The term was coined by Richard Nathan in his 1983 book of that title to describe efforts of Richard M. Nixon White House to gain control of federal administrative apparatus. Nixon wanted bureaucracy to be a tool of his presidency in an environment of divided government. The existence of administrative presidency had long preceded Nixon, of course. Presidents have always worried about getting bureaucracy to do what they want it to do and to not do what they do not want it to do. They often have been wary of their own appointees. Richard Fenno (1958), for example, details difficult relations between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jesse Jones, his agriculture secretary, and Richard Neustadt (1990) notes how Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of treasury, George Humphrey, sought to sabotage Eisenhower's budget proposal. Presidents also have been skeptical of legion of career bureaucrats in Washington. They often think careerists are out of tune with changes they wish to bring about. Nixon, of course, did carry these concerns and, at very least, responded to them in ways that tilted balance of power within bureaucracy and across political institutions decidedly in president's favor. In view of Nixon's downfall and Congress's reaction to his initiatives, administrative presidency strategy was overshadowed by conditions that beset Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter presidencies, each of whom had their struggles with Congress. The appointments system traditionally has been a tool for president's party. It remains so. But it also has come to reflect efforts of presidents to get appointees to conform enthusiastically to president's agenda--to be president's loyal spokespersons and to move their agencies and units in ways that advance president's agenda. In Nixon's case, loyalty to president was especially prized because it was not always clear exactly what Nixon's agenda was from an ideological perspective. Among presidents with clearly defined ideological commitments, true believers in president's cause are desired, although some can be brought down by their overzealousness (e.g., Ronald Reagan and Environmental Protection Agency), and others, such as John Bolton, former ambassador to United Nations, can be thorns in administration's side when they depart from office if they believe their administration has wavered in its commitments. The practice of administrative presidency and its association with what Terry Moe (1985) has called the politicized has expanded substantially since Nixon presidency. Views of executive as a unified branch exclusively under authority of president, unilateral assertion of what parts of a law a president will and will not recognize (a kind of line-item veto), and expansive notions of executive privilege have been articulated and put into practice in recent times, beginning especially with Reagan administration and culminating extravagantly in presidency of George W. Bush. The administrative presidency and its conjoined politicized presidency are with us more than ever. Nathan described a particular presidency--that of Richard Nixon--and its tactics, enjoying vantage point of both a participant and an analyst. Moe, however, asserted that incentives structured into situation that all presidents face lead them to politicize their operations in order to get what they want. It is undoubtedly a reflection of impact of Moe's seminal work that two of his former students--who, of course, have their own perspectives--are represented in this special issue on administrative presidency. The articles in this issue cover a variety of approaches to and perspectives on administrative presidency. They offer both positive and normative assessments of this phenomenon. They assess tools of administrative presidency, raise questions about how effectively they can be applied, and ask what consequences of administrative presidency are. …