The Particularistic President

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-1-107-03871-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 562 g

As the holders of the only office elected by the entire nation, presidents have long claimed to be sole stewards of the interests of all Americans. Scholars have largely agreed, positing the president as an important counterbalance to the parochial impulses of members of Congress. This supposed fact is often invoked in arguments for concentrating greater power in the executive branch. Douglas L. Kriner and Andrew Reeves challenge this notion and, through an examination of a diverse range of policies from disaster declarations, to base closings, to the allocation of federal spending, show that presidents, like members of Congress, are particularistic. Presidents routinely pursue policies that allocate federal resources in a way that disproportionately benefits their more narrow partisan and electoral constituencies. Though presidents publicly don the mantle of a national representative, in reality they are particularistic politicians who prioritize the needs of certain constituents over others.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kriner, Douglas L.

Reeves, Andrew

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 2. The origins of presidential particularism; 3. Base closings and trade; 4. Disaster declarations and transportation grants; 5. Federal grants and presidential particularism; 6. The electoral rewards of presidential particularism; 7. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Kriner, Douglas L.
Douglas L. Kriner is an associate professor of political science at Boston University. He is the author of After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War, which received the 2013 D. B. Hardeman Prize from the LBJ Foundation for the best book that focuses on the US Congress from the fields of biography, history, journalism, and political science. He is co-author (with Francis Shen) of The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities. His work has also appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets.

Reeves, Andrew
Andrew Reeves is an assistant professor of political science at Washington University, St Louis, and a research fellow at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. He previously held a faculty position at Boston University and has held research fellowships at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and at the Center for the Study of American Politics within the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets.