CBS/NYTimes) to come up with their argument that X (mean ideology in a
state)  Y (mean policy output) and finding that, contrary to conventional scholarly wisdom,
state politics are responsive to state public opinion and that, for the most part, state political
outcomes correlate very strongly with state ideology. Bluntly put, “our conclusion reverses
that of much of the state policy literature of the past twenty years. State politics - elections,
legislatures, and executives in all their variations - do matter. State political structures appear
to do a good job of delivering more liberal policies to more liberal states and more conservative
policies to more conservative states. Across an impressive range of policies, public opinion
counts, and not just a little.”

The heart of the book is chapter 4, where the mean liberal-conservative self-identification
of citizens from each state (cleverly measured by the state-level aggregation of some 142,000
responses to CBS/New York Times random-digit-dialing telephone surveys conducted between
1976 and 1988) is related to the liberalism or conservatism of state policy (measured, ca. 1980,
as a composite of eight issues -- education spending, scope of Medicaid, scope of Aid to
Families with Dependent Children, consumer protection, criminal justice, legalized gambling,
Equal Rights Amendment ratification, and tax progressivity). Across states, the bivariate
correlation between public opinion and policy is a hefty .82, which rises, when measurement
error is corrected, to a remarkable .91 . Thus, they are able to make with conviction the claim
that “public opinion is the dominant influence on policy making in the American states." They
even note that “this result holds up in the face of controls for the socio-economic variables that
the state policy literature had insisted dominated the state policy process.” They argue that
such variables (wealth, education, urbanism), simply reflect the state’s public ideological taste
and make little statistical contribution.

This research is methodologically much more solid than the old representation-in-Congress
studies, with their dyadic focus and their poor measurement of district opinions. It outdoes
most national-level, over-time studies that are subject to causal inference nightmares of
spuriousness and/or reciprocal causation. This is state-of-the-art research. It has profound
(though not extensively discussed) implications for democratic theory. Even in the American
states-arguably the least representative of our political institutions-citizens' preferences
apparently have powerful effects upon policy.

The concluding chapter places their findings in the context of the behavioral literature on
democratic politics by placing it in the context of Campbell et al. (1960) whose The American
Voter book found that few Americans were motivated by policy issues or used the spatial map
of the Left-Right ideological continuum for political guidance. Rather they presented a mostly
non-ideological electorate that gave surprisingly little attention to the policy issues of the
campaign, voting mostly based on party identification and candidate personalities. They also
contrast their findings to those of Stokes and Miller (1996) who found woefully ill-informed
voters in congressional elections. Converse (1964) is also broached. There he argued that a
substantial portion of the public response to survey questions about political topics are “non-
attitudes.” Even updated research on the topic (Nie, Verba and Petrock, 1979; Knight, 1985)
suggests that ideology activates no more than a minority in even the most heated of
campaigns.

Questions remain: just because they have shown a link between public ideology and state
policy, does that mean the voters are voting in an informed manner? Or is it the case that they
are voting with ignorance like Campbell et al. (1960) point out: party ID and reactions to
candidates? Perhaps the politicians interpret this type of voting as an ideological display and
enact policy to match it. Also, would these findings “stretch” to federal elections, or is a
different behavioral phenomenon occurring between state and federal elections?

-JWD: see ch. 10 for a nice lit review and contextual analysis of this book vis-à-vis other, similar
research.

3) Hero (1998) - The distinctive thesis of Faces of Inequality is that a state's racial and
ethnic composition, as much as any other factor, shapes its political processes and
policies. To understand state politics, therefore, we must consider them from the
perspective of social diversity. Scholars have broadly acknowledged that racial and
ethnic diversity are central to American political history, but Rodney E. Hero is the first
to posit and systematically examine this diversity as essential to our understanding of
contemporary American politics.

In these pages, Hero regards race/ethnicity as an American "dilemma" whose importance

transcends state boundaries, yet whose impact upon U.S. politics varies widely. He classifies
states' social diversity patterns as homogenous, heterogeneous, or bifurcated, and
demonstrates how these patterns influence political tendencies. Social diversity, he finds, is
strongly related not only to political processes, but also to specific policies and outcomes, such
as educational policies, incarceration rates, and infant mortality. Hero's interpretation provides
a new way of looking at state politics, one that causes us to broadly rethink U.S. politics from
the standpoint of social diversity.

The author states at the outset that he perceives race/ethnicity as a defining

characteristic of US history and that he is seeking to make “our understanding of state politics
more complete by not only more clearly acknowledging, but by systematically incorporating,
social diversity” into the understanding of state politics. He argues that “social diversity has a
critical impact on state political processes and institutions, as well as on public polices, and it is
also evident at the sub-state level.” Hero calls for a “unifying, contextually based theoretical
framework” from which to approach his social diversity interpretation in order to address major
questions, issues, and puzzles of US state politics are to be considered. He puts forth the claim
that “mixtures or cleavages of various minority and/or racial/ethnic groups within a state - the
types and levels of social diversity or complexity - are critical in understanding the politics and
policy in the states.”

His main hypothesis is that “heterogeneous sates would tend to have more powerful
and/or professionalized legislatures and governors because the complexity associated with
heterogeneity necessitates government to manage that complexity and diversity.”

To buttress his argument, Hero systematically analyzes the relationship of state racial
and ethnic make-up to an umbrella of political features using simple state-level regression
analysis. Strength and formation of political parties, interest groups, state policies, and
institutions are found to be significantly related to state's race and ethnic composition. Further,
Hero finds that these variables give much more explanatory value to political outcomes at the
state level. He claims that knowing the social composition while analyzing state-level politics
adds a `face' to American politics. Social diversity disaggregates, contextualizes, and serves as a
core influence on and explanation of political phenomenon at the state-level.

He concludes that “overall, the evidence strongly supports the claims that social
diversity has significant implications for a variety of state policies, especially differential or
disaggregated policies.”

Of interest: -author notes: “Elazar’s *1966: American Federalism; 1972 2nd. ed.+ ‘political
culture’ idea is perhaps the most influential single perspective, and among the most wide-
ranging, in the study of state politics in the US.”
-*see ch. 2 for a "summary and overview of perspectives on state politics and policy"*

4) John Pelissero, Cities, Politics, and Policy: A Comparative Analysis (2003, Congressional
Quarterly Press).

As the large majority of the American population lives in an urban environment and
increasing numbers of minority groups and immigrants come to the US, new battles are being
fought over rights for women, gays, and various ethnic and racial groups - nowadays these civic
controversies are being hashed out in city politics as issues such as school choice, taxes,
abortion, and benefits for domestic partners are dealt with at the city level. The distribution of
political power in cities is shifting the policy outcomes in many urban areas and mayors and city
councils across the country are contributing to this shift. Our cities, argues Pelissero, once the
dependents of national and state governments, are now heavily interdependent and exist in a
complex intergovernmental environment. This edited volume presents current research in the
field of urban politics and shows how political participation in cities has changed over time.
The authors also give a preview of the research agenda for the next decade by offering new
avenues for empirical research and redefinitions of existing models as well as new research
agendas.
 Pelissero’s introductory chapter traces the study of urban politics from the 50s and 60s
where it was a debate over who had power to the 70s where cities were in a period of “crisis”
featuring rising crime and civil unrest. Many cities responded to this by opening their political
process to once marginailized minority groups and new relationships were forged between the
national and city governments to enhance the flow of federal money to help cities deal with
these issues. The 80s brought urban economic development while the 90s brought city growth
as they became centers for local businesses and tourism - many city governments “reinivented”
their sytle of governing to accommodate these changes. He argues that cities today are in a
strong position with more capacity to govern than ever. Problems still exist though, as the
federal government curtails its financial support and states mandate new rules for cities
without providing the funding for them.

Pelissero reproduces the Systems Model of Urban Politics (Easton, 1953) in which political
systems, like natural systems, are open to influences from their environment. This
environment is one in which “authoritative decision-makers” respond to inputs and transform
them into political and policy outputs. Pelisserio’s draws upon this model and theorizes that
“the urban political system is composed of inputs from the political environment that are
channeled into the political process…*this process+ is the essence of deciding the ‘authoritative
allocation of values.’ The result of the decision makers’ processing of inputs yields outputs”
which lead to outcomes that send information back to the government. “The process is best
viewed as a continuous stream of feedback to the environment that may result in the alteration
and creation of inputs that keep cycling in the system” (chart p. 4). He argues that our
fundamental knowledge of cities, politics, and policy has been formed by case study and survey
research and that the field has evolved from fairly normative prescriptions of what it was
believed cities ought to be at the turn of the 20 th century to valid social science theories of the
nature of urban politics.

Key findings from the book: city politics is no longer isolated and much of what city
governments do is influenced by public officials and institutions at higher levels of government;
citizen participation in city government is a “classic system input,” but the level of involvement
is lower among the disadvantaged and among racial minorities; today’s urban bureaucracies
(especially in N.E. industrial cities) are dominated by black leaders who must respond to the
newer Latino and Asian populations that have challenged the entrenched political system;
debates about who governs have been replaced by debates over how governance occurs and
power now depends on how relationships are structured in the community - power is now
found in organized governing coalitions and these arraignments are built through 1) defining
purposes and setting an agenda of congruent purposes, 2) mobilizing a complementary blend of
resources commensurate with that agenda, and 3) imbuing the effort with a sense of
feasibility.

Other findings: the study of comparative mayoral politics is difficult because of the
intricacies of their personalities and the differences in institutions governing their actions and is
best done by case study rather than in aggregate; research on city councils reveals a significant
degree of variation in their organization, elections, legislative roles and policymaking impact
which is mainly related to structural differences especially that of Mayor-Council Governments
vs. Council-Manager Governments as MCGs are larger, work more, and have more partisan
elections and CMGs are smaller and work in less partisan environments.

Also: Urban public education can now be considered as “accountability-based” politics

because the public, policymakers, and organized interests have increased their demands for
improvement in district-level governance and student performance.

Presidency

1) Barber - Presidential Character (2008)

This book focuses on the psychological characteristics of a president that are essential in
predicting how he will occupy his office. Barber argues that the presidency is a unique
American institution that has special sentimental feelings for Americans unlike Congress or the
Courts. The president is seen as our decisive leader and people feel a unique sense of
attachment to him. The President’s unique character, world view, and style all impact his
personality which shapes his executive behavior on presidential matters great and small. This
personality interacts with the national “climate of expectations” dominant during the time he
serves and the resonance (or lack thereof) of these two dynamics will shape the path his
presidency takes. Barber also argues that his character, world view, and style are all shaped at
an early age and that it is important to investigate those formative years when predicting his
actions.
Barber assumes four distinct presidential personality types that are defined according to
how active he is and whether or not he gives the impression that he enjoys his political life.

These four types are: 1) Active-Positive (adaptive: self-confident; flexible; creates

opportunities for action; enjoys the exercise of power, does not take himself too seriously;
optimistic; emphasizes the "rational mastery" of his environment; power used as a means to
achieve beneficial results; Kennedy, Ford, Obama(?); 2) Active-Negative (compulsive: power as
a means to self-realization; expends great energy on tasks but derives little joy; preoccupied
with whether he is failing or succeeding; low self-esteem; inclined to rigidity and pessimism;
highly driven; problem managing aggression; Johnson, Nixon); 3) Passive-Positive (compliant:
seek to be loved; easily manipulated; low self-esteem is overcome by ingratiating personality;
reacts rather than initiates; superficially optimistic; Reagan, Clinton); 4) Passive-Negative
(withdrawn: responds to a sense of duty; avoid power; low self-esteem compensated by service
to others; responds rather than initiates; avoids conflict and uncertainty; emphasizes principles
and procedures and an aversion to politicking; Washington, Eisenhower).
 2) Carter (1979) - He seeks here to offer prescriptive remedies for what he views is the
absence of a “traditional” approach to the study of presidential selection in the field of
political science on the whole. Ignored almost entirely in the literature on this topic,
argues Carter, is “the thought of America’s past statesman and political theorists.” This
is due mostly to the extra-Constitutional status of most aspects of the current selection
system, including popular elections, parties, conventions, and campaigns, which Carter
argues all “developed outside of, and largely in opposition to, the original Constitutional
design.” This has placed focus for studying presidential selection outside the thoughts
of the Framers and instead shifted focus onto “party historians,” who (at the time of this
writing) taught us that the selection system not so much an institution of conscious
design by the Framers but rather a search by politicians for the most effective way to
win power. Research on presidential selection has progressed unrestrained by any
classical conception of its purpose, creating a scholarly license that allows for too many
creative approaches to the subject. “The field lacks an approach that defines the basic
elements of the selection process, indicates the relationship among them, and
establishes criteria by which to judge proposals for change.”

Giving credit where it is due, Carter sets forth to examine the works of some of America's
leading statesmen (the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and Woodrow Wilson)
in order to integrate contemporary institutional analysis of the selection process with the
relevant themes of American political thought. He argues that changes in the nominating and
election processes, far from being simply tactical responses by practical politicians, were also
well thought out attempts to solve certain institutional problems, especially those involving the
control of political ambition, the relationship of president to party, and the maintenance of
regime legitimacy. In sum, it is Ceaser's contention that the ideas of farsighted politicians led to
overall strategies, while the subsequent "search for political advantage then provided the
immediate force for its enactment" (p. 219).

Carter’s final conclusions include a prescription for modern politics: “a call for the
reinstitution of strong electoral parties for the purposes or providing an informal check on the
president and restraining the leadership appeals of presidential aspirants.” The heart of his
recommendation is a case for stronger political parties to restrain executive authority. He
argues that parties can serve as a great check against executive as parties can act as
“intermediary power brokers” to negotiate with the incumbent or nominee and ensure he is
acting with the interests of the party in mind. Stronger parties would exert great influence over
the president, especially if he fears revocation of endorsement and loss of nomination. This
measure would be the best way, Carter argues, to ensure the five normative functions of a
sound presidential selection system are met: “minimize the harmful results of the pursuit of
power by ambitious contenders; help establish the proper kind of presidential leadership and
proper scope of executive power; help secure a competent executive; ensure a legitimate
accession, and provide for the proper degree of choice and change.”
 3) William Howell, Power Without Persuasion (2003)

Since the early 1960s, scholarly thinking on the power of U.S. presidents has rested on these
words: "Presidential power is the power to persuade." Power, in this formulation, is strictly
about bargaining and convincing other political actors to do things the president cannot
accomplish alone. Power without Persuasion argues otherwise. Focusing on presidents' ability
to act unilaterally, William Howell provides the most theoretically substantial and far-reaching
reevaluation of presidential power in many years. He argues that presidents regularly set
public policies over vocal objections by Congress, interest groups, and the bureaucracy.
Throughout U.S. history, going back to the Louisiana Purchase and the Emancipation
Proclamation, presidents have set landmark policies on their own. More recently, Roosevelt
interned Japanese Americans during World War II, Kennedy established the Peace Corps,
Johnson got affirmative action underway, Reagan greatly expanded the president's powers of
regulatory review, and Clinton extended protections to millions of acres of public lands. Since
September 11, Bush has created a new cabinet post and constructed a parallel judicial system
to try suspected terrorists.

Howell not only presents numerous new empirical findings but goes well beyond the
theoretical scope of previous studies. Drawing richly on game theory and the new
institutionalism, he examines the political conditions under which presidents can change policy
without congressional or judicial consent. Clearly written, Power without Persuasion asserts a
compelling new formulation of presidential power, one whose implications will resound.

Howell counters Neustadt’s (1991) argument that the president must rally other actors
to his side through the art of persuasion and bargaining in order to accomplish his goals.
Rather, the president achieves much of his agenda without the help of Congress, opting
instead to employ tools such as executive agreements and executive orders. In other words,
the president needs neither congressional nor judicial approval for his policies to be put in
place.

Howell describes this phenomenon in his “unilateral politics model.” This game-
theoretic model predicts that presidents will use unilateral action under two conditions. In the
first condition, when Congress is ready to enact sweeping legislation that the president
opposes, he can try and preempt Congress by taking unilateral action through moderate policy
shifts. In the second condition, when Congress is gridlocked, the president can act to get his
agenda implemented through unilateral action. However, the president’s power to do so is kept
in check by Congress and the courts.

Howell’s empirical testing of his model involves a dependent variable that the author
calls “significant executive orders,” executive orders that have either been mentioned in the
appendix of The Congressional Record or in the opinions of at least two federal court opinions.
The importance of executive orders may not be apparent until years later (Howell notes 15
years), so he stops his collection of data from these sources in 1985. To bring the time series up
to date, he uses the New York Times. If an executive order is mentioned in the New York Times
within one year of its issuance, it also was included. The author ultimately finds support for two
of his three hypotheses. Specifically, his regression analyses support his first hypothesis, that
the size of party majorities affects the number of significant executive orders, and his third
hypothesis, that a greater number of significant executive orders will be issued during times
of divided government than during unified government.

Howell presents an interesting way of looking at presidential power. Certainly, modern

presidents are in the position to use unilateral action more often and more effectively than
their predecessors, with the author presenting a model to predict when this will happen. The
author, however, does not recognize the role of players in the system outside the three
branches of government. Surely, public opinion, the media, and interest groups can either
enhance or limit the president’s use of his unilateral powers. The model does not account for
this. That said, this book does advance our understanding of how modern presidents govern
and the tools that he has at his command.

Power without Persuasion also draws attention to a divide between scholarly studies
and what in reality often takes place in the decision-making processes of the U.S. political
system. Howell shows how conventional accounts of presidential power focus on a president’s
skill, reputation, and ability to persuade and negotiate within a legislative body. Previous
studies have analyzed personal qualities of presidents and distinguish good from bad presidents
by their ability to negotiate with Congress. By so doing, they position the president on the
periphery of decision making: direct presidential power is limited to veto rights and bargaining.
Howell claims that in fact presidents can “effect policy change outside of a bargaining
framework” (13).

Here, then, lies the book’s strength: it does not simplify its argument by creating a
model that overemphasizes unilateral action; instead, it outlines flexible institutional
constraints that dynamically allocate freedom for unilateral action only in certain specific
circumstances. The book’s central part consists of an analysis of these constraints. A president
can often overcome congressional constraints because he has an informational advantage over
members of Congress: particularly in foreign and national security affairs, a president can
decide on policies based on intelligence available only to him, whereas the Congress, often left
in the dark, must scramble for pieces of information the president chooses to reveal. In the
domestic arena, transaction costs affect congressional power to challenge executive unilateral
decisions: because members of Congress represent a limited electorate, they must “always
weigh the attendant electoral cost and benefits” (108), limiting the potential of Congress as a
collective decision-making body to influence wide-ranging domestic policy issues. Howell’s
model shows how congressional constraints and direct presidential power run inversely
proportional: the more cohesive Congress is, the less power a president can exert; the more
fragmented Congress is, the more freedom a president holds for unilateral action. But Howell
does not limit his argument to a simplified, one-sided theoretical model: through large data
sets, he finds and discusses numerous exceptions and variations where congressional powers
can effectively limit direct presidential action. In budgetary matters, for example, Congress can
stop funding programs, or it can restrict the ways in which funds are allocated.
 A second constraint to presidential power is the courts. Parallel to the chapter on
Congress, Howell analyzes data from a wide range of past political decisions to show the
interdependence between the judicial and the executive branch. Because the judicial branch as
an institution has no executive power, it relies on the executive branch to ensure its authority.
Courts are, then, less likely to interfere with a president’s unilateral actions because their own
authority and legitimacy hinge on the executive branch—should a president ignore or fail to
execute a court’s order, the executive action would undermine the court’s judicial authority. As
Howell summarizes the courts’ quandary in dealing with and constraining direct presidential
action, “judges must pass sentence on the very individual charged with enforcing their rulings”
(173).

As convincing and complete as the model is, Howell outlines a variety of improvements and
shortcomings. While his model considers Congress and the courts as institutional constraints on
presidential action, other groups such as public and interest groups (to whom Congress
members often must pay attention) or autonomous bureaucratic agencies can play a major role
in regulating the processes of direct presidential action and need to be analyzed more closely.
In the end, Power without Persuasion has something to offer to politically interested
nonacademics as well as to academics in political science, rhetoric, and argumentation studies.
To the former, the book opens a window into the intricate processes of policy decision making
and into what takes place in real-world politics behind the often-idealized veil of legislative and
judicial checks and balances. To the latter, the book offers a new perspective on the
deliberative and rhetorical processes that underlie the political system of the United States,
and it offers avenues to explain policy changes that cannot be accounted for with
conventional accounts of presidential power.

4) Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink (1972)

According to Janis, groupthink stands for an excessive form of concurrence- seeking among
members of high prestige, tightly knit policy-making groups [defined p. 9: “a mode of thinking
that people engage in when they are deeply involved in cohesive in-group, when the
members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise
alternative courses of action”] . It is excessive to the extent that the group members have
come to value the group (and their being part of it) higher than anything else. This causes them
to strive for a quick and painless unanimity on the issues that the group has to confront. To
preserve the clubby atmosphere, group members suppress personal doubts, silence dissenters,
and follow the group leader's suggestions. They have a strong belief in the inherent morality of
the group, combined with a decidedly evil picture of the group's opponents. The results are
devastating: a distorted view of reality, excessive optimism producing hasty and reckless
policies, and a neglect of ethical issues. The combination of these deficiencies makes these
groups particularly vulnerable to initiate or sustain projects that turn out to be policy fiascoes.
Janis's work on groupthink is one of the best-known attempts to illuminate and explain political
decision-making processes using psychological concepts, theories and perspectives. As such it is
part of one among several distinct paradigms in the study of politics and policy analysis.
 Janis's work on groupthink has been one of the pioneering studies in this area. At the
time of its publication, it was rare in its broad interdisciplinary (social psychology, political
science, history) approach and its extensive use of comparable case studies outlining the
argument and developing and illustrating the theory. This methodology, as well as Janis's lucid
style, made it appeal to an unusually broad audience, including many political scientists and
international-relations analysis who were otherwise not inclined to consult psychological
studies employing strictly experimental methods. Later on, the book was also adopted by
students of organizational behavior and managerial decision-making.

The first part of the book focuses on four case studies of “major political fiascoes”
resulting from poor decisions made during the administrations of four US presidents: FDR
(failure to be prepared for Pearl Harbor attack); Truman (invasion of N. Korea); JFK (Bay of Pigs);
and LBJ (escalation of Vietnam War). “Each of these decisions was a group product, issuing
from a series of meetings from a small body of government officials and advisers who
constituted a cohesive group. In each instance, the members of the policy-making group made
incredibly gross miscalculations about both the practical and moral consequences of their
decisions.”

The book’s second part is a comparative analysis of two case studies of “well worked out
decisions made by similar groups whose members made realistic appraisals of the
consequences: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Truman administration’s evolution of the
Marhall Plan in 1948. “These two case studies indicate that policy-making groups do not always
suffer the adverse consequences of group processes, that the quality of the group’s decision-
making activities depends upon current conditions that influence the group atmosphere.” Janis
uses secondary sources (memoirs and published documents) to show how the cases can be
viewed as forming a “consistent psychological pattern in light of what is known about group
dynamics.”

Janis highlights the 6 main symptoms of groupthink that led to the afforemetioned
“fiascoes”: limited discussion of alternative courses; failure to reconsider the first course of
action in light of emerging risks and drawbacks; failure to reconsider courses initially deemed
unfavorable; little or no consultation with outside experts; selective bias in response to relevant
judgment from outside critics, media, or experts; and spending little time considering how the
policy might be hindered by such obstacles as bureaucratic inertia, political opponents, or other
possible snags.

Janis does admit that group think is not the only way to produce error and that in
certainly does not always lead to failure. Also, it is not his assertion that all cohesive groups
suffer from groupthink. His point is that “the more amiability and esprit de corps among the
members of a policy-making in-group, the greater is the danger that independent critical
thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing
actions directed against out-groups.”
 In order to prevent groupthink, offers Janis at the book’s end, it is important that a group
must have a fairly high degree of like-mindedness about basic values and mutual respect and
they must forgo “trying to score points in a power struggle or to obtain ego gratification by
deflating rivals.” Three main proposals include: the leader must ensure each member is a
“critical evaluator” who airs objections and doubts freely and without castigation and the
leader must respect such doubts; the leader should be impartial and not state policy
preferences when assigning decision-making tasks; and the organization should refer to several
independent policy-planning and evaluation groups to work on the same policy question.

5) Charles Jones, The Presidency in a Separated System (2005)

Media coverage and popular interpretations of American government typically concentrate

on the presidency. Observers often attribute the fortunes of an entire government to one
person or his small circle of advisers. Jones explains how too exclusive a focus on the
presidency distorts the picture of how national government really works. He explores how
presidents find their place in the permanent government and how they are "fitted in" by
others, most notably those on Capitol Hill. Powerful though it may be, the Oval Office is not the
source of all authority in government.

Jones examines the organizational, political, and procedural challenges facing presidents, as
well as the role of public approval. The author compares the post-World War II presidents and
identifies their strengths and weaknesses in working within a separated system of government.
He explains how (since Clinton) split-party control, differing partisan strategies, and our recent
"narrow-margin politics" have changed the Washington landscape, reshaping relations among
the branches of government. While most have heeded to Jones’s lessons, some ignore them in
favor of perpetuating unrealistic expectations of what presidents can do.

Drawing extensively on the work of others, Jones’s work seeks to explain rather than
investigate as he forges a new synthesis of previous work on the presidency as he argues that
“no single model (especially, the prevailing "presidency-centered, responsible-party
perspective," [p. xii]) is adequate to describe either the presidency or its place in the political
system. Instead, he urges that we look on the presidency as part of a system of appropriately
"separated institutions competing for shares of powers" and thus an intensely variable office (p.
207). One practical effect of such an approach is to reclassify divided government as one of
many flowers that the Constitution allows to bloom, rather than as a weed to be yanked out of
the garden.

The theme of variability in the presidency colors the organization, as well as the contents, of
The Presidency in a Separated System: "There have been ten post-World War II presidents, but
these ten have had many more presidencies" (p. 24) "Presidents will enter the White House
with variable personal, political, and policy advantages or resources," writes Jones. White
House and cabinet organization are "quite personal in nature." Public support is "an elusive
variable." "Lawmaking will vary substantially.... The challenge is to comprehend the variable
role of the president." And Universal reforms are discouraged by a Constitution that allows for
different types of governments." (pp. 24-25, 290). In the course of treating these topics, Jones
returns frequently and at great length to the experiences of every president from Truman to
Bush. There are mini-histories of the post-World War II presidency, presidents, and domestic
public policy imbedded in this book.

Jones takes clear aim at the "presidency-centered, party government perspective" and
proposes an alternative perspective showing that the presidency operates within a competitive
environment structured by a constitutional system of separated powers. Jones helps to widen
the lens of study within the American presidency literature beyond one focal point-the
president or the presidency-to a field that captures the complexities of governing within the
American system.

First, he explicates how under the American constitutional system separationalism and a
government of parties produce a functioning system despite the diffusion of responsibility. The
American system is best thought of as a government in which the principle of separationalism
"was designed as a means of governing, one that promotes competition, multiple legitimacies,
mixed representation, and institutional sharing of power" (23). Allowing the framework of the
Constitution to guide his study, Jones shows the persistent difficulties of governing in a
separated system. Although some political scientists may doubt that this system can produce
effective lawmaking, this study shows that lawmaking does take place.

Secondly, Jones seamlessly merges the presidencies of William J. Clinton and George W.
Bush into his comparative investigation of postwar presidencies. In this way, Jones reinforces
his original claim that despite the inefficiencies produced by a separated system lawmaking still
takes place, showing that the system does indeed work. Six legislative cases from the Clinton-
Bush era are added to the original 28 drawn from David Mayhew's examination of lawmaking
from 1946 to 1990. Applying examples of lawmaking under the Clinton and Bush
Administrations increases the contextual variation of the study, in turn enhancing our
understanding of the legislative connection between the presidency and Congress. Even during
a period of split-party government and narrow political margins, the cases of Clinton's omnibus
deficit reduction package, welfare reform, and a balanced budget amendment, along with
Bush's tax cuts, education reform, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security
help to show that business of lawmaking does not stop. Legislative stagnation is not inevitable
when governing in a separated system.

6) Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties (1993)

Milkis argues that FDR’s party leadership and his New Deal mark the product of efforts
begun in the Progressive Era to loosen the grip of partisan politics on the councils of power,
with a view to strengthen the national administrative agencies and extend the programmatic
commitments of the federal government. The party system featured a constitutional
arrangement that led to legislative supremacy and constraints on the president’s administrative
power. In order to weaken this and realize their goal of having a national political power with
expansive programmatic capabilities in the executive branch, progressives had to either weaken
or re-construct the party system.

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson started this trend as they both sought to use
the presidency as an office of national leadership and political and social reform, turning away
from traditional partisan organizations as vehicles for campaigning and shaping national policy.
They struggled against the constraints of party leadership and contributed to the rise of the
modern executive who would rely on the executive office and the national bureaucracy (rather
than the party) to fulfill political and governmental tasks. FDR’s long reign helped to institute
this shift from party politics to administrative politics by articulating a public philosophy and
overseeing institutional changes that ushered in an “administrative republic,” a polity in which
control over programs and policies of the national bureaucracy became a major part of modern
American politics.

Milkis traces the legacy of Roosevelt’s “revolution” through the presidency of George
H.W. Bush showing that executive branch use of the bureaucracy to effect public policy existed
regardless of the president’s party or philosophy. Parties became sidelined as modern
presidential power made them less important - they loss their identity as a collective
organization with a firm mission statement and instead became defined by presidential politics
and governance. The presidency grew stronger while parties and “valued representative
insiutions” that helped cultiave a connection between government and society were dwarfed
by the power executive figure. “The fragile state of modern executive leadership reflects the
frayed link between the government and society, a crisis of citizenship that represents the most
pressing challenge as America approaches the twenty-first century,” write Milkis.

The President and the Parties is the first text to examine closely the association between
the chief executive and the two-party system. Placing parties in a broad historical context and
shedding light on their connection to other parts of the American political system, Sidney Milkis
argues that, beginning with the New Deal, reforms intended to liberate the chief executive from
the shackles of partisan politics only weakened an already fragile relationship, isolating
presidents from what was once popular and institutional support from their parties. This
comprehensive analysis covers a broad range of issues and events, including FDR's 1938
"Purge" of the Democratic Party, The Executive Reorganization Act of 1939, the legacy of
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and the triumph of executive centralization during the Reagan
"Revolution." By providing a unique perspective on the elements of American government,
Milkis offers new insights into the decline of the party system and the process that fashioned a
stronger, more active national state, but one lacking in vital representative institutions capable
of common deliberation and choice. Placing the issue in contemporary perspective, he warns of
the challenges ahead for a nation struggling to repair its frayed connection between
government and people.
 7) Terry Moe, "The Politicized Presidency," in John Chubb and Paul Peterson, The New
Direction in American Politics (1985)

This chapter demonstrates how the administrative agencies and bureaucracies of the
presidency have shifted toward a more politicized nature due mainly to efforts by presidents to
streamline their policies and bypass the legislative process by appointing partisan loyalists to
jobs that were traditional held by neutral bureaucrats. This effort started with the Budget and
Accounting Act of 1921 which created the Bureau of Budget to ease executive communication
with Congress over budgetary issues. Later, FDR came into office with a dedication to
significant social change and used the Bureau to change the institutional suture of the executive
branch and start pushing his policies. Under FDR the bureau grew from 40 to 500 employees
and many of them were considered ideologically loyal in order to "promote political
responsiveness, change bureaucratic decision criteria from within, and facilitate the smooth
operation" of the executive branch.

Future presidents followed the lead of FDR in an effort to further take hold of the
administrative machinery of government and politicize administrative arrangements and
centralize policy-related concerns in the WH. Nixon and Regan especially continued the trend,
as frustrations with achieving policy goals led to attempting to achieve programmatic ends
through bureaucratic control. Both presidents wanted "partisans located deep within the
established democracy, even if expertise was lacking." Especially the OMB became the hub for
this politicization as Regan especially intertwined policy initiatives with budgetary strategy.

Moe also describes in detail some of the logic behind this shift in the institutional shape of
the executive branch. He notes that "individual choices create institutions, but institutions
condition individual choices," in his illustration of how presidents attempt to initiate changes to
inherited institutional arraignments they are unhappy with. However, the president is greatly
bound by a larger institutional structure that greatly limits what he can do and he is also limited
by time constraints: 4-8 years is not enough time to revamp the whole system and presidents
need the timely "responsive competence" of loyal bureaucrats as opposed to the "neutral
competence" of trained professionals. On top of public and political pressure, the president is
"burdened by expectations that far exceed his capacity for effective action, and he has strong
incentives to right the imbalances by reforming and elaborating the institutional presidency."
The desire to quickly enact policies and re-structure the institutions to fit his needs combined
with time and political pressures led to this politicization of the executive branch.