Managing the President's Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation

Extract

Managing the President's Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation. By Andrew Rudalevige. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 292p. $65.00.

This book responds effectively to a theoretical challenge with an empirical analysis. The author addresses the proposition that successive presidents have increasingly centralized policy development in the White House to the detriment of the departments. The linear trend is said to be in response to the political demands on presidents to control their own programs. Andrew Rudalevige qualifies the theory out of existence by so broadening it that it disappears. He supplies a rich, empirical model in which presidents employ centralized, balanced, and decentralized approaches for developing policy as deliberate strategies as they perceive the different kinds of political capital and expertise involved in given cases. He finds no linear trend at all. All presidents since Harry Truman have used the White House to develop policies, but not to an increasing degree. Centralization is contingent.