Presidential Power: The Power Of The American President

While relationship between the legislative, executive and judiciary largely remained the same, the public perception of President’s place in system has changed (Jeffrey Tulis, 1990). In the twentieth century, a strong executive emerged and was institutionalized in American national politics. Even though the framers anticipated that Congress would be the predominant branch of government, contemporary presidents wield formidable formal and informal resources of governance. As a result, the public expectations of presidents have grown and created a gap between expectations and formal powers. In an attempt to explain presidential power and its limits, four major often conflicting theories of presidential power has emerged in the last four decades.
To Neustadt, “presidential power is the power to persuade” (Nuestadt, 11). Persuasion and bargaining are the means that presidents use to influence policy. Presidents need to “bargain” to influence both Congress and the executive branch. Neustadt argues that presidents cannot lead directly. In other words, just because a president says he wants something done does not mean it will be so. Instead, presidential power is function of his or her ability to persuade relevant Washington actors (staff, congressmen, bureaucrats) that it is in their interest to cooperate. In short, powerful, or successful, presidents are those that can bargain effectively with relevant actors. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) being the best example of a successful
Howell’s theory of unilateral action describes a more isolated president. But this does not mean that his insistence on unilateral presidential action is not valid or does not provide us with a valuable model for analyzing presidential power. Howell is certainly right in pointing that Congressional oversight is made more difficult by the multiplication of the unilateral tools the President can use to alter policies. The criticism stems from the fact that his book’s title seems to give the impression that his theory comes as an irreconcilable alternative to Neustadt’s version of presidential power of “persuasiveness”. Alternatively, Neustadt’s theory suffers from an institutional level analysis. Skrownek (1991) in his book, “The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton” have suggested that there are clear patterns of contextual circumstances that may explain the variation in presidential leadership. While not denying a role of personal attributes he clearly demonstrated that personal contributions of presidents cannot be truly understood without an appreciation of the institutional contexts in which they operate (Skrownek