Presidential Strategy Research Articles

The Retrenchment or Continuous Global Engagement

This article investigates America's global role by addressing three research questions and a central hypothesis. The research questions explore the impact of international partnerships on U.S. engagement, presidential strategies, and evolving public sentiment. The hypothesis suggests that U.S. retrenchment influences global governance and security dynamics. The literature review covers historical perspectives, presidential approaches, public opinion, scholarly debates, and global significance. Qualitative research methods involve data synthesis and comparative analysis. The article examines how recent presidents, like Obama, Trump, and Biden, approached global engagement. It notes shifts in American public opinion from skepticism to divided perspectives on domestic priorities versus global involvement. Scholarly debates encompass retrenchment, realism, and the importance of U.S. global leadership. The study emphasizes the need for continued American leadership in maintaining global stability, promoting democracy, and addressing emerging challenges. In conclusion, this article provides a succinct examination of America's worldwide role, emphasizing its complex dynamics and the vital significance of continued U.S. leadership in the international sphere.
 
 Received: 4 October 2023 / Accepted: 21 December 2023 / Published: 5 January 2024

Bureaucratic professionalization and cabinet management: How civil servants in presidential democracies are treated differently

AbstractHow does bureaucratic structure shape presidential strategy in managing top executive posts? The comparative literature on cabinet formation focuses heavily on presidential legislative strategy, largely overlooking the administrative dimension of cabinet management. This article fills this gap by examining how bureaucratic professionalization shapes the president's strategy in distributing and managing cabinet posts. We argue that as bureaucracies become more autonomous via professionalization, ministers from the bureaucracy are more likely to be central players in presidential cabinet management. Our analysis of original data on 1538 ministers' cabinet careers from 26 presidential administrations in four Asian democracies shows that bureaucrats are more likely to receive and retain cabinet posts in key policy areas as bureaucratic professionalization increases, whereas they are less likely to do so with decreasing bureaucratic professionalization. This finding suggests that presidential cabinet management follows a different set of rules according to the level of bureaucratic professionalization.

Ministerial stability during presidential approval crises: The moderating effect of ministers’ attributes on dismissals in Brazil and Chile

This article analyses the effect of ministers’ exposure to periods of low presidential approval in Brazil and Chile between 1990 and 2014. Approval is explored with quarterly estimates using a dyad-ratios algorithm and merged into a time-dependent cabinet data set to evaluate individual ministerial terminations ( N = 4245). The empirical strategy combines time-varying exposure Cox regressions with observational data and propensity score and matching to estimate the effect of low approval on ministerial survival and perform a moderation analysis with three profiles associated with presidential strategies: (1) nonpartisan ministers to limit agency loss and moral hazard; (2) economists as ministers to optimise cabinet performance and send positive signals to the electorate; and (3) party leaders as ministers to optimise legislative support. The main findings show that risk increases by 135.1% in periods of low approval. In addition, approximately only one in five nonpartisan ministers is removed compared to party members.

Presidential Strategy amidst the “Broken” Appointments Process

AbstractOne of the notable features of the most recent presidential administrations has been the increasing prevalence of vacancies in presidentially appointed and Senate‐confirmed positions. This article explains when and how presidents actively take control of those positions once they become vacant. It evaluates its claims with original data on the most important Senate‐confirmed positions during the first year of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, with a total of nearly 5,000 quarterly observations of 1,009 administration‐position cases. Estimates from Markov multistate models reveal that presidents use non‐default acting officials more frequently in ideologically opposed agencies, agencies connected to their campaign priorities, and the highest tier of leadership positions. Further, presidents pursue confirmation sparingly, often opting instead to use non‐default acting officials for extended periods of time. These results suggest that presidents have significant discretion over the leadership of the executive establishment that is at odds with our separation of powers system of government and the Senate's constitutional role to provide advice and consent on presidential appointees.

Presidential Strategies in Statements of Administration Policy

Presidents routinely employ Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs) to inform Congress about the executive's thoughts and position on pending legislation. Such statements are used for a variety of purposes, including bill promotion, suggesting changes, issuing veto threats, and addressing perceived threats to traditional powers. While SAPs have been identified as an important vehicle for interbranch communication and a key source of insight into presidential preferences, many questions remain as to how presidents make use of SAPs' full range of potential. Using a novel data set of over 4,600 SAPs across multiple administrations, we explore the content of these interbranch communications to uncover how, when, and why presidents use such statements over time. Ultimately, we demonstrate the many ways that presidential use of SAPs is strategic based on political contexts.

¿A quién escucha Bolsonaro en contexto de emergencia? Construyendo un marco analítico para el estudio de las redes informales de asesoría presidencial durante la pandemia de Covid-19 en Brasil

A pesar de las evidencias sobre los asesores informales de los presidentes en América Latina, la literatura sobre el tema aún es incipiente. Esteartículo investiga el escenario informativo que rodeó al presidente brasileño,Jair Bolsonaro, de enero a abril de 2020, un período de toma de decisionespresidenciales sobre las medidas para combatir la pandemia de Covid-19. Paraeso, se realiza un estudio de caso de las interacciones establecidas por el presidente brasileño basado en los registros de la Agenda del Presidente. Se utilizanherramientas de análisis de redes sociales (SNA) para examinar las evidencias.Los resultados indican que el Ministerio de Salud no fue el principal canal deinformación del presidente al principio de la pandemia a pesar de su papel central en la estructura de gobernanza nacional de emergencia en salud pública.Además, revelan la elección del presidente de utilizar la presidencia como suprincipal soporte informativo, incluso fortaleciéndolo a través de sus poderes. 

Будущее Европы: политическая дискуссия о перспективах интеграционного проекта ЕС

The European integration project as designed by its founders seventy years ago is experiencing difficulties in the current conditions of globalization, confronting challenges which were unpredictable beforehand. Many of these are of crucial character for the European Union, putting in question its constitutional organization, institutional structure, and political sustainability in the international balance of power. The list of most important issues includes ones like the yet incomplete character of the Union’s legal construction, which is balanced between supranational and national forms of regulation; the erosion of legitimacy of European institutions; the growing democracy deficits in transnational and national governance; the decline of solidarity in inter-governmental relations; and the falling level of accountability and decision-making mechanisms in Europe. The very natural response to these problems was a Pan-European discussion, stimulated by European elites after Brexit, on the future of the European project in order to frame existing opinions, provide a fresh start to “the European dream”, and possibly find appropriate solutions to legitimacy problems. An analysis of this ongoing discussion is the main subject of this article. This analysis involves such key issues as the future role of the EU founding agreements, as to keeping them or amending them in order to reconstruct the European constitutional settlement. It demonstrates the complex nature of the basic communitarian concept, in view of its various interpretations by different ideological trends such as cosmopolitism and confederation and federation movements. It explores the current agenda of institutional reforms involving parliamentarian and presidential strategies and reviews proposed solutions of the European leadership problem. The conclusion of the article makes it clear that the European Union is confronted today with the most dramatic challenge in its entire history. It consists in the necessity of making a decisive choice between two polar options — to preserve an amorphous conglomerate of states or to establish a new federal state. This must be done in a rather short period in order to avoid falling apart and to become a full-fledged and independent global political player.

Ideology, Unionization, and Personnel Politics in the Federal Budget Process

AbstractThis article studies how administrations seek to shape the federal workforce through the budget process. I develop a theory of personnel politics in which presidents balance ideological and interest group demands in distributing human resources across the federal government. I argue administrations advantage organizations with which they are ideologically aligned and that agencies with higher levels of union penetration see increased budgeted personnel levels, particularly during Democratic presidencies. Using an original dataset of budgeted personnel levels from fiscal years (FY) 1983–2016 and a series of regression analyses, I find strong support for these hypotheses. I also examine the sensitivity of presidential strategy to congressional preferences, agency professionalization, and leadership politicization, providing insights into how this control strategy interacts with the broader environment. Overall, these results have implications for understanding the political dynamics of human capital and capacity in the federal bureaucracy, the administrative presidency, and the politics of performance in federal agencies.

Small versus Statewide Parties: How Subnational Contestation and Decentralisation Influence Presidential Elections in Europe and Latin America

Shugart and Carey were among the first scholars to recognise that there is a relationship between regional and local – or subnational – electoral forces and the presidential race. Yet because of a lack of subnational electoral data, this relationship has largely remained unexplored. We elaborate on Shugart and Carey’s theory to argue that the effects of decentralisation are conditional on a party’s presence in subnational elections for determining when and why parties enter the presidential race. Using an original dataset of subnational electoral results and presidential strategies in 17 countries in Europe and Latin America from 1990 to 2013, we find that parties with a small presence in subnational elections are more likely to compete for the presidency under more extensive decentralisation. Statewide parties, however, contest presidential elections regardless of level of decentralisation. These findings have important implications for understanding Shugart and Carey’s expectation that subnational contestation influences national party systems, presidential elections and democratic representation more generally.

Waiting for the US Grand Strategy on China. A Summary of Findings and Recommendations of the US-China Security Review Commission in 2002–2018.

The article is a summary of works of almost two decades of the US-China Security Review Commission. As the US Congress notices the challenges posed by China to a wide spectrum of US interests and orders the US President to develop a comprehensive strategy on China, author highlights that such an awareness was already present among US officials much earlier. Article focuses on three key areas, i.e.: geostrategic posture, military posture and technological development, anticipating, that most of the problem defined by the Commission in these areas have not been eliminated and are most likely to be observed by the creator of the upcoming strategy. Author argues that China has a significant advantage over US, resulting from two major factors. First, its the inflow of capital followed by inflow of US technologies to Chinese industries and businesses. Second, it’s the centrally planned and governed Chinese system that allows CCP to steer the economy and society with higher predictability, as opposed to freedom-based economy on the US side, which is independent of the Congressional/ Administrational guidance.<br/>The article’s overall goal is to allow readers a better insight into the Presidential Strategy on China, which is to be published 180 days from the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2019.

GREAT MIGRATION POLITICS

AbstractThe Great Migration fundamentally reshaped Northern electorates. Millions of Black voters, who had been unable to vote in the South, became eligible to vote through their resettlement in the North. In many instances, parties and politicians believed that Black voters were the balance of power in elections. This belief led them to change their approaches and make specific appeals to Black voters in an effort to win their support. Although scholars of American politics have revised the dominant narrative about the development of the Democratic Party on issues related to race, they fail to account for the role of Black voters in contributing to the Party’s change. The goal of this work is to describe how the Great Migration influenced Democratic Party interactions with Black voters in presidential elections from 1948–1960. I argue that increasing competition between the Democratic and Republican Parties, coupled with Black migrants’ location in electorally important states, made Black voters an important target of presidential campaign strategy in the post-war era.

CZEKAJĄC NA WIELKĄ STRATEGIĘ USA W STOSUNKU DO CHIN. PODSUMOWANIE USTALEŃ I ZALECEŃ KOMISJI PRZEGLĄDU BEZPIECZEŃSTWA RELACJI USA–CHINY W LATACH 2002-2018

The article is a summary of works of almost two decades of the US-China Security Review Commission. As the US Congress notices the challenges posed by China to a wide spectrum of US interests and orders the US President to develop a comprehensive strategy on China, author highlights that such an awareness was already present among US officials much earlier. Article focuses on three key areas, i.e.: geostrategic posture, military posture and technological development, anticipating, that most of the problem defined by the Commission in these areas have not been eliminated and are most likely to be observed by the creator of the upcoming strategy. Author argues that China has a significant advantage over US, resulting from two major factors. First, its the inflow of capital followed by inflow of US technologies to Chinese industries and businesses. Second, it’s the centrally planned and governed Chinese system that allows CCP to steer the economy and society with higher predictability, as opposed to freedom-based economy on the US side, which is independent of the Congressional/Administrational guidance. The article’s overall goal is to allow readers a better insight into the Presidential Strategy on China, which is to be published 180 days from the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2019.

Reexamining the Nineteenth-Century Presidency and Partisan Press: The Case of President Grant and the Whiskey Ring Scandal

Studies of the institutional development of the presidency and popular leadership by presidents over time lead us to contrary expectations as to how a nineteenth-century president would react to a major political scandal. Scholarship on newspapers of the late 1800s is also unclear on how a quasipartisan media, with some outlets moving toward independence, would cover a White House scandal. I find that a close analysis of the case of President Ulysses S. Grant and the Whiskey Ring scandal forces us to reconsider what we assume to be firmly modern developments in both presidential studies and media history. Though a supposedly “premodern” president, Grant still mounted a concerted effort to mitigate the damage of the scandal. Further, although the president could get his version of events across in prominent newspapers, Republican newspaper coverage was hardly reliable. Newspapers also connected politicians’ character and psychology to mistakes made in office and made presidential strategies to shape public perception clear to their audiences—emphases on political gamesmanship considered hallmarks of the modern media environment.

ПРЕЗИДЕНТСЬКІ ВИБОРИ 2016 Р. В США І АМЕРИКАНСЬКА ЗОВНІШНЬОПОЛІТИЧНА СТРАТЕГІЯ

Presidential campaign 2016, given its degree of mutual mistrust and major candidates' profiles, was among the most unusual in the American history. However both H. Clinton and D. Trump managed to formulate quite lucidly their approaches to the national foreign policy strategy. Despite widely spread belief in incompatibility of the platforms of the two leaders competing for the Oval Office, they had a lot of common in their strategic perspectives. Both vehemently argued in favor of America's active world role and shared opinion about the importance of global developments for the wellbeing of common Americans. On the other hand real differences between the strategic paradigms of the two leaders did have place. H. Clinton represented the worldview rooted mainly in her husband's presidential foreign policy, it could be categorized as more proactive version of B. Obama's liberal globalism. On his part D. Trump put forward set of messages that appeared to be a new version of the long standing US global strategy made adaptable to the changed American public moods and the realities of the early 21st century world. Some of his messages sounded like remake of old themes harking back to the times between two World Wars. Yet not clear enough Republican candidate's blueprint contained ideas which could lead to one of the most unconventional and stylistically innovative, if not exotic, presidential international strategies ever known in the American history. Immediate reaction to the election results from Z. Brzezinski and H. Kissinger – two major national authorities in the field of international strategy -- supported the presumption about the expectable differences between D. Trump's electoral rhetoric and his steering of the American foreign policy from the White House. However presidential race 2016 left more questions open than answered when the forthcoming national international strategy is concerned. Thus the initial period of D. Trump presidency had all chances to become the time of prolonged and uneasy efforts of America to make its world strategy compatible with the increasingly complex world.

The Politics of Credit in Presidential Signing Statements

The separation of powers often makes it difficult to understand who is responsible for legislative outcomes. Both members of Congress and presidents seek to shape perceptions of policy responsibility to their advantage. Yet, the relative size of the president's rhetorical stage gives him disproportionate influence in molding these discussions at critical moments. Given these circumstances, how, when, and why, do presidents claim credit for themselves and attribute credit to members of Congress for legislation? Using an original dataset based upon a content analysis of all presidential signing statements from 1985–2008, we find that presidential strategies to claim and attribute credit for laws are greatly impacted by both political context (approval, divided government, midterm elections, and party power) and bill-specific attributes (appropriations, salience, and veto threats). The theory and results highlight the importance of taking multiple institutions into account when thinking about credit.

Coordination and presidential coattails

Parties often enter pre-election coalitions (PECs) in presidential elections while remaining independent in legislative races. Parties that support a presidential candidate should see legislative gains given the increase in their national electoral profile. Yet fewer presidential candidates often leads to fewer legislative parties, suggesting that participation in PECs reduces parties’ independent legislative representation. In this article, we examine how specific strategies in the presidential race affect parties’ legislative vote share. Using an original dataset of over 2300 party-level observations in 23 democracies across Europe and South America from 1975 to 2010, we show that the benefits of a party’s presidential strategy are conditional on its size. We find that smaller parties benefit from coattails when they run on their own or lead a PEC, while no parties benefit from joining a PEC. Our findings have important implications for understanding how parties’ presidential strategies influence their legislative success and system-level legislative fragmentation.

Analysis on Presidential Endorsement Speech's Characteristics and Strategies

Analysis on Presidential Endorsement Speech's Characteristics and Strategies

Signing Statements, Gridlock, and Presidential Strategy

During George W. Bush's second term, controversy emerged over president's perceived handling of hundreds of duly enacted congressional statutes. Phillip Cooper (2005) was among first to call attention to Bush's propensity for using signing statements as a way to construe intent of a bill he had just signed, and others quickly followed suit. Charlie Savage of Boston Globe reported in early 2006 that President Bush has quietly claimed authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, and a year later, American Bar Association (2006, 1) released a report decrying the misuse of presidential signing statements, urging a different course of action that would limit undue presidential influence. A surge in research on presidential signing statements followed in wake of controversy (Berry 2009; Conley 2011; Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2009, 2010; Korzi 2011; Ostrander and Sievert 2013; Sollenberger and Rozell 2011). The belief that Bush's usage of signing statements was unprecedented (Savage 2006) was significantly overstated, but nevertheless, focus among many presidential scholars, especially scholars of unilateral presidential power, began to shift to causes and consequences of signing statements. Signing statements are not new, but perception at least is that their use is consequential, prompting many to ponder when and why will use these statements. Extant research has advanced two theories about use of presidential signing statements. The first is a political perspective, which holds that signing statements are at least in part a reaction to ideological differences with Congress (Berry 2009; Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010; Whitford 2012). The second view is a separation of powers perspective, which takes signing statement as a presidential reaction to infringement by Congress on powers of president (Evans 2011; Ostrander and Sievert 2012). This view holds that political considerations can be secondary to more fundamental presidential concerns about encroachment of Congress on president's prerogatives. As Ostrander and Sievert (2012, 10) write, presidents and Congress are interested not only in policy outcomes but also in their relative balance of power vis-a-vis one another. These two views are not mutually exclusive. Berry (2009) and Kelley and Marshall (2008) contend that institutional prerogatives matter to president when it comes to use of signing statements. Thus, signing statement is, as Ostrander and Sievert suggest, a story of multiple considerations, meeting together to shape presidential strategy. However, scholars have not adequately considered ideological differences between president and Congress as well as gridlock within Congress when developing models to test usage of signing statements. Principally, measures of separation between two branches have largely been dichotomized to represent differences between unified and divided government (Berry 2009; Kelley and Marshall 2008; Ostrander and Sievert 2012). When ideology is considered (Kelley and Marshall 2010), it is done independent of gridlock within Congress. This article argues that varying levels of legislative gridlock interact with nature of Congress's relationship to president (i.e., whether government is unified or divided) to change presidential motivations and use of signing statements. Gridlock and Presidential Strategy Gridlock and divided government, when visited in conjunction with study of legislative productivity and government action, received quite a beating in realm of public opinion and among scholars for years before David Mayhew's (1991) groundbreaking study. James Sundquist (1988, 629) captured conventional wisdom of time when he described divided government as both unhealthy and debilitating. However, with Mayhew (1991) came argument that divided government hampers legislative productivity (at least in face of important legislation) either not at all or not as much as is expected. …

From Ministries to Elective Offices: Partisan and Presidential Strategies to Candidates' Recruitment

This paper analyses ministerial experience as partisan and presidential strategies to foster political career of technocrats ministers under coalition government in Brazil widening the supply of candidates to electoral competition. Former technocrats ministers have become party members and have increased the candidates' supply for elective offices. This trend has challenged the current view of ministerial nomination of technocrats as a presidential strategy to overcome the politicization effects on executive performance. We explain this move as an alternative recruitment of new candidates for electoral competition. We explore the hypothesis that the likelihood of a technocrat minister to be a candidate Increases when they are informally linked with the party responsible for her nomination; they took part in policy communities related to ministerial jurisdiction; ministry is organized alongside to federative structures; if ministerial policies have distributive effects; the minister's visibility and his activism into parliamentary and executive settings; the salience of policy areas. This study explores news implications of coalition politics, focusing on the opportunities for candidate recruitment by ministerial selection.

O Partido Comunista Brasileiro e o governo João Goulart

O artigo tem por objetivo conhecer as estratégias e a atuação do Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) durante o governo Goulart. Os comunistas tiveram diferentes posturas nesse período: na fase parlamentarista de governo, o partido demonstrou distanciamento crítico em relação ao presidente da República. A seguir, durante todo o ano de 1963, o PCB foi opositor de Goulart, recusando a estratégia presidencial de aliar o PTB ao PSD para alcançar maioria no Congresso Nacional. Por fim, de fins de 1963 até o golpe militar no ano seguinte, os comunistas tornaram-se aliados do presidente. A mudança foi motivada pela decisão de Goulart de romper com o PSD e governar com o apoio político das esquerdas.