This inside account of decision making in the White House describes the organizational challenges the President faces. The Economic Policy Board was one of the most systematic and sustained attempts to organize advice for the President in recent decades. The author examines the Board's deliberations over three controversial policy issues, drawing on scores of interviews with cabinet officials and career civil servants.
A deep look into the agency that implements the president's marching orders to the rest of the executive branch The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is one of the federal government's most important and powerful agencies—but it's also one of the least-known among the general public. This book describes why the office is so important and why both scholars and citizens should know more about what it does. The predecessor to the modern OMB was founded in 1921, as the Bureau of the Budget within the Treasury Department. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it in 1939 into the Executive Office of the President, where it's been ever since. The office received its current name in 1970, during the Nixon administration. For most people who know about it, the OMB's only apparent job is to supervise preparation of the president's annual budget request to Congress. That job, in itself, gives the office tremendous influence within the executive branch. But OMB has other responsibilities that give it a central role in how the federal government functions on a daily basis. OMB reviews all of the administration's legislative proposals and the president's executive orders. It oversees the development and implementation of nearly all government management initiatives. The office also analyses the costs and benefits of major government regulations, this giving it great sway over government actions that affect nearly every person and business in America. One question facing voters in the 2020 elections will be how well the executive branch has carried out the president's promises; a major aspect of that question centers around the wider work of the OMB. This book will help members of the public, as well as scholars and other experts, answer that question.
PUBLISHING JANURARY 3, 2020! With a focus on presidential leadership, the authors address the capacity of chief executives to fulfill their tasks, exercise their powers, and utilize their organizational structures to affect the output of government. The authors examine all aspects of the presidency in rich detail, including the president’s powers, presidential history, and the institution of the presidency. Guiding their analysis is their unique contrast between two broad perspectives on the presidency—the constrained president (“facilitator”) and the dominant president (“director”)—making the text a perennial favorite for courses on the presidency. The authors richly illustrate their engaging analysis with timely, fascinating examples. They fully integrate the Trump presidency into every chapter, offering wide-ranging coverage. Moreover, they devote separate chapters to essential aspects of President Trump’s approach to governing such as on media relations, leading the public, and decision making. Equally important, they incorporate the most recent scholarship and their own unique approach to show how the Trump presidency illuminates our basic understanding of the presidency, making Presidential Leadership the perfect vehicle for understanding the president and his impact on the office.
The premise behind this book is that policy making provides a useful perspective for studying the presidency, perhaps the most important and least understood policy-making institution in the United States. The eleven essays focus on diverse aspects of presidential policy making, providing insights on the presidency and its relationship to other policy-making actors and institutions. Major topics addressed include the environment of presidential policy making and the constraints it places on the chief executive; relationships with those outside the executive branch that are central to presidential policy making; attempts to lead the public and Congress; presidential decision making; and administration or implementation of policies in the executive branch, a topic that has received limited attention in the literature on the presidency.
divFinds that presidents are responsive to the public in selecting issues to focus on, but pay less attention to public opinion when making a policy /DIV
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the president's policy-making role and the way this role structures the president's interaction with other institutions of government. The framework is laid out in Thomas's foreword and in Steven A. Shull's and James E Pfiffner's contributions to Part I on presidential policy making. Part II, on public opinion and the media, interest groups, political parties, and elections, features chapters by Jeffrey E. Cohen and Ken Collier, Joseph A. Pika, Sidney M. Milkus, Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold Rusk. In Part III, on intragovernmental relations, George C. Edwards III writes on Congress, Shirley A. Warshaw on staff, Richard W. Waterman on the bureaucracy, and Jeffrey A. Segal and Robert Howard on relations with the court. Part IV covers policy areas, with chapters by Paul J. Quirk and Bruce Nesmith on domestic policy, Lance T. LeLoup on budget policy, James E. Anderson on economic policy, and Louis Fisher on foreign and defense policy. In the concluding section of the book, Mary E. Stuckey discusses the issue of accountability and Bert A. Rockman and Colin Campbell write on policy leadership.
Examines the impact of medical and psychological illness on foreign policy decision making. Illness provides specific, predictable, and recognizable shifts in attention, time perspective, cognitive capacity, judgment, and emotion, which systematically affect impaired leaders. In particular, this book discusses the ways in which processes related to aging, physical and psychological illness, and addiction influence decision making. This book provides detailed analysis of four cases among the American presidency. Woodrow Wilson's October 1919 stroke affected his behavior during the Senate fight over ratifying the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt's severe coronary disease influenced his decisions concerning the conduct of war in the Pacific from 1943–1945 in particular. John Kennedy's illnesses and treatments altered his behavior at the 1961 Vienna conference with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. And Nixon's psychological impairments biased his decisions regarding the covert bombing of Cambodia in 1969–1970.
Originally published in 2005. David Mitchell provides a better understanding of the role presidents play in the decision-making process in terms of their influence on two key steps in the process: deliberation and outcome of policy making. The events that have taken place in relation to the Bush administration's decisions to fight the war on terrorism and invade Iraq highlight how important it is to understand the president's role in formulating policy. This influential study presents an advisory system theory of decision-making to examine cases of presidential policy formulation drawn from the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations. Easily accessible to scholars, graduates and advanced undergraduates interested in US foreign policy or foreign policy analysis, presidential studies, and bureaucracy and public administrations scholars, and to practitioners and those with a general interest in International Relations.
