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The bureaucracy in the United States has a hand in almost all aspects of our lives, from the water we drink to the parts in our cars. For a force so influential and pervasive, however, this body of all nonelective government officials remains an enigmatic, impersonal entity. The literature of bureaucratic theory is rife with contradictions and mysteries. Bureaucrats, Politics, and the Environment attempts to clarify some of these problems. The authors surveyed the workers at two agencies: enforcement personnel from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and employees of the New Mexico Environment Department. By examining what they think about politics, the environment, their budgets, and the other institutions and agencies with which they interact, this work puts a face on the bureaucracy and provides an explanation for its actions.
Offering readable case studies and well-paired figures and tables (presented in both technical and nontechnical fashion), Bureaucratic Dynamics uses principal-agent theory to explain how the public policy system works.
This classic text on the American presidency analyzes the institution and the presidents who hold the office through the key lens of leadership. Edwards, Mayer, and Wayne explain the leadership dilemma presidents face and their institutional, political, and personal capacities to meet it. Two models of presidential leadership help us understand the institution: one in which a strong president dominates the political environment as a director of change, and another in which the president performs a more limited role as facilitator of change. Each model provides an insightful perspectives to better understand leadership in the modern presidency and to evaluate the performance of individual pre...
A collection of compelling analyses by eminent scholars, Presidential Leadership: The Vortex of Power looks at presidential leadership from a variety of perspectives, integrating cutting-edge research on both the incentives and the constraints presidents face in their attempts to lead the country. These original readings contextualize presidential leadership in relation to Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, the media, and the public. Furthermore, the essays include discussions on executive decision making and both domestic and national security issues.
This book takes a social science approach to address two related questions: (1) what does Donald Trump say on Twitter? and (2) why? Since entering the 2016 Presidential Election, Donald Trump’s tweets have been a major part of his communications strategy with the public. While the popular media has devoted considerable attention to selected tweets, it is less clear what those selected tweets tell us about Trump the businessman, the political candidate, and, finally, the President of the United States. We argue that to fully understand Trump, we must take a more comprehensive approach to examining all of his activities on Twitter. Overall, our analysis presents a strikingly complex picture of Trump and how he uses Twitter. Not only has his pattern of tweets changed over time, we find that Trump’s use of Twitter is more deliberate than he has been given credit. Like most other politicians, Trump is strategically-minded about his presence on social media.
Image is everything. Today, our television and movie stars, our athletes, and our politicians carefully craft images for public consumption. Even our country's Executive Chief is not immune to a bit of image manipulation. If presidents can not always actually satisfy the public's excessive, contradictory, and unrealistic expectations, they can at l
This book examines whether differences in the organizational structure of armed groups shape patterns of human rights violations in civil wars. Since the end of World War II, civil wars have been characterized by extremely high numbers of civilian casualties. However, the exact extent of civilian suffering varies across time, conflict, and geographic region. Recently, a new strand of research has emerged, primarily focused on studying the dynamics underlying the variation in civilian abuse by examining the characteristics of the armed groups and how these characteristics influence the armed groups’ behaviour towards the civilian population. With reference to principal-agent theory and data...
Charles Walcott and Karen Hult maintain that the organization of the White House influences presidential performance much more than commonly thought and that organization theory is an essential tool for understanding that influence. Their book offers the first systematic application of organizational governance theory to the structures and operations of the White House Office. Using organizational theory to analyze what at times has been a rather ad hoc and disorganized office might seem quixotic. After all, the White House Office exists within a turbulent political environment that encourages expedient decision-making. And every four to eight years it must be "reinvented" by presidents who ...
Employing a theory of political ecosystems, Waterman evaluates the presidency from a historical perspective, including information about changes in presidential resources, the role of the media in the emergence of the modern presidency, and other aspects in the ongoing evolution of the office.