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This paper traces the development of the concept of "political arts" within several of John Stuart Mill's texts. Mill is commonly classified as a liberal utilitarian who was also preoccupied with establishing the basis for social science in service to the cause of social progress. Recently, scholars have questioned the image of Mill as a "typical liberal." In order to extend such revisionary work, I have undertaken an examination of his writings about social science. What I have found is a skepticism regarding the possibility of a science of politics as a precursor to the political arts. Instead of criticizing Mill for his "failure" to illuminate the proper relationship between these two activities, I contend that there is much to learn through exposing the reasons for Mill's uncertainty. The tension between the science and art of politics is brought to light through a focus on Mill's mode of theorizing - the way in which Mill employs ambiguity and "many-sidedness" within and across his works. This mode of theorizing is especially effective within his political writings. While Mill explicitly advocates for the authority of science in politics, he implicitly acknowledges that the (democratic) political world erects many barriers to scientific knowledge about its workings. Mill's work on the political arts is worthy of consideration as it captures the difficulties involved in the application of political science within a democratic society. I conclude that Mill was correct to frame his writings with a scientific basis for the political arts - even if such a project is actually futile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who study the development of the plebiscitary leadership often break presidential history into two periods: the traditional presidency, marked by weak leaders who seldom stirred public passions with their rhetoric, and the modern presidency, which is defined by aggressive popular leadership claims and passionate appeals. In this paper, we contest this modern-traditional divide, showing that a vibrant tradition of presidential popular leadership and populist rhetoric existed in the Democratic party throughout the nineteenth century. In place of the modern-traditional divide, we offer a multiple traditions approach that posits that two competing visions of executive leadership existed in the nineteenth century: the Whig vision of presidential leadership, which corresponds roughly to the depiction of the traditional presidency, and the Democratic vision, which radically broke from the Whig doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the "modern presidency" is the dominant analytical construct in contemporary presidential scholarship. The conventional wisdom describes the "modern presidency" as an institution with more political authority and autonomy than its "traditional" nineteenth century predecessor. This paper questions the utility of this bifurcated paradigm by examining how three lesser-known "pre-modern" presidents (John Tyler, James Polk, Rutherford Hayes) created new forms of executive authority and increased their institutional autonomy. We begin with a consideration of Terry Moe’s (1985) suggestion that modern presidents are distinguished by their incentive to "politicize" and "centralize." We contend, on the contrary, that this is not a distinctly modern phenomenon: presidents throughout American history have "politicized" and "centralized." This behavior is not due to Moe’s "politics of structural choice," but to the ambiguous definition of executive power in the Constitution. We also build upon Harvey Mansfield’s theory of executive power in Taming the Prince (1993), demonstrating that an ambivalent, yet pervasive, institutional incentive encourages presidents to pursue authority not explicitly granted to them. In our case studies, we demonstrate that the tendency for presidents to actively claim authority and seek out reliable resources for the exercise of power is neither distinctly modern nor particularly extraordinary. Rather, it is a common tendency that finds its roots in the peculiar, ambiguous form of executive power in America. We intend our paper to be a first step towards the development of a historically informed and theory-driven research agenda that transcends the "modern-traditional" frame of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]