Building Reliable Theories of the Presidency

Giovanni Sartori's seminal analysis warns that the essential task of theory building is hampered by a false choice between two extreme views. At one extreme, grand theory seeks an all-encompassing explanation that can stretch across heterogeneous contexts; it offers a discipline-wide model that combines maximum extension and minimal depth of analysis. Sartori warns that grand theory produces "macroscopic errors of interpretation, explanation, and prediction" because its propositions are inaccurate and lack "informational value" about core empirical features (1970, 1052). At the other extreme is research at the lowest level of abstraction. According to this approach, "the differentiae of individual settings are stressed above their similarities" (1041). Sartori concludes that its particularistic attention to cataloguing detail results in "microscopic errors." Framing theory building as a choice between grand theory and particularism produces, according to Sartori, an "oscillar[ion] between two unsound extremes"--either a fixation on detail that abandons the necessity of conceptual development, logical rigor, and the search for similarity, or a devotion to theorizing that is ungrounded in empirical reality (1970, 1033). Sartori's important contribution is to explain why theory building is essential: it identifies enduring questions, specifies core concepts as reliable data containers, and engages in logical and rigorous analysis--and does not require an embrace of grand theory with its insufficient regard for empirical reality. "[T]he need for highly abstract, all-embracing categories does not require us," Sartori insists, "to inflate, indeed to evaporate, the observational, empirically-linked categories that we do have" (1052). Sartori's alternative to the false choice of particularism or grand theory is middle-level theorizing--an approach that "make[s] extensional gains (by climbing the abstraction ladder) without having to suffer unnecessary losses in precision and empirical testability" (1970, 1041). Instead of the no-win situation of seeking both universalism and precision, Sartori recommends developing theory "along a medium level of abstraction with better intermediate categories.... to bring together ... a relatively high explanatory power and a relatively precise descriptive account [as well as] macro-theory and empirical testing" (1053). The key is to "reduc[e] the number of qualifying attributes" (1051) nd, instead, to engage in "intra-area comparisons among relatively homogenous contexts" in ways that balance and allow for the interplay of conceptual extension and empirical depth (1044). In other words, theorizing should abandon the pursuit of law-like generalizations across heterogeneous contexts in favor of specifying concepts and expectations for guiding research to identify empirically accurate similarities within relatively homogeneous contexts. The Lessons of Theory Building for the Study of the Presidency Sartori's scrutiny of theory building offers two critical insights for the contemporary study of the presidency. The Need for Theory The first implication of Sartori's investigation is that presidency research requires theoretical and conceptual extension to propel it up the ladder of abstraction from its lowest rung. Like bird watchers, there is a (shrinking) component of presidency research that continues to be fascinated with spotting odd particularistic details of individualized personality traits (from the president's to those of key staff, such as the expressive features of certain press secretaries), idiosyncratic staffing arrangements, and other features. This preoccupation with the particular makes a fundamental omission: the similarities and central tendencies across presidents and their actions. What is needed is an interpretative framework and a set of theoretically informed concepts to explain (not just to describe) presidential behavior and the institutional formation of the presidency and its place in American governance. …