Presidents as Agents of Change

Over the last half-century, most presidency research has been built upon Richard Neustadt's (1990 [1960]) premise that modern presidents operate within a political environment that is intractable and highly resistant to change. Though they may rack up some policy accomplishments and enjoy short-term victories over their opponents, presidents are widely seen as having limited capacities to alter the institutional and organizational arrangements that surround them. As George C. Edwards III has written, "there is little evidence that presidents can restructure the political landscape and pave the way for change. Although not prisoners of their environment, they are likely to be highly constrained by it" (2000, 34). (1) Not all presidency scholars, of course, have shared this view. Scholars of rational choice institutionalism, in particular, ventured into presidency studies in the 1980s and 1990s heralding a very different perspective. In two important essays, Terry Moe (1985, 1993) urged scholars to shift attention from analyses of presidential strategy and style within fixed constraints to studies of how presidents factor into the broader "logic of institutional development" (1985, 236). As an illustration, Moe suggested that all modern presidents had contributed to a dynamic process of change in the executive branch. In their efforts to make administrative structures more competent and responsive to the White House in the short-term--to achieve "congruence" between inherited structures and their incentives for leadership--modern presidents made incremental contributions to the long-term evolution of the "institutional presidency." Often unwittingly, their actions "set in motion" institutional changes that had "reciprocal effects that alter[ed] individual incentives and resources, which in turn propel[led] the next round of institutional changes," thereby shaping the "directions and dynamics of institutional change" (Moe 1985, 237). Rather than leave their structural environment undisturbed, Moe suggested that presidents regularly engage in behaviors that alter their surroundings and "shift the structure of politics for themselves and everyone else" (1993, 367). These insights opened two new lines of inquiry for presidency research. The first involved reconceptualizing presidents as "generic types rooted in an institutional system" (rather than individual people) who respond systematically to incentives and interact with other institutions in predictable ways (Moe 2009, 704). The second emphasized the downstream effects of those interactions--effects that may alter institutional trajectories in politically consequential ways. Subsequent work in the rational choice tradition primarily pursued the first line of inquiry. It depersonalized the presidency, constructed refined theories of presidential politicization, centralization, interbranch bargaining, and unilateral action, and designed formal models to specify the conditions under which different presidents are likely to act in similar ways with more or less success (Cameron 2000; Groseclose and McCarty 2001; Howell 2003; Howell and Pevehouse 2007; Lewis 2003; McCarty 2004; Rudalevige 2002). Taking center stage was comparative statics, or the examination of how changes in the model's parameters affect its equilibrium solution. (2) Comparative statics analyses have many advantages, but they do not consider whether (or how) the outcome of one game might alter the constraints faced by presidents in subsequent games. Each game is treated as distinct from the last, with the parameters exogenously determined and the players remaining the same. Presidents are expected to try to alter the status quo---that is the game--but the consequences of their actions do not factor into the analysis in any meaningful way. Whether the moves they make are informed or constrained by prior rounds--and whether their actions have any long-term effects on their political environment--are not the subjects of investigation. …