Back to the Future? Toward Revitalizing the Study of the Administrative Presidency

When the term "administrative presidency" was first coined by Richard Nathan (1983), it was focused largely on presidents selecting political appointees who shared their policy aims and wished to alter organizational structures, personnel systems, budgets, and decision rules in their agencies to accord with those aims. Nathan argued that it was a low-visibility strategy offering what recent scholarship calls significant first-mover advantages to presidents (see also Howell 2003; Kagan 2001; Moe 1989, 1993; Moe and Howell 1999). A Congress challenged by collective-action problems could not react to most administrative initiatives because of their sheer number, arcane nature, information asymmetries favoring presidents, and the opaqueness of bureaucratic operations. Since then, empirical research relevant to the administrative presidency has offered mixed support for this perspective. Employing qualitative, statistically sophisticated, formal modeling, or choice theoretic analyses, some scholars have argued that agency outputs tend to respond to changes in presidential administrations, the comings and goings of political appointees, and other presidential shocks to the American political system (e.g., Wood 1988; Wood and Waterman 1994). In contrast, others have found agencies more responsive, alternatively, to congressional direction (e.g., Chubb 1985; McCubbins 1985; Scholz and Wei 1986; Weingast 1984); to multiple principals rather than just to presidents (e.g., Scholz and Wood 1998; Wood and Waterman 1994); to interest groups, subnational actors, and local contexts (e.g., Epstein and O'Halloran 1994; Scholz, Twombly, and Headrick 1991; Yackee 2006); and to various actors, depending on policy domain (Zegart 1999). Other researchers have found bureaucratic responsiveness to aspects of the administrative presidency better characterized as a function of contingencies (e.g., Aberbach and Rockman 2000; Durant 1992; Golden 2000; Hammond and Knott 1996; Lupia and McCubbins 1994; Maranto 1993; Michaels 1997; Waterman 1989). These include the extent of change involved for bureaucrats, the extent to which presidential goals are clear, the perceived impact of a delay in complying with presidential missives, the type of agency involved, the culture of the agency, styles of administrative leadership, agency reward systems, and the availability of external employment. Others focusing largely on such unilateral tools of the administrative presidency as executive orders, presidential signing statements, presidential proclamations, and national security directives argue for the potency of these techniques in advancing presidential policy goals (Howell 2003; Mayer 2001; Warber 2006). Many among them worry about inordinate--and even unconstitutional shifts in--power to presidents (Cooper 2002; Fisher 2004; Ginsberg 2007; Pious 2007; Rozell 1994; Rudalevige 2002). Still others see invocation of the unitary executive theory as a relative weakness rather than a strength of presidents (Roberts 2008). This article argues that despite the significant insights offered by prior research, assessments of the efficacy of the administrative presidency to date are both premature and in need of refocusing to comport with the realities of the American political system. In regard to prematurity, assessments must be withheld until four interrelated limitations of prior research are addressed. First, unlike early qualitative research on the topic, most recent research related to the administrative presidency has used neoclassical economics-based (e.g., principal-agent models) or statistically sophisticated research designs that marginalize the implementation processes accompanying these efforts to advance presidential agendas. Yet, like legislation, administrative initiatives are only the "starting gun" for battle, with interests and stakes for presidents that shift over time (West 1995). Moreover, this reality has not stopped many from praising or decrying the use of, say, executive orders and signing statements, as if issuing them were enough to ensure implementation. …