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Abstract: The White House Chief of Staff (COS) has become the modern presidency's organizational lynchpin, the position tasked with helping presidents “faithfully execute the Office of President.” Extending a rich literature about how chiefs manage White House staffers, we consider the other side of the coin: can a COS manage the president? We begin theoretically, sketching three mechanisms—offloading, streamlining, and steering—by which a COS could shape presidents' basic workways. We test resulting hypotheses against original data on presidents' daily work behaviors from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush—a total spanning 48 years, nine presidencies, and 21 Chiefs of Staff (plus one sustained vacancy). Surprisingly, we find little evidence that Chiefs of Staff affected the duration, density, or composition of their president's workday. When it comes to the basic contours of presidential workways, it appears Chiefs of Staff do less “managing up” and more “managing around.”

When scholars address presidential agenda setting, they focus on how presidents go about getting what they want. We know far less about the prior step: how presidents decide what they want (agenda construction). Moreover, prior work that has dealt with this topic has focused on the external constraints imposed on presidential choice by Congress and public opinion. I contend, by contrast, that presidents have considerable agency in determining their domestic policy priorities. They rely on it to establish who they are and where they want to take the nation, putting forward their own "political projects." I situate this agency in the selection of agenda items and the manner and sequence in which presidents pursue them. Failing to account for this "power of initiative and origination" leaves us with an underspecified understanding of presidential decision making that obscures the consequentiality of leadership in driving important policy outcomes. I develop this argument by exploring three presidential administrations that pose a hard test for my agency thesis: Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. These case studies draw from archival records obtained at the associated presidential libraries and interviews with senior administration personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, and under what conditions, do international crises make the president's national security agenda? I argue that international crises are opportunities for presidents to seek domestic political gains, but that presidents are likely to weigh anticipated political benefits against anticipated risk of political opposition. I analyze presidential National Security Council (NSC) meeting agendas from 1947 to 1993 to find that the War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 reduced the likelihood of presidential crisis attentiveness, that low approval ratings are associated with increased crisis attentiveness, and that post‐WPR presidents under unified government are likely to be more crisis attentive. This article provides fresh analysis of the WPR by connecting presidential national security behavior with American domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much should we fear that a president will break the law to pursue power—then use their office to avoid legal accountability? Political scientists studying the presidency have often overlooked the risk of what we here call a criminal president. Donald Trump's presidency spotlighted that risk and has begun to shift the field's focus toward not just presidential power but presidential constraints. We believe this shift should continue. In this review, we aim to set an agenda that makes the danger of a criminal president central to understanding the presidency more broadly. Situating the criminal presidency within wider questions about legal and constitutional constraints on presidential power, we emphasize the unique risks to democracy that a president unbound by law can pose. We call for a greater focus on the legal rules governing the executive branch—especially unitary executive ideas—and the policies needed to hold criminal presidents accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens' views of legal institutions are influenced by their partisanship and signals from the president. Through multiple experiments, we demonstrate that support for two key institutions—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice—is substantially derived from the intersection of one's partisan identity and their partisan proximity to the president. These effects are strongest among respondents exhibiting high levels of affective partisanship. Our results suggest that in forming perceptions of the rule of law, partisan politics is increasingly competing with perceptions of procedural fairness, thereby subverting support for legal institutions in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic accountability requires that citizens accurately attribute credit and blame to leaders and institutions. However, citizens tend to simplify politics by personifying the state as its leader and directing credit and blame accordingly. Using an expert survey and a five-wave public panel survey spanning two administrations, we contrast public and expert perceptions of presidential power. We demonstrate that the public exaggerates the president's powers relative to scholarly experts and that people who exaggerate presidential powers most are more likely to attribute blame to the president. However, a change in partisan control of the presidency shifts perceptions of power among partisans. Finally, we find suggestive evidence of similar shifts in belief after salient policy failures. These results provide the most direct evidence to date that citizens generally exaggerate the president's influence and control but that these beliefs change over time in response to events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The White House Chief of Staff (COS) has become the modern presidency's organizational lynchpin, the position tasked with helping presidents "faithfully execute the Office of President." Extending a rich literature about how chiefs manage White House staffers, we consider the other side of the coin: can a COS manage the president? We begin theoretically, sketching three mechanisms—offloading, streamlining, and steering—by which a COS could shape presidents' basic workways. We test resulting hypotheses against original data on presidents' daily work behaviors from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush—a total spanning 48 years, nine presidencies, and 21 Chiefs of Staff (plus one sustained vacancy). Surprisingly, we find little evidence that Chiefs of Staff affected the duration, density, or composition of their president's workday. When it comes to the basic contours of presidential workways, it appears Chiefs of Staff do less "managing up" and more "managing around." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unilateral presidential action is thought to be limited by the ability of successors to easily reverse past decisions. Yet, most executive actions are never formally revoked. We argue that because of presidents' unique position as chief executive, some actions create outcomes that make policy reversal more difficult or even infeasible. We develop a novel measure of policies with more immutable consequences and analyze the revocation of executive orders issued between 1937 and 2021. We find the degree of outcome immutability reduces the influence of political conditions on policy revocation. We further examine these dynamics in three cases in which presidents have substantial discretion – diplomacy, non-combatant detention, and police militarization. Scholarship has long highlighted the president's first-mover status relative to other institutional actors as a key source of their power. Collectively, our argument and evidence demonstrate this applies to their relationship with successors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to identify whether there are substantive differences in the career development of men and women who have held the presidency in a Latin America country. To do this, we reconstruct the trajectory of the 162 men and women that have, under democracy, been the chief executives of their government in the region between 1978 and 2022. From the reconstruction of their political careers, we propose a classification of career profiles based on three dimensions: capital of origin, entry channel into politics, and capitalisation after leaving the presidency. The data show differentiated patterns by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The present study aimed to analyze the academic attributes of the presidents of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) over the past four decades to elucidate the trajectories of these societies' leaderships. Methods: Forty-three AANS and 43 CNS presidents of the past four decades were identified. Demographic and research productivity data were collected from publicly available sources. Results: Compared to AANS presidents, CNS presidents were younger (median = 48 years vs. 59.5 years; p

We examine the tone of the president's immigration policy speeches as a function of the political context, policy characteristics, and individual presidents in two ways. First, we describe the tone of the president's immigration rhetoric using DICTION software and its five global categories of tone. Second, we hypothesize that commonality and optimism, two categories of tone expressive of immigration policy, will co‐vary by political context, policy characteristics of immigration, and a president's approach to rhetoric. To test our expectations, we collected presidential mentions of immigration since 1953 from the Public Papers of the Presidents. Key variables, like the president's honeymoon and the post‐9/11 era, increase a president's commonality tone, and the president's approval ratings encourage greater optimism. Individual presidents also shape presidential rhetoric, indicating the importance of presidential style to immigration tone, especially for optimism. We conclude with implications of our work for the systematic study of presidential tone and the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's interconnected world, nations confront complex economic challenges. The G20 serves as a crucial forum for coordinated action, with member countries taking turns in the annual presidency. Indonesia's stewardship in 2022 was marked by a concerted focus on global economic recovery, especially in the wake of the momentum of COVID-19, and the demonstration of its leadership prowess on the international stage. This study employs qualitative research methods and national interest theory to delve into Indonesia's strategic priorities during its historic first G20 presidency in 2022. Through a meticulous analysis of Indonesia's initiatives, it becomes evident that the presidency not only advanced the interests of the G20 as a whole but also brought significant benefits to Indonesia, the ASEAN region, and developing countries worldwide. This examination underscores Indonesia's adept maneuvering and strategic engagement within the broader global economic landscape.

Political action and electoral behavior often stem from a conviction that an issue is important. Yet despite a growing literature on partisan bias, it remains unclear whether partisan attachment also affects the perceived importance of various issues. We propose a theory of partisan-motivated issue attention (PMIA), wherein citizens satisfy partisan instincts by shifting the perceived importance of an issue. We apply our theory to an issue involving a fundamental tool of the federal government—the power to deficit-spend—and test the hypothesis that partisans' concern about government overspending significantly changes depending on which party presides over deficit-spending. Leveraging pre-registered experimental and observational studies, we find strong support for this hypothesis among both Republicans and Democrats. Lastly, using text analytical methods, we also find evidence of PMIA in televised partisan media. Our study thus demonstrates that putative concern about deficit-spending contains a sizable partisan component and, more broadly, uncovers an additional means by which partisan bias guides citizens' attitude formation on policy-relevant issues in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the parliamentary system and the presidential system based on government systems. Discussions on government systems in many parts of the world coincide with periods of disruption in the existing system (Göç & Kayıkcı, 2021, p. 57). Efforts to change, which started with constitutional movements, have to produce their own truths until the right system is found. As a result, the system most suitable for the needs of the society excludes the other and creates the area where the new system will be applied somehow. The way to make a healthy comparison between the new system and the old system lies in the necessity of applying it in both systems. The parliamentary system and the presidential system were generally implemented in a way that substitutes one for the other. In terms of the comparison of the two systems, both systems will be examined in detail in this study. The presidential system is one of the forms of government of the representative regime and is a form of government agreed upon as a result of the long deliberations of the constituent assembly of the “United States Constitution” of 1787, which is considered one of the first written constitutions. The parliamentary system, on the other hand, is the manifestation of representative democracy, a form of government in which the parliament plays a strong role in the execution of the system, and the prime minister and ministries have a significant share in the system. Thanks to this study, both government systems will be examined in detail further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Security Council (NSC) is the preeminent national security feature of the modern U.S. presidency. The NSC is the president's council, but presidents have varied dramatically in how frequently they have convened formal meetings of the NSC since the NSC system was created in 1947. Under what conditions are presidents likely to hold NSC meetings? I argue that presidents are pragmatic about when to engage personally in national security affairs and that presidents are incentivized to conduct NSC meetings more frequently early in a presidency. Using a novel data set of all NSC meetings from 1947 to 1993, I find that presidents are likely to hold NSC meetings most frequently in the first year of office and that NSC meeting frequency is likely to decline substantially over a president's first 3 years in office, even after controlling for important international security conditions and domestic political factors previously thought to influence presidential national security behavior. The results affirm prior scholars' description of the NSC as a presidential mechanism for international crisis management but also suggest that time in office is an important determinant of presidential national security behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sakarya University Journal of Law Faculty (SHD) is the property of Sakarya University Journal of Law Faculty (SHD) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

White House spaces and offices are not created equal. The spaces that constitute the offices of the president are distinctive, familiar, and publicly translatable assets of statecraft. Whether in the Oval Office, the Treaty Room, aboard Air Force One, or even in the Rose Garden their use is designed to deliver information and send an influential signal to the public. Many of the offices of the president have their own cognitive profiles in the public’s mind. The utilization of physical spaces establishes a repertoire of routine and ritual that informs the public about how important a potential policy issue is. The question driving this research asks: How do the physical offices of the president function as policy instruments? We argue that physical offices can be considered policy tools under categories of (1) nodality, when they are employed as a tool to publicly rally around a policy decision and (2) authority, when they serve as a heuristic regarding command-and-control to the public. In short, the physical offices of the president facilitate policy adoption by serving as devices to communicate information about the direction and gravity of a policy decision.

A content analysis of over 1-year worth of online news coverage was undertaken to assess the impact of the election of Barack Obama, America's first Black President, on the overall portrayal of Blacks in the news. Specifically, we investigated whether the potential positive coverage of President Obama and his family displaced more stereotypic coverage of Blacks in the news than simply adding to existing stereotypical portrayals. Results indicate that Blacks achieved greater frequency in coverage compared with prior analyses. However, pervasive stereotyping and negative characterizations of Blacks persisted. Explanations for the minimal impact of the Obama family on the overall presentation of Blacks are discussed within the context of trait attribution and media stacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effects of shocks on the invisible Presidential primary in the United States. First, we build on existing models using an algorithm simulating social network shocks. Findings show that positive shocks significantly aid the lead candidate's chances of winning in the invisible primary. Negative shocks, however, are less detrimental to a lead candidate than positive shocks are helpful, as the leader is often able to survive a negative shock and still emerge victorious. Broad empirical tests demonstrate the importance of shocks as well. Beyond the importance of shocks, findings also suggest that Presidential candidate success in the invisible primary owes more to public- than elite-driven factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some narratives claim that American presidents can increase their approval ratings by nominating members of underrepresented groups to positions within the judiciary. Indeed, public opinion polls frequently show that members of the public think presidents should consider individuals from underrepresented groups when making judicial appointments. Despite the prevalence of these narratives, little research investigates how the descriptive characteristics of judicial appointments influence public evaluations of the president. We find that the public views presidents more favourably when they are more inclusive of women and minorities in their judicial appointments, and this effect is particularly strong for Democrats. The results demonstrate that presidents can increase public support by appointing individuals from underrepresented groups. This research has implications for representation and judicial selection in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new coalition government in Germany came into power at the end of 2021. The paper describes Germany’s 2022 G7 Presidency as a first major foreign policy priority and test. The article considers that this period gave the German government the opportunity to test diverse political initiatives. These include proposals in the economic and climate sphere, in the regulation of the labor market, the prospects for the global agro-industrial complex, and overcoming the consequences of the pandemic. The creation of the Climate Club has become the most ambitious project. In this regard the G7 will unify their environmental standards within the club. It will stimulate the entry into the club of countries that are also taking action to combat climate change. Additionally, we examine the of sectoral communiqués. Analysis showed that Olaf Scholz’s government did not propose any truly breakthrough initiatives. Many key ideas were duplicated from the Elmau summit in 2015. In each sectoral area, financial and military support for the Ukrainian regime was noted in the documents. In the author’s opinion, the strategic move of the German Presidency was to invite the leaders of India and South Africa to a key meeting, as well as to coordinate with the Indonesian G20 Presidency. The author comes to the conclusion that the results of the German presidency are twofold. On the one hand, despite the Ukrainian conflict, attempts have been made to develop the climate agenda. It is emphasized that main issue was the modernization of the WTO. Was put on the other hand, these topics constantly disappeared due to the topics of support for Ukraine. Most likely, the G7 once again demonstrated the soft nature of the organizational structure. The author concludes that main decisions to put pressure on Russia remained in the shadow of the sanctions packages of the European Union.

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including executive politics in an era of democratic crisis, systemic roots of authoritarian turn in contemporary U.S. politics, and threat posed by the executive branch to transparency and preservation of government records.

Copyright of Reflexión Politica is the property of Universidad Autonoma de Bucaramanga, UNAB and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Crisis leadership falls to the president, the nation's chief policymaker. In response to the global pandemic COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Namibian President Hage Geingob declared a state of emergency on March 17, 2020, under Article 26 (1) of the Namibian constitution. A national crisis is one of the most important occasions for the presidency as a rhetorical institution. Therefore, this article analyses the rhetoric of emergency used by Geingob as his political tool to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rhetorical situations (Bitzer, 1968) and the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos (Aristotle, 2007) guide this research. National crises like COVID-19 are mostly handled by presidential rhetorical performance. Since the simple declaration of a State of emergency does not provide details of the meaning of the measure, Geingob formulated a number of regulations that constitute clear meaning in terms of measures that were to be followed in order to curb the COVID-19 pandemic as a state of emergency. This research is a qualitative analysis of Geingob's use of rhetoric in announcing the COVID-19 pandemic and outlining the initial COVID-19 safety precautions. Finally, the research found that the precautionary measures were reasonable and considered Namibians' mental state during social isolation and human nature and goodness in their numerous forms. Equally, declaring a state of emergency facilitated effective governance by streamlining decision-making processes and allowing rapid action to overcome the issues posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a dynamic model in which a politician (most commonly an executive) makes authority claims that are subject to a hard constraint (administered, typically, by a court). At any period, the court is free to rule against the executive and thereby permanently halt her efforts to acquire more power. Because it appropriately cares about the executive's ability to address real-world disruptions, however, the court is always willing to affirm more authority. Neither robust electoral competition nor alternative characterizations of judicial decision-making fundamentally alters this state of affairs. Moreover, we show modest authority claims in one period yield opportunities for more substantial claims in the next. The result is an often persistent accumulation of executive authority and a degradation of judicial checks on presidential power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article reviews the emergent role of foreign policy in the political career of George H. W. Bush, one of the most influential political figures in the second half of the 20th century. More specifically, the focus of this review is Bush's steady presence in government service and his unique perspective on foreign policy. Since an attempt of this kind has been the goal of previous research, the present article builds on the existing literature with an emphasis on the role of foreign policy in a political trajectory which later came to the fore during his presidency. This review focuses on four administrations and the areas of global change from the time of Bush's entry into world politics up to his successful presidential campaign. In doing so, the study pursues the emergent role of foreign policy within Bush's lifelong pursuit with references to Cold War foreign policy examples. The article demonstrates how this role was subject to individual circumstances, global imperatives and each administration's unique approach to world affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White House spaces and offices are not created equal. The spaces that constitute the offices of the president are distinctive, familiar, and publicly translatable assets of statecraft. Whether in the Oval Office, the Treaty Room, aboard Air Force One, or even in the Rose Garden their use is designed to deliver information and send an influential signal to the public. Many of the offices of the president have their own cognitive profiles in the public's mind. The utilization of physical spaces establishes a repertoire of routine and ritual that informs the public about how important a potential policy issue is. The question driving this research asks: How do the physical offices of the president function as policy instruments? We argue that physical offices can be considered policy tools under categories of (1) nodality, when they are employed as a tool to publicly rally around a policy decision and (2) authority, when they serve as a heuristic regarding command-and-control to the public. In short, the physical offices of the president facilitate policy adoption by serving as devices to communicate information about the direction and gravity of a policy decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, one of Tisza Kálmán’s close collaborators and longtime co-leader of the Left Center Party, Kálmán Ghyczy, talks about the background of his resignation from the presidency and his withdrawal from the frontline of political life, the relationship between the two politicians, and the immediate antecedents of the decision: the Eastern question, i.e. the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina we will talk about his political judgment. Kálmán Ghyczy (1808-1888) is a somewhat forgotten, but definitely relegated to the background, figure in Hungarian historiography, although he had a 20-year acquaintance with party leader Kálmán Tisza, then multiple prime ministers, and in fact, between 1865 and 1874, they jointly led the Balközép Party, of which Ghyczy was president, a prestigious he was an orator and politician, and Tisza was his actual organizer and political leader. And between 1875 and 1879, at Tisza’s request, Ghyczy assisted the legislative work of Kálmán Tisza’s first government as Speaker of the House. Our study aims to answer what could have led to the end of this essentially 15-year-long political and working relationship, what prompted Kálmán Ghyczy to end the joint work in 1879 and retire to private life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is structured around a review of the ‘second wave’ of scholarship extending Stephen Skowronek’s presidentially centered political time theory. It introduces this theory, which is arguably the most prominent account of American long cycles being studied by Political Scientists today. Then it highlights how acolytes are making progress applying political time theory in the Comparative Politics, Public Law, and Americanist / Presidency fields. Finally, the essay turns to bring original thought to questions of interest to all students of historical cycles. Namely, it considers the nature of political time and the drivers that cause the cycle to turn.

The Czech Republic took over the presidency of the European Union Council from France during a deep crisis ignited by the aggressive Russian invasion of Ukraine. In fact, as a result of the invasion, the Czech presidency had to deal with a multitude of crises: not only the actual security crisis, that is, Russian forces attacking a country at the EUʼs border, but also an energy crisis manifested by price hikes and supply insufficiency, and an economic crisis caused by both of the above. As energy was among the priorities of the presidency, the article focuses on this area, assessing the presidencyʼs performance in strengthening the blocʼs energy security. The text focuses on electricity and natural gas markets, given the impact of the crisis on these areas and the fact that their functioning is communitarized. Retrospectively, it also takes on the topic of what the presidencyʼs main message and legacy were when it passed the proverbial baton to Sweden at the end of 2022. The research found that the agreements reached under the Czech presidency can increase the Unionʼs energy security, namely the availability and affordability of energy supplies. The presidency also showcased the Czech Republic’s ability to achieve broad agreement even on controversial points.

Polarization in the USA has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop "at the water's edge," as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congress and President? And how is polarization altering the effectiveness of US foreign policy and influencing America's role in the world? In this introductory article to our special issue "Domestic Polarization and US Foreign Policy: Ideas, Institutions, and Policy Implications," we provide an overview of key debates and existing knowledge about these questions, highlight important new findings from the contributions to the special issue, and suggest avenues for further research on this increasingly important topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent are U.S. elected officials polarized on foreign policy? And how do patterns of polarization and bipartisanship differ across policy areas? Using an original data set of nearly 3000 important congressional votes since the end of the Cold War, we find that severe polarization remains the exception rather than the norm in U.S. foreign policy debates and that the U.S. Congress is still less polarized on international than on domestic issues. We also show that foreign policy bipartisanship regularly takes several forms, including bipartisan agreement in support of the president's policies, cross-partisan coalitions, and even bipartisan opposition to the president's policies. Collectively, our findings provide a more nuanced portrait of the politics of U.S. foreign policy than many recent accounts, point to persistent differences in the political alignments associated with different policy areas, and highlight the importance of conceiving of polarization and bipartisanship as more than binary categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Medunarodni Problemi is the property of Institute of International Politics & Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)