Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences · Presidential Power

Presidential Power

Item

Title: Presidential Power
Author: Howell, William G.
Research Area: Class, Status and Power
Topic: Political Power
Abstract: For the better part of 40 years, the study of presidential power was understood within a strictly bargaining framework—one that emphasized presidential dependence on other political actors to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own, and that recognized personal reputation and prestige as the keystones of presidential success. But in the past 15–20 years, the presidency field as a whole has undergone significant change. Scholars have begun to investigate a broader array of actions that presidents can take, many independently, to affect public policy; and the foundations for these actions do not depend, at least exclusively, on the particular endowments of the individual presidents who stand in office. In this short essay, I recognize a sampling of the most significant advancement in three areas of the study of presidential power: unilateral powers, the political control of the bureaucracy, and public appeals. I then underscore the importance of continued investments in theory building for the study of presidential power.
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Identifier: etrds0262
extracted text: Presidential Power
WILLIAM G. HOWELL

Abstract
For the better part of 40 years, the study of presidential power was understood within
a strictly bargaining framework—one that emphasized presidential dependence on
other political actors to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own,
and that recognized personal reputation and prestige as the keystones of presidential
success. But in the past 15–20 years, the presidency field as a whole has undergone
significant change. Scholars have begun to investigate a broader array of actions that
presidents can take, many independently, to affect public policy; and the foundations
for these actions do not depend, at least exclusively, on the particular endowments of
the individual presidents who stand in office. In this short essay, I recognize a sampling of the most significant advancement in three areas of the study of presidential
power: unilateral powers, the political control of the bureaucracy, and public appeals.
I then underscore the importance of continued investments in theory building for the
study of presidential power.

INTRODUCTION
When presidents exercise power, they materially alter the doings of government. Sometimes they do so by advancing policies that would otherwise be
stymied. Other times they do so by blocking actions that, left unperturbed,
would themselves change how policy is written or implemented. Other times
presidents exercise power by revising policies destined to pass but not in
the form others (legislators, judges, bureaucrats, the public) would have preferred. But in every instance, the same comparison demarks just how much
power is exercised: that between the state of the world with the president in
it and the one that would exist if he (someday she) were not.
Such is what presidential power is. But how presidential power is wielded,
the constellation of formal and information endowments that augment any
individual president’s power, and the conditions under which all presidents
wield more or less power, these are matters of some dispute. Fortunately, in
the past 15–20 years, scholars have made real strides investigating the various
sources, manifestations, and contributors of presidential power—drawing
on new methods of inquiry, to be sure, but also discerning new ways in
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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which presidents interact with those political actors who would intermittently check or enhance their power. After surveying the core arguments
that defined the field for nearly 40 years, I survey recent areas of scholarly
research that, to my mind, have contributed most to our understanding of
presidential power.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
During the latter half of the twentieth century, no scholar dominated the
study of the American presidency generally—and the issue of presidential
power especially—as did Richard Neustadt. In his 1960 classic, subsequently
updated and expanded twice (most recently in 1991), Neustadt set the terms
by which subsequent generations of scholars thought about the nation’s
highest office: the distinct challenge that the president faces; the possibility,
if only fleeting, for exercising power; and the means by which to do so.
For Neustadt, the modern American presidency is born of a basic contradiction. On the one hand, presidents must attend to an extraordinary tide
of public expectations. Indeed, “attend to” does not even begin to capture
the prerequisites of executive leadership since Franklin Delano Roosevelt
held office. Presidents must define and offer solutions to every conceivable
issue that is the legitimate subject of government action, from thwarting security threats abroad to offering solace to grieving citizens at home to pushing
for gun control legislation to reforming the nation’s health care systems to
embodying the aspirations, hopes, and moral character of the country. Nothing is beyond the president’s purview. And no single act, no collection of
reforms, can possibly sate the public’s appetite for presidential leadership.
The trouble, however, is that presidents are not endowed with nearly the
formal powers required to meet these expectations. Only fledgling and conditional powers—for example, that of appointing judges and bureaucrats,
subject to the Senate’s consent, or meeting foreign dignitaries—are explicitly
enumerated in Article II of the Constitution. Meanwhile, those provisions
that would seem to confer more substantial authority—for example, the take
care clause—are deeply ambiguous.
What, then, is a president to do? For Neustadt, the answer is clear. He must
persuade those political actors who have genuine power—legislators, who
write the laws; bureaucrats, who implement them; and judges, who interpret
them—to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own. Indeed,
for Neustadt, persuasion is not merely a means by which power might be
exercised. Persuasion is synonymous with power. “Presidential power is the
power to persuade,” he tells us. Power is about cajoling, pleading, beseeching, and ultimately convincing others that their interests and the president’s
interests are one and the same. It is about enlisting others to do the president’s

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bidding, to take actions and render changes that are beyond the president’s
purview.
How does the president persuade? Here again, Neustadt offers clear
counsel. Presidents must draw upon the individual skills, experiences, and
insights that they bring with them into office in order to enhance their
public prestige and reputation. Having cast the president’s predicament
in institutional terms, Neustadt delivers absolution in personal terms. The
presidents must cultivate an instinct for influence just as they project a sense
of mastery and control. For so doing, persuasive appeal will take hold,
legislators and bureaucrats will see fit to follow directions, and executive
power will, against all odds, be exercised.
The most immediate sign of Neustadt’s influence on the field of presidency studies was in its invocation to join the larger behavioral revolution
that was sweeping the discipline. In the decades that followed, scholars
posited skill, personality, style, and reputation as the essential ingredients
of persuasion and thus the keystones of presidential power (Barber, 1972;
George, 1974; Greenstein, 2000; Hargrove, 1966). An exalted reputation
within the Washington community and prestige among the general public
became the signature markers of presidential success. Power was contingent
upon persuasion; persuasion was a function of all the personal qualities
individual presidents bore; and so, the argument ran, what the presidency
was at any moment critically depended on who filled the office.
To be sure, scholarly attention did not remain permanently fixed on the
psychological and personal dimensions of presidential power. How could
it, when the most salient features of the modern presidency—the expanding
size of the executive branch, the proliferation of statutory law that intermittently constrained and expanded presidential authority, the formalization
of the president’s efforts to control the bureaucracy—were institutional in
nature? And so, by the century’s end, political scientists were once again
writing as much about the American presidency as about individual presidents. Rather than fixate on the idiosyncratic personal qualities of the men
who occupied the White House, scholars returned to the formal sources of
authority that preoccupied the generation of presidency scholars—men like
Edward Corwin and Clinton Rossiter—who preceded Richard Neustadt.
Still, even as the purely behavioral tendencies of presidency scholarship
waned, Neustadt’s influence could still be felt. Almost uniformly, empirically oriented institutional studies assessed presidents’ power by their ability
to drive through Congress a legislative agenda (Bond & Fleisher, 1990, 2000;
Goldsmith, 1974; Light, 1999; Peterson, 1990; Spitzer, 1993; Wayne, 1978). The
signature of strong presidents was a high legislative success rate in Congress,
of weak presidents, the sight of legislative proposals repeatedly dying in
committees and on floors.

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Like Neustadt, institutionally oriented scholars in the 1980s and 1990s
persistently equated presidential power if not exactly as persuasion then at
least as the ability to redirect political affairs in other stations of the federal
government. Scholars equated presidential power with an ability to bargain,
negotiate, change minds, turn votes, and drive legislative agendas through
Congress. The president, as such, continued to play second fiddle to the
people who make real policy decisions: committee members writing bills,
congressional representatives offering amendments, bureaucrats enforcing
laws, judges deciding cases.
When assessing the American presidency, Neustadt famously argued that
“weak” is the word with which to begin. And the growing body of institutional scholarship on the topic offered little reason to believe otherwise.
In this scholarship, presidents appear remarkable only because they are so
feeble. As represented in both the empirical and theoretical work on vetoes
(Cameron, 2000; McCarty, 1997), for example, presidents appear only slightly
more important than members of Congress who can credibly threaten to filibuster a bill. Rather than having to assemble a supermajority of 60 in the
Senate, enacting coalitions now must occasionally win the votes of 67. The
technical impact of the president within these models of lawmaking is to
replace the three-fifths cloture point with the two-thirds veto override player
as the veto pivot—not exactly the stuff of a modern, ascendant presidency.
AREAS OF CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Of late, the study of the American presidency has undergone tremendous
change. By Terry Moe’s account, nothing less than a “revolution” has taken
hold. As he puts it, “In just a few short years, a field mired in isolation and
traditionalism has been catapulted into a new scientific realm through a seismic shift in the scope, power, and analytical rigor of its theories—a shift that
has put an end to the era of inferiority, modernized and invigorated the way
the presidency is thought about, and integrated the field much more fully
and productively into the mainstream of political science” (2009, p. 702). As
Moe notes, much of the change involves matters of method, as the norms
and technologies of modern social scientific research take hold in a subfield
long versed on historical narratives and anecdote. More substantively,
however, the new wave of presidency research breaks from the Neustadtian
tradition by emphasizing the independent actions that presidents can take,
by exploring the formal ways in which they can remake their political and
policy universes, and by exercising power without obviously persuading
those political elites who stand in their way. More foundationally still, these
burgeoning literatures on unilateral action, public appeals, and bureaucratic
design—each described later—do not merely take the existence of Congress

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or the courts as given and then counsel presidents to turn inward and
elicit whatever skills and experiences might make them more persuasive.
Rather, in both the theory and empirical tests that these literatures advance,
dynamics between the various branches of government stand at the very
center of the analysis. And in this sense, the study of presidential power
becomes, quite appropriately, the study of political power writ large.
POLICY INFLUENCE BEYOND LEGISLATION
Recently, scholars have begun to take systematic account of the powers that
presidents wield outside of the legislative arena. Building on the insights of
legal scholars and political scientists who first recognized and wrote about
the president’s “unilateral” or “prerogative” powers (e.g., Fleishman & Aufses, 1976; Pious, 1991), scholars recently have built well-defined theories of
unilateral action and then assembled original data sets of executive orders,
executive agreements, proclamations, and other sorts of directives to test
them. In the past several years, fully six books have focused exclusively on
the president’s unilateral powers (Cooper, 2002; Howell, 2003; Krutz & Peake,
2011; Mayer, 2001; Shull, 2006; Warber, 2006), complemented by a bevy of articles focusing on policymaking in both the United States (e.g., Fine & Warber,
2012; Gordon, 2007; Howell, 2005; Howell & Lewis, 2002; Krause & Cohen,
2000; Krutz & Peake, 2006; Lewis, 2005; Marshall & Pacelle, 2005; Pious, 2007;
Rudalevige, 2012) and Latin America (Morgenstern, Polga-Hecimovich, &
Shair-Rosenfield, 2013; Negretto, 2004; Pereira, Power, & Rennó, 2005).
Collectively, the emerging literature on unilateral powers makes two main
contributions to our substantive understanding of presidential power. First,
and most obviously, it expands the scope of scholarly inquiry to account for
the broader array of mechanisms that presidents utilize to influence the content of public policy. Rather than struggling to convince individual members
of Congress to publicly endorse a bill and then cast sympathetic votes, presidents often can seize the initiative, issue new policies by fiat, and leave it
to others to revise the new political landscape. Rather than dally at the margins of the policy-making process, presidents regularly issue directives that
Congress, left to its own devices, would not enact. So doing, they manage to
leave a plain, although too often ignored, imprint on the corpus of law.
In addition, the literature highlights the ways in which adjoining branches
of government effectively check presidential power. After all, should the
president proceed without statutory or constitutional authority, the courts
stand to overturn his actions, just as Congress can amend them, cut funding
for their operations, or eliminate them outright. And in this regard, the
president’s relationship with Congress and the courts is very different from
the one described in the existing quantitative literature on the legislative

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

process. When unilateral powers are exercised, legislators, judges, and the
president do not work cooperatively to effect meaningful policy change.
Opportunities for change, in this instance, do not depend on the willingness
and capacity of different branches of government to coordinate with one
another. Instead, when presidents issue unilateral directives, they struggle
to protect the integrity of orders given and to undermine the efforts of
adjoining branches of government to amend or overturn actions already
taken.
Some of the more innovative quantitative work conducted on unilateral
powers highlights the differences between policies issued as laws versus
executive orders. In his study of administrative design, for instance, David
Lewis shows that modern agencies created through legislation tend to
live longer than those created by executive decree (Lewis, 2003). But what
presidents lose in terms of longevity they tend to gain back in terms of
control. By Lewis’s calculations, between 1946 and 1997, fully 67% of
administrative agencies created by executive order and 84% created by
departmental order were placed either within the Executive Office of the
President or the cabinet, as compared to only 57% of agencies created
legislatively. Independent boards and commissions, which further dilute
presidential control, governed only 13% of agencies created unilaterally, as
compared to 44% of those created through legislation. And 40% of agencies
created through legislation had some form of restrictions on the kinds of
appointments presidents can make, as compared to only 8% of agencies
created unilaterally.
In another study of the trade-offs between legislative and unilateral
strategies, I show that the institutional configurations that promote the
enactment of laws impede the production of executive orders, and vice
versa (Howell, 2003). Just as large and cohesive legislative majorities within
Congress facilitate the enactment of legislation, they create disincentives
for presidents to issue executive orders. Meanwhile, when gridlock prevails
in Congress, presidents have strong incentives to deploy their unilateral
powers, not least because their chance of building the coalitions needed to
pass laws is relatively small. The trade-offs observed between unilateral
and legislative policy making are hardly coincidental, for ultimately, it is the
checks that Congress and the courts place on the president that define his
capacity to change public policy by fiat.
Quantitative work on the president’s unilateral powers is beginning to take
systematic account for unilateral directives other than executive orders and
departmental reorganizations—most importantly, perhaps, those regarding
military operations conducted abroad. Just as previous scholarship examined
how different institutional configurations (divided government, the partisan
composition of Congress) affected the number of executive orders issued in

Presidential Power

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any given quarter or year, this research examines how such factors influence the number of military deployments that presidents initiate, the timing
of these deployments, and their duration (Howell & Pevehouse, 2005, 2007;
Kriner, 2009). Although still in its infancy, this research challenges presidency
scholars to take an even more expansive view of presidential power, while
also bridging long-needed connections with scholars in other fields who have
much to say about how, and when, heads of state wield authority.
PUBLIC APPEALS
Although presidents rely upon their unilateral powers as never before, on
many matters, they have no choice but to engage Congress. When doing
so, however, they need not bargain with individual legislators in the quiet
removes of the White House. Increasingly, in fact, the lines of communication between the two branches of government proceed rather circuitously
through, first, an increasingly fragmented media market, and then the larger
public, which may or may not relay the message to its intended target. Success, in this arrangement, may require persuasion. But neither the setting in
which persuasion now occurs nor the content of its constituent appeals are
especially well-documented in Neustadt’s rendering of executive politics.
In a hugely influential 1997 book, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential
Leadership, Samuel Kernell offered the first, full-throated explanation of
contemporary presidential appeals. To explain why presidents “go public,”
Kernell emphasized the transformation of the nation’s polity, beginning in
the early 1970s, from a system of “institutionalized” to “individualized”
pluralism. Under institutional pluralism, Kernell (1997) explained, “political
elites, and for the most part only elites, matter[ed]” (p. 12). Insulated
from public opinion, presidents had only to negotiate with a handful of
“protocoalition” leaders in Congress. But under the new individualized
pluralist system, opportunities for bargaining dwindled. The devolution
of power to subcommittees, the weakening of parties, and the profusion
of interest groups greatly expanded the number of political actors with
whom presidents would have to negotiate; and compounded with the rise
of divided government, such developments made compromise virtually
impossible. Facing an increasingly volatile and divisive political terrain,
Kernell argued, presidents have clear incentives to circumvent formal
political channels and speak directly to the people.
During the past decade a number of scholars, very much including Kernell
himself, have extended the analyses and insights found in Going Public. Two
areas of research have been especially prodigious. The first examines how
changes in the media environment, especially the rise of cable television,
have complicated the president’s efforts to reach his constituents (Baum &

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Kernell, 1999; Cohen, 2008; Groeling & Kernell, 1998). While presidents once
could count on the few existing television networks to broadcast their public
appeals to a broad cross-section of the American public, now they must navigate a highly competitive and diffuse media environment, one that caters
to the individual interests of an increasingly fickle citizenry. Hence, while
structural changes to the American polity in the 1970s may have encouraged
presidents to go public with greater frequency, more recent changes to the
media environment have limited the president’s ability to rally the public
behind a chosen cause.
It should not come as much of a surprise, then, that public appeals do
not always change the content of public opinion, which constitutes the second body of quantitative research spawned by Kernell’s work (Barrett, 2004;
Cohen, 1998; Edwards, 2003). Although it may raise the salience of particular issues, presidential speeches typically do not materially alter citizens’
views about particular policies, especially those that involve domestic issues.
Either because an increasingly narrow portion of the American public actually receives presidential appeals, or because these appeals are transmitted by
an increasingly critical and politicized media, or both, presidential endorsements of specific policies fail to resonate broadly.
Still, notes Brandice Canes-Wrone (2005), public appeals constitute a
good deal more than political theater. By increasing the salience of policies
that already enjoy broad-based support, Canes-Wrone argues, plebiscitary
presidents can pressure members of Congress to respond to the (otherwise
latent) preferences of their constituents. Further recognizing the limited
attention spans of average citizens and the diminishing returns of public
appeals, Canes-Wrone argues that presidents will only go public when
there are clear policy rewards associated with doing so. Then, by linking
presidential appeals to budgetary outlays over the past several decades,
Canes-Wrone shows how such appeals, under well-specified conditions,
augment presidential influence over public policy.
Finally, there is B. Dan Wood’s (2007) recent work, which illuminates
the cascading effects of presidential appeals. How presidents talk about
certain issues, Wood argues, does not only affect public and, by extension,
congressional opinion about the issue. Presidential rhetoric also bears on
the decisions that everyday citizens make in their lives. Focusing on issues
of economic leadership, Wood examines how presidential optimism and
confidence about the economy affect economic actors’ attitudes toward
taking risks. He shows that presidents, through economic rhetoric, can
produce tangible effects on consumer spending, business investment, and
interest rates. Presidents can also strengthen their own public approval
ratings by projecting strong images of economic leadership.

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POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE BUREAUCRACY
Beginning with a series of articles written by Terry Moe in the 1980s and
early 1990s (Moe, 1985, 1987, 1990; Moe & Wilson, 1994), scholars have recast
their attention to the ways in which presidents exercise influence not only
through appeals but also through administrative design. Moe observed that
in an increasingly volatile political world, one wherein opportunities to
effect change are fleeting, power is always contested, and opposing factions
stand mobilized at every turn, presidents and their immediate advisers
have a strong incentive to hunker down, formulate policy themselves, and
fill administrative agencies with people who can be counted on to do their
bidding faithfully. Neutral competence and bureaucratic independence,
Moe observed, does not always suit the president’s political needs. Rather
than rely on the expertise of a distant cadre of civil servants, presidents,
for reasons built into the design of a political system of separated powers,
have considerable cause to surround themselves with individuals who are
responsive, loyal, and like-minded.
In the years since, a number of influential books have built on Moe’s
insights. Andrew Rudalevige’s (2002) book, Managing the President’s program, systematically investigated the regularity with which presidents
centralized the policy-making process within the Executive Office of the
Presidency. Positing a “contingent theory of centralization,” Rudalevige
identified the basic trade-off that all presidents face when constructing a
legislative agenda: By relying on their closest advisers and staff, they can
be sure that policy will reflect their most important goals and principles;
but when policy is especially complex, the costs of assembling the needed
information to formulate policy can be astronomical. To demonstrate as
much, Rudalevige estimated a series of statistical models that predicted
where within the executive branch presidents turned to formulate different
policies. His findings are fascinating. Policies that involved multiple issues,
that presented new policy innovations, and that required the reorganization
of existing bureaucratic structures were more likely to be centralized; while
those that involved complex issues were less likely to be. For the most
part, the partisan leanings of an agency, divided government, and temporal
indicators appeared unrelated to the location of policy formation. Whether
presidents centralized, it would seem, varied from issue to issue, justifying
Rudalevige’s emphasis on “contingency.”
In addition to shifting responsibilities about the executive branch, presidents also can influence the bureaucracy by appointing individuals with
shared political convictions. The most significant empirical investigation of
this particular strategy lies with David Lewis’s (2008) book, The Politics of
Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance. The

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core of Lewis’s book is devoted to examining the particular conditions under
which politicization increases and decreases in different agencies, and the
consequences this has for their performance. Lewis shows that the number of
political appointees reliably increases when the presidency switches parties;
and that certain kinds of political appointees tend to rise as the preferences of
members of Congress and the president converge. In addition, Lewis demonstrates that agencies with higher numbers of political appointees consistently
receive performance evaluations, a finding that would appear to confirm the
longstanding concerns raised by public administration scholars about the
rise in politicization.
Finally, there is Sean Gailmard and John Patty’s (2012) book, Learning while
Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Although not
expressly about the president, per se, this book offers crucial insights into a
facet of presidential power that scholars have long assumed but only intermittently explained: policy expertise. Across three game theoretic models,
Gailmard and Patty identify three basic problems associated with information acquisition: the extraction of reliable information from an interest group;
the reliable transmittal of information from an executive agency to Congress
via the president; and the development of expertise within an agency. As
Gailmard and Patty demonstrate, however, the solution to any one of these
problems exacerbates the other two problems. Hence, for example, the creation of a civil service system that encourages bureaucrats to invest in expertise reduces the probability that the president will turn to this agency for
advice and the ability of this agency to extract information from a private
actor. As a result, they demonstrate, “learning while governing” is unavoidably haphazard and incomplete.
GOING FORWARD
I am reticent to say very much about future directions that presidency studies
might take. With so much new and innovative work under way, disciplinary
prognostications should cede way to disciplinary research. Progress should
materialize through actual research, not via central planning.
With some hesitation, then, I offer just one suggestion. Scholars who
are interested in making sense of executive power—indeed, of executive
politics—should invest just as many resources into the building of theory
as in the construction of data. Indeed, when first trying to make sense of
an emergent facet of presidential power, the need for theory may even take
precedent.
To see as much, consider the nascent empirical literature on signing statements, which presidents periodically issue to signal their views about a bill
they just signed into law. Much of this research relates trends in the issuance

Presidential Power

11

of signing statements with a familiar assembly of political covariates, for
example, divided government, public support for the president, and the
like. This is fine and well, as far as it goes. But it could go a good deal
further. It is not especially illuminating to assess the relative probabilities
that presidents will issue a signing statement during divided rather than
unified government—at least not without some underlying theory about
what presidents are trying to accomplish, and what constraints they face in
the endeavor, when they issue them. What we need, but still do not have,
is a robust body of theory that explains why a law that is accompanied
by a signing statement will be evaluated differently by either a bureaucrat
charged with implementing it or a judge charged with interpreting it. And
the reason we lack such theory, I worry, is partially due to a tendency among
presidency scholars—and here I very much include myself—to prioritize
issues of measurement over theory in the scholarly enterprise.
To make sense of signing statements, indeed, to make sense of executive
politics more generally, we need theory. And a lot more than is currently on
offer. We need models—formal and otherwise—that embed the president in
the larger system of separated and federated powers within which he must
work, that recognize the constraints presidents operate under and identify
ways in which presidents can manage them. To the graduate student thinking about writing on some facet of presidential power, I say this: Your first
move should not involve pulling up a spreadsheet and documenting patterns in presidential actions; rather, it should involve a lot of critical thinking,
theorizing, about what presidents stand to benefit from their usage at all.
REFERENCES
Barber, J. (1972). The presidential character: Predicting performance in the White House.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Barrett, A. (2004). Gone public: The impact of going public on presidential legislative
success. American Politics Research, 32, 332–70.
Baum, M., & Kernell, S. (1999). Has cable ended the golden age of presidential television? American Political Science Review, 93, 99–114.
Bond, J., & Fleisher, R. (1990). The president in the legislative arena. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bond, J., & Fleisher, R. (2000). Polarized politics: Congress and the president in a partisan
era. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.
Cameron, C. M. (2000). Veto bargaining: Presidents and the politics of negative power.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Canes-Wrone, B. (2005). Who leads whom?: Presidents, policy, and the public. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Cohen, J. (1998). Presidential responsiveness and public policy-making: The public and the
policies that presidents choose. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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Cohen, J. (2008). The presidency in the era of 24-hour news. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Cooper, P. J. (2002). By order of the president: The use and abuse of executive direct action.
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Edwards, G. (2003). On deaf ears: The limits of the bully pulpit. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Fine, J. A., & Warber, A. L. (2012). Circumventing adversity: Executive orders and
divided government. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 42, 256–274.
Fleishman, J., & Aufses, A. (1976). Law and orders: The problem of presidential legislation. Law and Contemporary Problems, 40, 1–46.
Gailmard, S., & Patty, J. (2012). Learning while governing: Expertise and accountability
in the executive branch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
George, A. (1974). Presidential personality and performance. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Goldsmith, W. (1974). The growth of presidential power. New York, NY: Chelsea House
Publishers.
Gordon, V. (2007). “The law”: Unilaterally shaping U.S. national security policy: The
role of national security directives. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 37, 349–367.
Greenstein, F. (2000). The presidential difference: Leadership style from FDR to Clinton.
New York, NY: Martin Kessler Books.
Groeling, T., & Kernell, S. (1998). Is network news coverage of the president biased?
Journal of Politics, 60, 1063–87.
Hargrove, E. C. (1966). Presidential leadership, personality and political style. New York,
NY: Macmillan.
Howell, W. G. (2003). Power without persuasion: The politics of direct presidential action.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Howell, W. G. (2005). Unilateral powers: A brief overview. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35, 417–39.
Howell, W. G., & Lewis, D. (2002). Agencies by presidential design. Journal of Politics,
64, 1095–1114.
Howell, W. G., & Pevehouse, J. (2005). Presidents, Congress, and the use of force.
International Organization, 59, 209–32.
Howell, W. G., & Pevehouse, J. (2007). While dangers gather: Congressional checks on
presidential war powers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kernell, S. (1997). Going public: New strategies of presidential leadership. Washington,
DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.
Krause, G., & Cohen, D. (2000). Opportunity, constraints, and the development of the
institutional presidency: The case of executive order issuance, 1939–1996. Journal
of Politics, 62, 88–114.
Kriner, D. (2009). Presidents, domestic politics and the international arena. In G. C.
Edwards III, & W. G. Howell (Eds.), Oxford handbook on the American presidency.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Krutz, G. S., & Peake, J. S. (2006). The changing nature of presidential policy making
on international agreements. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36, 391–409.

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Krutz, G. S., & Peake, J. S. (2011). Treaty politics and the rise of executive agreements:
International commitments in a system of shared powers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press.
Lewis, D. (2003). Presidents and the politics of agency design. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Lewis, D. (2005). Staffing alone: Unilateral action and the politicization of the executive office of the president, 1988–2004. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35, 496–514.
Lewis, D. (2008). The politics of presidential appointments: Political control and bureaucratic performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Light, P. C. (1999). The president’s agenda: Domestic policy choice from Kennedy to Clinton
(3rd ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Marshall, B., & Pacelle, R. (2005). Revisiting the two presidencies: The strategic use
of executive orders. American Politics Quarterly, 33, 81–105.
Mayer, K. (2001). With the stroke of a pen: Executive orders and presidential power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
McCarty, N. (1997). Presidential reputation and the veto. Economics and Politics, 9,
1–26.
Moe, T. (1985). The politicized presidency. In J. Chubb & P. Peterson (Eds.), The new
direction in American politics. Brookings Institution: Washington, DC.
Moe, T. (1987). An assessment of the positive theory of “congressional dominance”.
Legislative Studies Quarterly, 12, 475–520.
Moe, T. (1990). The politics of structural choices: Toward a theory of public bureaucracy. In O. Williamson (Ed.), Organization theory: From Chester Barnard to the present
and beyond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Moe, T. (2009). The revolution in presidential studies. Presidential Studies Quarterly,
39, 701–724.
Moe, T., & Wilson, S. (1994). Presidents and the politics of structure. Law and Contemporary Problems, 57, 1–44.
Morgenstern, S., Polga-Hecimovich, J., & Shair-Rosenfield, S. (2013). Tall, Grande, or
Venti but not short: Comparing Presidential powers in the United States and Latin
America. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 5(2), 37–70.
Negretto, G. L. (2004). Government capacities and policy making by decree in Latin
America. Comparative Political Studies, 37, 531–62.
Neustadt, R. E. (1991[1960]). Presidential power and the modern presidents. New York,
NY: Free Press.
Pereira, C., Power, T., & Rennó, L. (2005). Under what conditions do presidents resort
to decree power? Theory and evidence from the Brazilian case. Journal of Politics,
67, 178–200.
Peterson, M. (1990). Presidential power and the modern presidents. New York, Ny: Free
Press.
Pious, R. M. (1991). Prerogative power and the Reagan presidency. Political Science
Quarterly, 106, 499–510.
Pious, R. M. (2007). Inherent war and executive powers and prerogative politics. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 37, 66–84.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Rudalevige, A. (2002). Managing the president’s program: Presidential leadership and legislative policy formation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rudalevige, A. (2012). The contemporary presidency: Executive orders and presidential unilateralism. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 42, 138–160.
Shull, S. (2006). Policy by other means: Alternative adoption by presidents. College Station,
TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Spitzer, R. (1993). President and congress: Executive hegemony at the crossroads of American government. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Warber, A. (2006). Executive orders and the modern presidency: Legislating from the oval
office. New York, NY: Lynne Rienner.
Wayne, S. (1978). The legislative presidency. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Wood, B. D. (2007). The politics of economic leadership: The causes and consequences of
presidential rhetoric. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

FURTHER READING
Corwin, E. (1941). The President: Office and powers. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Howell, W. (2013). Thinking about the presidency: The primacy of power. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
McDonald, F. (1994). The American presidency: An intellectual history. Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas.
Neustadt, R. (1960). Presidential power: The politics of leadership. New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Skowronek, S. (1993). The politics Presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to George
Bush. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

WILLIAM G. HOWELL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
William G. Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at
Chicago Harris, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the
College, and a codirector of the Program on Political Institutions. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He currently is working on research projects
on Obama’s education initiatives, distributive politics, and the normative
foundations of executive power.
William recently published two books, one with coauthors Saul Jackman
and Jon Rogowski entitled The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the
Nationalizing Politics of Threat (University of Chicago Press, 2013); and the
other, with David Brent, entitled Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of
Power (Princeton University Press, 2013). He also is the coauthor (with Jon
Pevehouse) of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War
Powers (Princeton University Press, 2007); author of Power without Persuasion:

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15

The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton University Press, 2003);
coauthor (with Paul Peterson) of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban
Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002); coauthor (with John Coleman
and Ken Goldstein) of an introductory American politics textbook series;
and editor of additional volumes on the presidency and school boards. His
research also has appeared in numerous professional journals and edited
volumes.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, William taught in the government department at Harvard University and the political science department
at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, he received a PhD in political science
from Stanford University.
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WILLIAM G. HOWELL

Abstract
For the better part of 40 years, the study of presidential power was understood within
a strictly bargaining framework—one that emphasized presidential dependence on
other political actors to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own,
and that recognized personal reputation and prestige as the keystones of presidential
success. But in the past 15–20 years, the presidency field as a whole has undergone
significant change. Scholars have begun to investigate a broader array of actions that
presidents can take, many independently, to affect public policy; and the foundations
for these actions do not depend, at least exclusively, on the particular endowments of
the individual presidents who stand in office. In this short essay, I recognize a sampling of the most significant advancement in three areas of the study of presidential
power: unilateral powers, the political control of the bureaucracy, and public appeals.
I then underscore the importance of continued investments in theory building for the
study of presidential power.

INTRODUCTION
When presidents exercise power, they materially alter the doings of government. Sometimes they do so by advancing policies that would otherwise be
stymied. Other times they do so by blocking actions that, left unperturbed,
would themselves change how policy is written or implemented. Other times
presidents exercise power by revising policies destined to pass but not in
the form others (legislators, judges, bureaucrats, the public) would have preferred. But in every instance, the same comparison demarks just how much
power is exercised: that between the state of the world with the president in
it and the one that would exist if he (someday she) were not.
Such is what presidential power is. But how presidential power is wielded,
the constellation of formal and information endowments that augment any
individual president’s power, and the conditions under which all presidents
wield more or less power, these are matters of some dispute. Fortunately, in
the past 15–20 years, scholars have made real strides investigating the various
sources, manifestations, and contributors of presidential power—drawing
on new methods of inquiry, to be sure, but also discerning new ways in
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

which presidents interact with those political actors who would intermittently check or enhance their power. After surveying the core arguments
that defined the field for nearly 40 years, I survey recent areas of scholarly
research that, to my mind, have contributed most to our understanding of
presidential power.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
During the latter half of the twentieth century, no scholar dominated the
study of the American presidency generally—and the issue of presidential
power especially—as did Richard Neustadt. In his 1960 classic, subsequently
updated and expanded twice (most recently in 1991), Neustadt set the terms
by which subsequent generations of scholars thought about the nation’s
highest office: the distinct challenge that the president faces; the possibility,
if only fleeting, for exercising power; and the means by which to do so.
For Neustadt, the modern American presidency is born of a basic contradiction. On the one hand, presidents must attend to an extraordinary tide
of public expectations. Indeed, “attend to” does not even begin to capture
the prerequisites of executive leadership since Franklin Delano Roosevelt
held office. Presidents must define and offer solutions to every conceivable
issue that is the legitimate subject of government action, from thwarting security threats abroad to offering solace to grieving citizens at home to pushing
for gun control legislation to reforming the nation’s health care systems to
embodying the aspirations, hopes, and moral character of the country. Nothing is beyond the president’s purview. And no single act, no collection of
reforms, can possibly sate the public’s appetite for presidential leadership.
The trouble, however, is that presidents are not endowed with nearly the
formal powers required to meet these expectations. Only fledgling and conditional powers—for example, that of appointing judges and bureaucrats,
subject to the Senate’s consent, or meeting foreign dignitaries—are explicitly
enumerated in Article II of the Constitution. Meanwhile, those provisions
that would seem to confer more substantial authority—for example, the take
care clause—are deeply ambiguous.
What, then, is a president to do? For Neustadt, the answer is clear. He must
persuade those political actors who have genuine power—legislators, who
write the laws; bureaucrats, who implement them; and judges, who interpret
them—to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own. Indeed,
for Neustadt, persuasion is not merely a means by which power might be
exercised. Persuasion is synonymous with power. “Presidential power is the
power to persuade,” he tells us. Power is about cajoling, pleading, beseeching, and ultimately convincing others that their interests and the president’s
interests are one and the same. It is about enlisting others to do the president’s

Presidential Power

3

bidding, to take actions and render changes that are beyond the president’s
purview.
How does the president persuade? Here again, Neustadt offers clear
counsel. Presidents must draw upon the individual skills, experiences, and
insights that they bring with them into office in order to enhance their
public prestige and reputation. Having cast the president’s predicament
in institutional terms, Neustadt delivers absolution in personal terms. The
presidents must cultivate an instinct for influence just as they project a sense
of mastery and control. For so doing, persuasive appeal will take hold,
legislators and bureaucrats will see fit to follow directions, and executive
power will, against all odds, be exercised.
The most immediate sign of Neustadt’s influence on the field of presidency studies was in its invocation to join the larger behavioral revolution
that was sweeping the discipline. In the decades that followed, scholars
posited skill, personality, style, and reputation as the essential ingredients
of persuasion and thus the keystones of presidential power (Barber, 1972;
George, 1974; Greenstein, 2000; Hargrove, 1966). An exalted reputation
within the Washington community and prestige among the general public
became the signature markers of presidential success. Power was contingent
upon persuasion; persuasion was a function of all the personal qualities
individual presidents bore; and so, the argument ran, what the presidency
was at any moment critically depended on who filled the office.
To be sure, scholarly attention did not remain permanently fixed on the
psychological and personal dimensions of presidential power. How could
it, when the most salient features of the modern presidency—the expanding
size of the executive branch, the proliferation of statutory law that intermittently constrained and expanded presidential authority, the formalization
of the president’s efforts to control the bureaucracy—were institutional in
nature? And so, by the century’s end, political scientists were once again
writing as much about the American presidency as about individual presidents. Rather than fixate on the idiosyncratic personal qualities of the men
who occupied the White House, scholars returned to the formal sources of
authority that preoccupied the generation of presidency scholars—men like
Edward Corwin and Clinton Rossiter—who preceded Richard Neustadt.
Still, even as the purely behavioral tendencies of presidency scholarship
waned, Neustadt’s influence could still be felt. Almost uniformly, empirically oriented institutional studies assessed presidents’ power by their ability
to drive through Congress a legislative agenda (Bond & Fleisher, 1990, 2000;
Goldsmith, 1974; Light, 1999; Peterson, 1990; Spitzer, 1993; Wayne, 1978). The
signature of strong presidents was a high legislative success rate in Congress,
of weak presidents, the sight of legislative proposals repeatedly dying in
committees and on floors.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Like Neustadt, institutionally oriented scholars in the 1980s and 1990s
persistently equated presidential power if not exactly as persuasion then at
least as the ability to redirect political affairs in other stations of the federal
government. Scholars equated presidential power with an ability to bargain,
negotiate, change minds, turn votes, and drive legislative agendas through
Congress. The president, as such, continued to play second fiddle to the
people who make real policy decisions: committee members writing bills,
congressional representatives offering amendments, bureaucrats enforcing
laws, judges deciding cases.
When assessing the American presidency, Neustadt famously argued that
“weak” is the word with which to begin. And the growing body of institutional scholarship on the topic offered little reason to believe otherwise.
In this scholarship, presidents appear remarkable only because they are so
feeble. As represented in both the empirical and theoretical work on vetoes
(Cameron, 2000; McCarty, 1997), for example, presidents appear only slightly
more important than members of Congress who can credibly threaten to filibuster a bill. Rather than having to assemble a supermajority of 60 in the
Senate, enacting coalitions now must occasionally win the votes of 67. The
technical impact of the president within these models of lawmaking is to
replace the three-fifths cloture point with the two-thirds veto override player
as the veto pivot—not exactly the stuff of a modern, ascendant presidency.
AREAS OF CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Of late, the study of the American presidency has undergone tremendous
change. By Terry Moe’s account, nothing less than a “revolution” has taken
hold. As he puts it, “In just a few short years, a field mired in isolation and
traditionalism has been catapulted into a new scientific realm through a seismic shift in the scope, power, and analytical rigor of its theories—a shift that
has put an end to the era of inferiority, modernized and invigorated the way
the presidency is thought about, and integrated the field much more fully
and productively into the mainstream of political science” (2009, p. 702). As
Moe notes, much of the change involves matters of method, as the norms
and technologies of modern social scientific research take hold in a subfield
long versed on historical narratives and anecdote. More substantively,
however, the new wave of presidency research breaks from the Neustadtian
tradition by emphasizing the independent actions that presidents can take,
by exploring the formal ways in which they can remake their political and
policy universes, and by exercising power without obviously persuading
those political elites who stand in their way. More foundationally still, these
burgeoning literatures on unilateral action, public appeals, and bureaucratic
design—each described later—do not merely take the existence of Congress

Presidential Power

5

or the courts as given and then counsel presidents to turn inward and
elicit whatever skills and experiences might make them more persuasive.
Rather, in both the theory and empirical tests that these literatures advance,
dynamics between the various branches of government stand at the very
center of the analysis. And in this sense, the study of presidential power
becomes, quite appropriately, the study of political power writ large.
POLICY INFLUENCE BEYOND LEGISLATION
Recently, scholars have begun to take systematic account of the powers that
presidents wield outside of the legislative arena. Building on the insights of
legal scholars and political scientists who first recognized and wrote about
the president’s “unilateral” or “prerogative” powers (e.g., Fleishman & Aufses, 1976; Pious, 1991), scholars recently have built well-defined theories of
unilateral action and then assembled original data sets of executive orders,
executive agreements, proclamations, and other sorts of directives to test
them. In the past several years, fully six books have focused exclusively on
the president’s unilateral powers (Cooper, 2002; Howell, 2003; Krutz & Peake,
2011; Mayer, 2001; Shull, 2006; Warber, 2006), complemented by a bevy of articles focusing on policymaking in both the United States (e.g., Fine & Warber,
2012; Gordon, 2007; Howell, 2005; Howell & Lewis, 2002; Krause & Cohen,
2000; Krutz & Peake, 2006; Lewis, 2005; Marshall & Pacelle, 2005; Pious, 2007;
Rudalevige, 2012) and Latin America (Morgenstern, Polga-Hecimovich, &
Shair-Rosenfield, 2013; Negretto, 2004; Pereira, Power, & Rennó, 2005).
Collectively, the emerging literature on unilateral powers makes two main
contributions to our substantive understanding of presidential power. First,
and most obviously, it expands the scope of scholarly inquiry to account for
the broader array of mechanisms that presidents utilize to influence the content of public policy. Rather than struggling to convince individual members
of Congress to publicly endorse a bill and then cast sympathetic votes, presidents often can seize the initiative, issue new policies by fiat, and leave it
to others to revise the new political landscape. Rather than dally at the margins of the policy-making process, presidents regularly issue directives that
Congress, left to its own devices, would not enact. So doing, they manage to
leave a plain, although too often ignored, imprint on the corpus of law.
In addition, the literature highlights the ways in which adjoining branches
of government effectively check presidential power. After all, should the
president proceed without statutory or constitutional authority, the courts
stand to overturn his actions, just as Congress can amend them, cut funding
for their operations, or eliminate them outright. And in this regard, the
president’s relationship with Congress and the courts is very different from
the one described in the existing quantitative literature on the legislative

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

process. When unilateral powers are exercised, legislators, judges, and the
president do not work cooperatively to effect meaningful policy change.
Opportunities for change, in this instance, do not depend on the willingness
and capacity of different branches of government to coordinate with one
another. Instead, when presidents issue unilateral directives, they struggle
to protect the integrity of orders given and to undermine the efforts of
adjoining branches of government to amend or overturn actions already
taken.
Some of the more innovative quantitative work conducted on unilateral
powers highlights the differences between policies issued as laws versus
executive orders. In his study of administrative design, for instance, David
Lewis shows that modern agencies created through legislation tend to
live longer than those created by executive decree (Lewis, 2003). But what
presidents lose in terms of longevity they tend to gain back in terms of
control. By Lewis’s calculations, between 1946 and 1997, fully 67% of
administrative agencies created by executive order and 84% created by
departmental order were placed either within the Executive Office of the
President or the cabinet, as compared to only 57% of agencies created
legislatively. Independent boards and commissions, which further dilute
presidential control, governed only 13% of agencies created unilaterally, as
compared to 44% of those created through legislation. And 40% of agencies
created through legislation had some form of restrictions on the kinds of
appointments presidents can make, as compared to only 8% of agencies
created unilaterally.
In another study of the trade-offs between legislative and unilateral
strategies, I show that the institutional configurations that promote the
enactment of laws impede the production of executive orders, and vice
versa (Howell, 2003). Just as large and cohesive legislative majorities within
Congress facilitate the enactment of legislation, they create disincentives
for presidents to issue executive orders. Meanwhile, when gridlock prevails
in Congress, presidents have strong incentives to deploy their unilateral
powers, not least because their chance of building the coalitions needed to
pass laws is relatively small. The trade-offs observed between unilateral
and legislative policy making are hardly coincidental, for ultimately, it is the
checks that Congress and the courts place on the president that define his
capacity to change public policy by fiat.
Quantitative work on the president’s unilateral powers is beginning to take
systematic account for unilateral directives other than executive orders and
departmental reorganizations—most importantly, perhaps, those regarding
military operations conducted abroad. Just as previous scholarship examined
how different institutional configurations (divided government, the partisan
composition of Congress) affected the number of executive orders issued in

Presidential Power

7

any given quarter or year, this research examines how such factors influence the number of military deployments that presidents initiate, the timing
of these deployments, and their duration (Howell & Pevehouse, 2005, 2007;
Kriner, 2009). Although still in its infancy, this research challenges presidency
scholars to take an even more expansive view of presidential power, while
also bridging long-needed connections with scholars in other fields who have
much to say about how, and when, heads of state wield authority.
PUBLIC APPEALS
Although presidents rely upon their unilateral powers as never before, on
many matters, they have no choice but to engage Congress. When doing
so, however, they need not bargain with individual legislators in the quiet
removes of the White House. Increasingly, in fact, the lines of communication between the two branches of government proceed rather circuitously
through, first, an increasingly fragmented media market, and then the larger
public, which may or may not relay the message to its intended target. Success, in this arrangement, may require persuasion. But neither the setting in
which persuasion now occurs nor the content of its constituent appeals are
especially well-documented in Neustadt’s rendering of executive politics.
In a hugely influential 1997 book, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential
Leadership, Samuel Kernell offered the first, full-throated explanation of
contemporary presidential appeals. To explain why presidents “go public,”
Kernell emphasized the transformation of the nation’s polity, beginning in
the early 1970s, from a system of “institutionalized” to “individualized”
pluralism. Under institutional pluralism, Kernell (1997) explained, “political
elites, and for the most part only elites, matter[ed]” (p. 12). Insulated
from public opinion, presidents had only to negotiate with a handful of
“protocoalition” leaders in Congress. But under the new individualized
pluralist system, opportunities for bargaining dwindled. The devolution
of power to subcommittees, the weakening of parties, and the profusion
of interest groups greatly expanded the number of political actors with
whom presidents would have to negotiate; and compounded with the rise
of divided government, such developments made compromise virtually
impossible. Facing an increasingly volatile and divisive political terrain,
Kernell argued, presidents have clear incentives to circumvent formal
political channels and speak directly to the people.
During the past decade a number of scholars, very much including Kernell
himself, have extended the analyses and insights found in Going Public. Two
areas of research have been especially prodigious. The first examines how
changes in the media environment, especially the rise of cable television,
have complicated the president’s efforts to reach his constituents (Baum &

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Kernell, 1999; Cohen, 2008; Groeling & Kernell, 1998). While presidents once
could count on the few existing television networks to broadcast their public
appeals to a broad cross-section of the American public, now they must navigate a highly competitive and diffuse media environment, one that caters
to the individual interests of an increasingly fickle citizenry. Hence, while
structural changes to the American polity in the 1970s may have encouraged
presidents to go public with greater frequency, more recent changes to the
media environment have limited the president’s ability to rally the public
behind a chosen cause.
It should not come as much of a surprise, then, that public appeals do
not always change the content of public opinion, which constitutes the second body of quantitative research spawned by Kernell’s work (Barrett, 2004;
Cohen, 1998; Edwards, 2003). Although it may raise the salience of particular issues, presidential speeches typically do not materially alter citizens’
views about particular policies, especially those that involve domestic issues.
Either because an increasingly narrow portion of the American public actually receives presidential appeals, or because these appeals are transmitted by
an increasingly critical and politicized media, or both, presidential endorsements of specific policies fail to resonate broadly.
Still, notes Brandice Canes-Wrone (2005), public appeals constitute a
good deal more than political theater. By increasing the salience of policies
that already enjoy broad-based support, Canes-Wrone argues, plebiscitary
presidents can pressure members of Congress to respond to the (otherwise
latent) preferences of their constituents. Further recognizing the limited
attention spans of average citizens and the diminishing returns of public
appeals, Canes-Wrone argues that presidents will only go public when
there are clear policy rewards associated with doing so. Then, by linking
presidential appeals to budgetary outlays over the past several decades,
Canes-Wrone shows how such appeals, under well-specified conditions,
augment presidential influence over public policy.
Finally, there is B. Dan Wood’s (2007) recent work, which illuminates
the cascading effects of presidential appeals. How presidents talk about
certain issues, Wood argues, does not only affect public and, by extension,
congressional opinion about the issue. Presidential rhetoric also bears on
the decisions that everyday citizens make in their lives. Focusing on issues
of economic leadership, Wood examines how presidential optimism and
confidence about the economy affect economic actors’ attitudes toward
taking risks. He shows that presidents, through economic rhetoric, can
produce tangible effects on consumer spending, business investment, and
interest rates. Presidents can also strengthen their own public approval
ratings by projecting strong images of economic leadership.

Presidential Power

9

POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE BUREAUCRACY
Beginning with a series of articles written by Terry Moe in the 1980s and
early 1990s (Moe, 1985, 1987, 1990; Moe & Wilson, 1994), scholars have recast
their attention to the ways in which presidents exercise influence not only
through appeals but also through administrative design. Moe observed that
in an increasingly volatile political world, one wherein opportunities to
effect change are fleeting, power is always contested, and opposing factions
stand mobilized at every turn, presidents and their immediate advisers
have a strong incentive to hunker down, formulate policy themselves, and
fill administrative agencies with people who can be counted on to do their
bidding faithfully. Neutral competence and bureaucratic independence,
Moe observed, does not always suit the president’s political needs. Rather
than rely on the expertise of a distant cadre of civil servants, presidents,
for reasons built into the design of a political system of separated powers,
have considerable cause to surround themselves with individuals who are
responsive, loyal, and like-minded.
In the years since, a number of influential books have built on Moe’s
insights. Andrew Rudalevige’s (2002) book, Managing the President’s program, systematically investigated the regularity with which presidents
centralized the policy-making process within the Executive Office of the
Presidency. Positing a “contingent theory of centralization,” Rudalevige
identified the basic trade-off that all presidents face when constructing a
legislative agenda: By relying on their closest advisers and staff, they can
be sure that policy will reflect their most important goals and principles;
but when policy is especially complex, the costs of assembling the needed
information to formulate policy can be astronomical. To demonstrate as
much, Rudalevige estimated a series of statistical models that predicted
where within the executive branch presidents turned to formulate different
policies. His findings are fascinating. Policies that involved multiple issues,
that presented new policy innovations, and that required the reorganization
of existing bureaucratic structures were more likely to be centralized; while
those that involved complex issues were less likely to be. For the most
part, the partisan leanings of an agency, divided government, and temporal
indicators appeared unrelated to the location of policy formation. Whether
presidents centralized, it would seem, varied from issue to issue, justifying
Rudalevige’s emphasis on “contingency.”
In addition to shifting responsibilities about the executive branch, presidents also can influence the bureaucracy by appointing individuals with
shared political convictions. The most significant empirical investigation of
this particular strategy lies with David Lewis’s (2008) book, The Politics of
Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance. The

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

core of Lewis’s book is devoted to examining the particular conditions under
which politicization increases and decreases in different agencies, and the
consequences this has for their performance. Lewis shows that the number of
political appointees reliably increases when the presidency switches parties;
and that certain kinds of political appointees tend to rise as the preferences of
members of Congress and the president converge. In addition, Lewis demonstrates that agencies with higher numbers of political appointees consistently
receive performance evaluations, a finding that would appear to confirm the
longstanding concerns raised by public administration scholars about the
rise in politicization.
Finally, there is Sean Gailmard and John Patty’s (2012) book, Learning while
Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Although not
expressly about the president, per se, this book offers crucial insights into a
facet of presidential power that scholars have long assumed but only intermittently explained: policy expertise. Across three game theoretic models,
Gailmard and Patty identify three basic problems associated with information acquisition: the extraction of reliable information from an interest group;
the reliable transmittal of information from an executive agency to Congress
via the president; and the development of expertise within an agency. As
Gailmard and Patty demonstrate, however, the solution to any one of these
problems exacerbates the other two problems. Hence, for example, the creation of a civil service system that encourages bureaucrats to invest in expertise reduces the probability that the president will turn to this agency for
advice and the ability of this agency to extract information from a private
actor. As a result, they demonstrate, “learning while governing” is unavoidably haphazard and incomplete.
GOING FORWARD
I am reticent to say very much about future directions that presidency studies
might take. With so much new and innovative work under way, disciplinary
prognostications should cede way to disciplinary research. Progress should
materialize through actual research, not via central planning.
With some hesitation, then, I offer just one suggestion. Scholars who
are interested in making sense of executive power—indeed, of executive
politics—should invest just as many resources into the building of theory
as in the construction of data. Indeed, when first trying to make sense of
an emergent facet of presidential power, the need for theory may even take
precedent.
To see as much, consider the nascent empirical literature on signing statements, which presidents periodically issue to signal their views about a bill
they just signed into law. Much of this research relates trends in the issuance

Presidential Power

11

of signing statements with a familiar assembly of political covariates, for
example, divided government, public support for the president, and the
like. This is fine and well, as far as it goes. But it could go a good deal
further. It is not especially illuminating to assess the relative probabilities
that presidents will issue a signing statement during divided rather than
unified government—at least not without some underlying theory about
what presidents are trying to accomplish, and what constraints they face in
the endeavor, when they issue them. What we need, but still do not have,
is a robust body of theory that explains why a law that is accompanied
by a signing statement will be evaluated differently by either a bureaucrat
charged with implementing it or a judge charged with interpreting it. And
the reason we lack such theory, I worry, is partially due to a tendency among
presidency scholars—and here I very much include myself—to prioritize
issues of measurement over theory in the scholarly enterprise.
To make sense of signing statements, indeed, to make sense of executive
politics more generally, we need theory. And a lot more than is currently on
offer. We need models—formal and otherwise—that embed the president in
the larger system of separated and federated powers within which he must
work, that recognize the constraints presidents operate under and identify
ways in which presidents can manage them. To the graduate student thinking about writing on some facet of presidential power, I say this: Your first
move should not involve pulling up a spreadsheet and documenting patterns in presidential actions; rather, it should involve a lot of critical thinking,
theorizing, about what presidents stand to benefit from their usage at all.
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Cohen, J. (2008). The presidency in the era of 24-hour news. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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Edwards, G. (2003). On deaf ears: The limits of the bully pulpit. New Haven, CT: Yale
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Greenstein, F. (2000). The presidential difference: Leadership style from FDR to Clinton.
New York, NY: Martin Kessler Books.
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NY: Macmillan.
Howell, W. G. (2003). Power without persuasion: The politics of direct presidential action.
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Howell, W. G. (2005). Unilateral powers: A brief overview. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35, 417–39.
Howell, W. G., & Lewis, D. (2002). Agencies by presidential design. Journal of Politics,
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Howell, W. G., & Pevehouse, J. (2005). Presidents, Congress, and the use of force.
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Howell, W. G., & Pevehouse, J. (2007). While dangers gather: Congressional checks on
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Kernell, S. (1997). Going public: New strategies of presidential leadership. Washington,
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Krutz, G. S., & Peake, J. S. (2006). The changing nature of presidential policy making
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Krutz, G. S., & Peake, J. S. (2011). Treaty politics and the rise of executive agreements:
International commitments in a system of shared powers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
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Morgenstern, S., Polga-Hecimovich, J., & Shair-Rosenfield, S. (2013). Tall, Grande, or
Venti but not short: Comparing Presidential powers in the United States and Latin
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Negretto, G. L. (2004). Government capacities and policy making by decree in Latin
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Pious, R. M. (2007). Inherent war and executive powers and prerogative politics. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 37, 66–84.

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Rudalevige, A. (2002). Managing the president’s program: Presidential leadership and legislative policy formation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rudalevige, A. (2012). The contemporary presidency: Executive orders and presidential unilateralism. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 42, 138–160.
Shull, S. (2006). Policy by other means: Alternative adoption by presidents. College Station,
TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Spitzer, R. (1993). President and congress: Executive hegemony at the crossroads of American government. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Warber, A. (2006). Executive orders and the modern presidency: Legislating from the oval
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Wood, B. D. (2007). The politics of economic leadership: The causes and consequences of
presidential rhetoric. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

FURTHER READING
Corwin, E. (1941). The President: Office and powers. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Howell, W. (2013). Thinking about the presidency: The primacy of power. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
McDonald, F. (1994). The American presidency: An intellectual history. Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas.
Neustadt, R. (1960). Presidential power: The politics of leadership. New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Skowronek, S. (1993). The politics Presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to George
Bush. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

WILLIAM G. HOWELL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
William G. Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at
Chicago Harris, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the
College, and a codirector of the Program on Political Institutions. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He currently is working on research projects
on Obama’s education initiatives, distributive politics, and the normative
foundations of executive power.
William recently published two books, one with coauthors Saul Jackman
and Jon Rogowski entitled The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the
Nationalizing Politics of Threat (University of Chicago Press, 2013); and the
other, with David Brent, entitled Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of
Power (Princeton University Press, 2013). He also is the coauthor (with Jon
Pevehouse) of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War
Powers (Princeton University Press, 2007); author of Power without Persuasion:

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15

The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton University Press, 2003);
coauthor (with Paul Peterson) of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban
Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002); coauthor (with John Coleman
and Ken Goldstein) of an introductory American politics textbook series;
and editor of additional volumes on the presidency and school boards. His
research also has appeared in numerous professional journals and edited
volumes.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, William taught in the government department at Harvard University and the political science department
at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, he received a PhD in political science
from Stanford University.
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Participatory Governance (Political Science), Stephanie L. McNulty and Brian
Wampler
Rationing of Health Care (Sociology), David Mechanic
Money in Politics (Political Science), Jeffrey Milyo
Politics of Immigration Policy (Political Science), Jeannette Money
Why Do Governments Abuse Human Rights? (Political Science), Will H.
Moore and Ryan M. Welch
Natural Resources and Development (Political Science), Kevin M. Morrison
Cultural Conflict (Sociology), Ian Mullins
Economics of Renewable Energy Production (Economics), Gregory F. Nemet
Intervention and Regime Change (Political Science), John M. Owen IV and
Roger G. Herbert Jr.
World Trade Organization and Judicial Enforcement of International Trade
Law (Political Science), Krzysztof J. Pelc
The New Political Economy of Colonialism (Political Science), Thomas B.
Pepinsky
Migration and Globalization (Political Science), Margaret E. Peters
Evolutionary Theory and Political Behavior (Political Science), Michael Bang
Petersen and Lene Aarøe
The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective (Sociology), Jill Quadagno et al.
The Politics of Disaster Relief (Political Science), Alexander J. Oliver and
Andrew Reeves
Sociology of Entrepreneurship (Sociology), Martin Ruef

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Education in an Open Informational World (Educ), Marlene Scardamalia
and Carl Bereiter
Electoral Authoritarianism (Political Science), Andreas Schedler
US Union and Workers’ Movements, Past and Future (Sociology), Daniel
Schneider and Judith Stepan-Norris
War and Social Movements (Political Science), Sidney Tarrow
Leadership (Anthropology), Adrienne Tecza and Dominic Johnson
Creativity in Teams (Psychology), Leigh L. Thompson and Elizabeth Ruth
Wilson
Trends in the Analysis of Interstate Rivalries (Political Science), William R.
Thompson
The Social Science of Sustainability (Political Science), Johannes Urpelainen
Information Politics in Dictatorships (Political Science), Jeremy L. Wallace
Trends in the Analysis of Interstate Rivalries (Political Science), William R.
Thompson
Constitutionalism (Political Science), Keith E. Whittington
Recent Demographic Trends and the Family (Sociology), Lawrence L. Wu

Presidential Power
WILLIAM G. HOWELL

Abstract
For the better part of 40 years, the study of presidential power was understood within
a strictly bargaining framework—one that emphasized presidential dependence on
other political actors to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own,
and that recognized personal reputation and prestige as the keystones of presidential
success. But in the past 15–20 years, the presidency field as a whole has undergone
significant change. Scholars have begun to investigate a broader array of actions that
presidents can take, many independently, to affect public policy; and the foundations
for these actions do not depend, at least exclusively, on the particular endowments of
the individual presidents who stand in office. In this short essay, I recognize a sampling of the most significant advancement in three areas of the study of presidential
power: unilateral powers, the political control of the bureaucracy, and public appeals.
I then underscore the importance of continued investments in theory building for the
study of presidential power.

INTRODUCTION
When presidents exercise power, they materially alter the doings of government. Sometimes they do so by advancing policies that would otherwise be
stymied. Other times they do so by blocking actions that, left unperturbed,
would themselves change how policy is written or implemented. Other times
presidents exercise power by revising policies destined to pass but not in
the form others (legislators, judges, bureaucrats, the public) would have preferred. But in every instance, the same comparison demarks just how much
power is exercised: that between the state of the world with the president in
it and the one that would exist if he (someday she) were not.
Such is what presidential power is. But how presidential power is wielded,
the constellation of formal and information endowments that augment any
individual president’s power, and the conditions under which all presidents
wield more or less power, these are matters of some dispute. Fortunately, in
the past 15–20 years, scholars have made real strides investigating the various
sources, manifestations, and contributors of presidential power—drawing
on new methods of inquiry, to be sure, but also discerning new ways in
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

which presidents interact with those political actors who would intermittently check or enhance their power. After surveying the core arguments
that defined the field for nearly 40 years, I survey recent areas of scholarly
research that, to my mind, have contributed most to our understanding of
presidential power.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
During the latter half of the twentieth century, no scholar dominated the
study of the American presidency generally—and the issue of presidential
power especially—as did Richard Neustadt. In his 1960 classic, subsequently
updated and expanded twice (most recently in 1991), Neustadt set the terms
by which subsequent generations of scholars thought about the nation’s
highest office: the distinct challenge that the president faces; the possibility,
if only fleeting, for exercising power; and the means by which to do so.
For Neustadt, the modern American presidency is born of a basic contradiction. On the one hand, presidents must attend to an extraordinary tide
of public expectations. Indeed, “attend to” does not even begin to capture
the prerequisites of executive leadership since Franklin Delano Roosevelt
held office. Presidents must define and offer solutions to every conceivable
issue that is the legitimate subject of government action, from thwarting security threats abroad to offering solace to grieving citizens at home to pushing
for gun control legislation to reforming the nation’s health care systems to
embodying the aspirations, hopes, and moral character of the country. Nothing is beyond the president’s purview. And no single act, no collection of
reforms, can possibly sate the public’s appetite for presidential leadership.
The trouble, however, is that presidents are not endowed with nearly the
formal powers required to meet these expectations. Only fledgling and conditional powers—for example, that of appointing judges and bureaucrats,
subject to the Senate’s consent, or meeting foreign dignitaries—are explicitly
enumerated in Article II of the Constitution. Meanwhile, those provisions
that would seem to confer more substantial authority—for example, the take
care clause—are deeply ambiguous.
What, then, is a president to do? For Neustadt, the answer is clear. He must
persuade those political actors who have genuine power—legislators, who
write the laws; bureaucrats, who implement them; and judges, who interpret
them—to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own. Indeed,
for Neustadt, persuasion is not merely a means by which power might be
exercised. Persuasion is synonymous with power. “Presidential power is the
power to persuade,” he tells us. Power is about cajoling, pleading, beseeching, and ultimately convincing others that their interests and the president’s
interests are one and the same. It is about enlisting others to do the president’s

Presidential Power

3

bidding, to take actions and render changes that are beyond the president’s
purview.
How does the president persuade? Here again, Neustadt offers clear
counsel. Presidents must draw upon the individual skills, experiences, and
insights that they bring with them into office in order to enhance their
public prestige and reputation. Having cast the president’s predicament
in institutional terms, Neustadt delivers absolution in personal terms. The
presidents must cultivate an instinct for influence just as they project a sense
of mastery and control. For so doing, persuasive appeal will take hold,
legislators and bureaucrats will see fit to follow directions, and executive
power will, against all odds, be exercised.
The most immediate sign of Neustadt’s influence on the field of presidency studies was in its invocation to join the larger behavioral revolution
that was sweeping the discipline. In the decades that followed, scholars
posited skill, personality, style, and reputation as the essential ingredients
of persuasion and thus the keystones of presidential power (Barber, 1972;
George, 1974; Greenstein, 2000; Hargrove, 1966). An exalted reputation
within the Washington community and prestige among the general public
became the signature markers of presidential success. Power was contingent
upon persuasion; persuasion was a function of all the personal qualities
individual presidents bore; and so, the argument ran, what the presidency
was at any moment critically depended on who filled the office.
To be sure, scholarly attention did not remain permanently fixed on the
psychological and personal dimensions of presidential power. How could
it, when the most salient features of the modern presidency—the expanding
size of the executive branch, the proliferation of statutory law that intermittently constrained and expanded presidential authority, the formalization
of the president’s efforts to control the bureaucracy—were institutional in
nature? And so, by the century’s end, political scientists were once again
writing as much about the American presidency as about individual presidents. Rather than fixate on the idiosyncratic personal qualities of the men
who occupied the White House, scholars returned to the formal sources of
authority that preoccupied the generation of presidency scholars—men like
Edward Corwin and Clinton Rossiter—who preceded Richard Neustadt.
Still, even as the purely behavioral tendencies of presidency scholarship
waned, Neustadt’s influence could still be felt. Almost uniformly, empirically oriented institutional studies assessed presidents’ power by their ability
to drive through Congress a legislative agenda (Bond & Fleisher, 1990, 2000;
Goldsmith, 1974; Light, 1999; Peterson, 1990; Spitzer, 1993; Wayne, 1978). The
signature of strong presidents was a high legislative success rate in Congress,
of weak presidents, the sight of legislative proposals repeatedly dying in
committees and on floors.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Like Neustadt, institutionally oriented scholars in the 1980s and 1990s
persistently equated presidential power if not exactly as persuasion then at
least as the ability to redirect political affairs in other stations of the federal
government. Scholars equated presidential power with an ability to bargain,
negotiate, change minds, turn votes, and drive legislative agendas through
Congress. The president, as such, continued to play second fiddle to the
people who make real policy decisions: committee members writing bills,
congressional representatives offering amendments, bureaucrats enforcing
laws, judges deciding cases.
When assessing the American presidency, Neustadt famously argued that
“weak” is the word with which to begin. And the growing body of institutional scholarship on the topic offered little reason to believe otherwise.
In this scholarship, presidents appear remarkable only because they are so
feeble. As represented in both the empirical and theoretical work on vetoes
(Cameron, 2000; McCarty, 1997), for example, presidents appear only slightly
more important than members of Congress who can credibly threaten to filibuster a bill. Rather than having to assemble a supermajority of 60 in the
Senate, enacting coalitions now must occasionally win the votes of 67. The
technical impact of the president within these models of lawmaking is to
replace the three-fifths cloture point with the two-thirds veto override player
as the veto pivot—not exactly the stuff of a modern, ascendant presidency.
AREAS OF CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Of late, the study of the American presidency has undergone tremendous
change. By Terry Moe’s account, nothing less than a “revolution” has taken
hold. As he puts it, “In just a few short years, a field mired in isolation and
traditionalism has been catapulted into a new scientific realm through a seismic shift in the scope, power, and analytical rigor of its theories—a shift that
has put an end to the era of inferiority, modernized and invigorated the way
the presidency is thought about, and integrated the field much more fully
and productively into the mainstream of political science” (2009, p. 702). As
Moe notes, much of the change involves matters of method, as the norms
and technologies of modern social scientific research take hold in a subfield
long versed on historical narratives and anecdote. More substantively,
however, the new wave of presidency research breaks from the Neustadtian
tradition by emphasizing the independent actions that presidents can take,
by exploring the formal ways in which they can remake their political and
policy universes, and by exercising power without obviously persuading
those political elites who stand in their way. More foundationally still, these
burgeoning literatures on unilateral action, public appeals, and bureaucratic
design—each described later—do not merely take the existence of Congress

Presidential Power

5

or the courts as given and then counsel presidents to turn inward and
elicit whatever skills and experiences might make them more persuasive.
Rather, in both the theory and empirical tests that these literatures advance,
dynamics between the various branches of government stand at the very
center of the analysis. And in this sense, the study of presidential power
becomes, quite appropriately, the study of political power writ large.
POLICY INFLUENCE BEYOND LEGISLATION
Recently, scholars have begun to take systematic account of the powers that
presidents wield outside of the legislative arena. Building on the insights of
legal scholars and political scientists who first recognized and wrote about
the president’s “unilateral” or “prerogative” powers (e.g., Fleishman & Aufses, 1976; Pious, 1991), scholars recently have built well-defined theories of
unilateral action and then assembled original data sets of executive orders,
executive agreements, proclamations, and other sorts of directives to test
them. In the past several years, fully six books have focused exclusively on
the president’s unilateral powers (Cooper, 2002; Howell, 2003; Krutz & Peake,
2011; Mayer, 2001; Shull, 2006; Warber, 2006), complemented by a bevy of articles focusing on policymaking in both the United States (e.g., Fine & Warber,
2012; Gordon, 2007; Howell, 2005; Howell & Lewis, 2002; Krause & Cohen,
2000; Krutz & Peake, 2006; Lewis, 2005; Marshall & Pacelle, 2005; Pious, 2007;
Rudalevige, 2012) and Latin America (Morgenstern, Polga-Hecimovich, &
Shair-Rosenfield, 2013; Negretto, 2004; Pereira, Power, & Rennó, 2005).
Collectively, the emerging literature on unilateral powers makes two main
contributions to our substantive understanding of presidential power. First,
and most obviously, it expands the scope of scholarly inquiry to account for
the broader array of mechanisms that presidents utilize to influence the content of public policy. Rather than struggling to convince individual members
of Congress to publicly endorse a bill and then cast sympathetic votes, presidents often can seize the initiative, issue new policies by fiat, and leave it
to others to revise the new political landscape. Rather than dally at the margins of the policy-making process, presidents regularly issue directives that
Congress, left to its own devices, would not enact. So doing, they manage to
leave a plain, although too often ignored, imprint on the corpus of law.
In addition, the literature highlights the ways in which adjoining branches
of government effectively check presidential power. After all, should the
president proceed without statutory or constitutional authority, the courts
stand to overturn his actions, just as Congress can amend them, cut funding
for their operations, or eliminate them outright. And in this regard, the
president’s relationship with Congress and the courts is very different from
the one described in the existing quantitative literature on the legislative

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

process. When unilateral powers are exercised, legislators, judges, and the
president do not work cooperatively to effect meaningful policy change.
Opportunities for change, in this instance, do not depend on the willingness
and capacity of different branches of government to coordinate with one
another. Instead, when presidents issue unilateral directives, they struggle
to protect the integrity of orders given and to undermine the efforts of
adjoining branches of government to amend or overturn actions already
taken.
Some of the more innovative quantitative work conducted on unilateral
powers highlights the differences between policies issued as laws versus
executive orders. In his study of administrative design, for instance, David
Lewis shows that modern agencies created through legislation tend to
live longer than those created by executive decree (Lewis, 2003). But what
presidents lose in terms of longevity they tend to gain back in terms of
control. By Lewis’s calculations, between 1946 and 1997, fully 67% of
administrative agencies created by executive order and 84% created by
departmental order were placed either within the Executive Office of the
President or the cabinet, as compared to only 57% of agencies created
legislatively. Independent boards and commissions, which further dilute
presidential control, governed only 13% of agencies created unilaterally, as
compared to 44% of those created through legislation. And 40% of agencies
created through legislation had some form of restrictions on the kinds of
appointments presidents can make, as compared to only 8% of agencies
created unilaterally.
In another study of the trade-offs between legislative and unilateral
strategies, I show that the institutional configurations that promote the
enactment of laws impede the production of executive orders, and vice
versa (Howell, 2003). Just as large and cohesive legislative majorities within
Congress facilitate the enactment of legislation, they create disincentives
for presidents to issue executive orders. Meanwhile, when gridlock prevails
in Congress, presidents have strong incentives to deploy their unilateral
powers, not least because their chance of building the coalitions needed to
pass laws is relatively small. The trade-offs observed between unilateral
and legislative policy making are hardly coincidental, for ultimately, it is the
checks that Congress and the courts place on the president that define his
capacity to change public policy by fiat.
Quantitative work on the president’s unilateral powers is beginning to take
systematic account for unilateral directives other than executive orders and
departmental reorganizations—most importantly, perhaps, those regarding
military operations conducted abroad. Just as previous scholarship examined
how different institutional configurations (divided government, the partisan
composition of Congress) affected the number of executive orders issued in

Presidential Power

7

any given quarter or year, this research examines how such factors influence the number of military deployments that presidents initiate, the timing
of these deployments, and their duration (Howell & Pevehouse, 2005, 2007;
Kriner, 2009). Although still in its infancy, this research challenges presidency
scholars to take an even more expansive view of presidential power, while
also bridging long-needed connections with scholars in other fields who have
much to say about how, and when, heads of state wield authority.
PUBLIC APPEALS
Although presidents rely upon their unilateral powers as never before, on
many matters, they have no choice but to engage Congress. When doing
so, however, they need not bargain with individual legislators in the quiet
removes of the White House. Increasingly, in fact, the lines of communication between the two branches of government proceed rather circuitously
through, first, an increasingly fragmented media market, and then the larger
public, which may or may not relay the message to its intended target. Success, in this arrangement, may require persuasion. But neither the setting in
which persuasion now occurs nor the content of its constituent appeals are
especially well-documented in Neustadt’s rendering of executive politics.
In a hugely influential 1997 book, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential
Leadership, Samuel Kernell offered the first, full-throated explanation of
contemporary presidential appeals. To explain why presidents “go public,”
Kernell emphasized the transformation of the nation’s polity, beginning in
the early 1970s, from a system of “institutionalized” to “individualized”
pluralism. Under institutional pluralism, Kernell (1997) explained, “political
elites, and for the most part only elites, matter[ed]” (p. 12). Insulated
from public opinion, presidents had only to negotiate with a handful of
“protocoalition” leaders in Congress. But under the new individualized
pluralist system, opportunities for bargaining dwindled. The devolution
of power to subcommittees, the weakening of parties, and the profusion
of interest groups greatly expanded the number of political actors with
whom presidents would have to negotiate; and compounded with the rise
of divided government, such developments made compromise virtually
impossible. Facing an increasingly volatile and divisive political terrain,
Kernell argued, presidents have clear incentives to circumvent formal
political channels and speak directly to the people.
During the past decade a number of scholars, very much including Kernell
himself, have extended the analyses and insights found in Going Public. Two
areas of research have been especially prodigious. The first examines how
changes in the media environment, especially the rise of cable television,
have complicated the president’s efforts to reach his constituents (Baum &

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Kernell, 1999; Cohen, 2008; Groeling & Kernell, 1998). While presidents once
could count on the few existing television networks to broadcast their public
appeals to a broad cross-section of the American public, now they must navigate a highly competitive and diffuse media environment, one that caters
to the individual interests of an increasingly fickle citizenry. Hence, while
structural changes to the American polity in the 1970s may have encouraged
presidents to go public with greater frequency, more recent changes to the
media environment have limited the president’s ability to rally the public
behind a chosen cause.
It should not come as much of a surprise, then, that public appeals do
not always change the content of public opinion, which constitutes the second body of quantitative research spawned by Kernell’s work (Barrett, 2004;
Cohen, 1998; Edwards, 2003). Although it may raise the salience of particular issues, presidential speeches typically do not materially alter citizens’
views about particular policies, especially those that involve domestic issues.
Either because an increasingly narrow portion of the American public actually receives presidential appeals, or because these appeals are transmitted by
an increasingly critical and politicized media, or both, presidential endorsements of specific policies fail to resonate broadly.
Still, notes Brandice Canes-Wrone (2005), public appeals constitute a
good deal more than political theater. By increasing the salience of policies
that already enjoy broad-based support, Canes-Wrone argues, plebiscitary
presidents can pressure members of Congress to respond to the (otherwise
latent) preferences of their constituents. Further recognizing the limited
attention spans of average citizens and the diminishing returns of public
appeals, Canes-Wrone argues that presidents will only go public when
there are clear policy rewards associated with doing so. Then, by linking
presidential appeals to budgetary outlays over the past several decades,
Canes-Wrone shows how such appeals, under well-specified conditions,
augment presidential influence over public policy.
Finally, there is B. Dan Wood’s (2007) recent work, which illuminates
the cascading effects of presidential appeals. How presidents talk about
certain issues, Wood argues, does not only affect public and, by extension,
congressional opinion about the issue. Presidential rhetoric also bears on
the decisions that everyday citizens make in their lives. Focusing on issues
of economic leadership, Wood examines how presidential optimism and
confidence about the economy affect economic actors’ attitudes toward
taking risks. He shows that presidents, through economic rhetoric, can
produce tangible effects on consumer spending, business investment, and
interest rates. Presidents can also strengthen their own public approval
ratings by projecting strong images of economic leadership.

Presidential Power

9

POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE BUREAUCRACY
Beginning with a series of articles written by Terry Moe in the 1980s and
early 1990s (Moe, 1985, 1987, 1990; Moe & Wilson, 1994), scholars have recast
their attention to the ways in which presidents exercise influence not only
through appeals but also through administrative design. Moe observed that
in an increasingly volatile political world, one wherein opportunities to
effect change are fleeting, power is always contested, and opposing factions
stand mobilized at every turn, presidents and their immediate advisers
have a strong incentive to hunker down, formulate policy themselves, and
fill administrative agencies with people who can be counted on to do their
bidding faithfully. Neutral competence and bureaucratic independence,
Moe observed, does not always suit the president’s political needs. Rather
than rely on the expertise of a distant cadre of civil servants, presidents,
for reasons built into the design of a political system of separated powers,
have considerable cause to surround themselves with individuals who are
responsive, loyal, and like-minded.
In the years since, a number of influential books have built on Moe’s
insights. Andrew Rudalevige’s (2002) book, Managing the President’s program, systematically investigated the regularity with which presidents
centralized the policy-making process within the Executive Office of the
Presidency. Positing a “contingent theory of centralization,” Rudalevige
identified the basic trade-off that all presidents face when constructing a
legislative agenda: By relying on their closest advisers and staff, they can
be sure that policy will reflect their most important goals and principles;
but when policy is especially complex, the costs of assembling the needed
information to formulate policy can be astronomical. To demonstrate as
much, Rudalevige estimated a series of statistical models that predicted
where within the executive branch presidents turned to formulate different
policies. His findings are fascinating. Policies that involved multiple issues,
that presented new policy innovations, and that required the reorganization
of existing bureaucratic structures were more likely to be centralized; while
those that involved complex issues were less likely to be. For the most
part, the partisan leanings of an agency, divided government, and temporal
indicators appeared unrelated to the location of policy formation. Whether
presidents centralized, it would seem, varied from issue to issue, justifying
Rudalevige’s emphasis on “contingency.”
In addition to shifting responsibilities about the executive branch, presidents also can influence the bureaucracy by appointing individuals with
shared political convictions. The most significant empirical investigation of
this particular strategy lies with David Lewis’s (2008) book, The Politics of
Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance. The

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

core of Lewis’s book is devoted to examining the particular conditions under
which politicization increases and decreases in different agencies, and the
consequences this has for their performance. Lewis shows that the number of
political appointees reliably increases when the presidency switches parties;
and that certain kinds of political appointees tend to rise as the preferences of
members of Congress and the president converge. In addition, Lewis demonstrates that agencies with higher numbers of political appointees consistently
receive performance evaluations, a finding that would appear to confirm the
longstanding concerns raised by public administration scholars about the
rise in politicization.
Finally, there is Sean Gailmard and John Patty’s (2012) book, Learning while
Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Although not
expressly about the president, per se, this book offers crucial insights into a
facet of presidential power that scholars have long assumed but only intermittently explained: policy expertise. Across three game theoretic models,
Gailmard and Patty identify three basic problems associated with information acquisition: the extraction of reliable information from an interest group;
the reliable transmittal of information from an executive agency to Congress
via the president; and the development of expertise within an agency. As
Gailmard and Patty demonstrate, however, the solution to any one of these
problems exacerbates the other two problems. Hence, for example, the creation of a civil service system that encourages bureaucrats to invest in expertise reduces the probability that the president will turn to this agency for
advice and the ability of this agency to extract information from a private
actor. As a result, they demonstrate, “learning while governing” is unavoidably haphazard and incomplete.
GOING FORWARD
I am reticent to say very much about future directions that presidency studies
might take. With so much new and innovative work under way, disciplinary
prognostications should cede way to disciplinary research. Progress should
materialize through actual research, not via central planning.
With some hesitation, then, I offer just one suggestion. Scholars who
are interested in making sense of executive power—indeed, of executive
politics—should invest just as many resources into the building of theory
as in the construction of data. Indeed, when first trying to make sense of
an emergent facet of presidential power, the need for theory may even take
precedent.
To see as much, consider the nascent empirical literature on signing statements, which presidents periodically issue to signal their views about a bill
they just signed into law. Much of this research relates trends in the issuance

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11

of signing statements with a familiar assembly of political covariates, for
example, divided government, public support for the president, and the
like. This is fine and well, as far as it goes. But it could go a good deal
further. It is not especially illuminating to assess the relative probabilities
that presidents will issue a signing statement during divided rather than
unified government—at least not without some underlying theory about
what presidents are trying to accomplish, and what constraints they face in
the endeavor, when they issue them. What we need, but still do not have,
is a robust body of theory that explains why a law that is accompanied
by a signing statement will be evaluated differently by either a bureaucrat
charged with implementing it or a judge charged with interpreting it. And
the reason we lack such theory, I worry, is partially due to a tendency among
presidency scholars—and here I very much include myself—to prioritize
issues of measurement over theory in the scholarly enterprise.
To make sense of signing statements, indeed, to make sense of executive
politics more generally, we need theory. And a lot more than is currently on
offer. We need models—formal and otherwise—that embed the president in
the larger system of separated and federated powers within which he must
work, that recognize the constraints presidents operate under and identify
ways in which presidents can manage them. To the graduate student thinking about writing on some facet of presidential power, I say this: Your first
move should not involve pulling up a spreadsheet and documenting patterns in presidential actions; rather, it should involve a lot of critical thinking,
theorizing, about what presidents stand to benefit from their usage at all.
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14

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Rudalevige, A. (2002). Managing the president’s program: Presidential leadership and legislative policy formation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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FURTHER READING
Corwin, E. (1941). The President: Office and powers. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Howell, W. (2013). Thinking about the presidency: The primacy of power. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
McDonald, F. (1994). The American presidency: An intellectual history. Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas.
Neustadt, R. (1960). Presidential power: The politics of leadership. New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Skowronek, S. (1993). The politics Presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to George
Bush. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

WILLIAM G. HOWELL SHORT BIOGRAPHY
William G. Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at
Chicago Harris, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the
College, and a codirector of the Program on Political Institutions. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He currently is working on research projects
on Obama’s education initiatives, distributive politics, and the normative
foundations of executive power.
William recently published two books, one with coauthors Saul Jackman
and Jon Rogowski entitled The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the
Nationalizing Politics of Threat (University of Chicago Press, 2013); and the
other, with David Brent, entitled Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of
Power (Princeton University Press, 2013). He also is the coauthor (with Jon
Pevehouse) of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War
Powers (Princeton University Press, 2007); author of Power without Persuasion:

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15

The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton University Press, 2003);
coauthor (with Paul Peterson) of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban
Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002); coauthor (with John Coleman
and Ken Goldstein) of an introductory American politics textbook series;
and editor of additional volumes on the presidency and school boards. His
research also has appeared in numerous professional journals and edited
volumes.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, William taught in the government department at Harvard University and the political science department
at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, he received a PhD in political science
from Stanford University.
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