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On the heels of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1973), contended the presidency had become too powerful, essentially 'imperial' in nature. Today, concern over a new, 'unitary' presidency, perhaps a 'new imperial presidency' wielding unconstitutional authority unchecked by Congress, has resurfaced (Howell, 2003; Rudalegive, 2005). In response, this dissertation asks two critical questions: What are the determinants of presidential imperial behavior? And secondly, is the imperial presidency an ongoing component of the modern presidency? To evaluate those questions, I apply a multi-level analysis to the Vietnam War, George W. Bush's War on Terror, and the Reagan Administration's handling of both the Iranian arms for hostage dealings and civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Specifically, I draw on the theoretical approaches formulated from the field of Foreign Policy Analysis, a sub-field of International Relations theory. Counter to conventional wisdom, I argue that the 'imperial presidency' is in fact a continual, if at times dormant, component of the modern presidency beginning with the Cold War. The president's evaluation of threats to their administration's military policy agenda serves as our primary independent variable and is strongly influenced by the associated level of domestic policy support stemming from two interactive, intervening variables; the United States Congress and the views of the American public. A third element is found in the American media, which serves as a conduit between Congress, the public and the presidency itself. When support among these three audiences is strong, presidents hold a free hand. Where support is weak, policy limitations exist. However, where support is weak, but the threat to the president's military priorities are perceived by the administration as significant, I argue they have been willing to ignore domestic constraints and proceed in an imperial manner. Those imperial actions represent the study's dependent variable.

In 2007 the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) was reformed by the introduction of the so-called trio Presidency . The trio mechanism encourages policy continuity by grouping incumbent Presidencies in teams of three and inviting them to coordinate. This thesis seeks to contribute original knowledge on EU policy-making by mapping how trio practices are established, exploring which factors explain how Member States coordinate, and by assessing how the trio arrangement affects the EU agenda. Empirically, the trio function is examined through its implementation in the policy area of sport, focusing on the three trios to assume office after the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. The analysis is structured around a number of carefully selected dossiers adopted between 2010 and 2013. Guided by a conceptual framework based on agenda-setting and new institutionalism, these decisions are submitted to in depth process-tracing. The analysis draws on qualitative research, primarily official documents and 37 semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that actors approach the trio with differing preferences and expectations, leading to much variation in how the arrangement is performed. The thesis identifies a number of factors that explain variation. Thus, a fixed agenda supports trios in coordinating priorities and activities ex ante. Moreover, coordination is conditioned by trio composition, as federal and new Member States are more inclined to cooperate. Further, trio practices are shaped by factors such as multiannual planning and focusing events, with the intenseness of trio coordination reflecting whether the agenda includes issues that demand sustained attention. The thesis concludes that the introduction of the trio mechanism has preserved the ability of Member States to use the Council Presidency to prioritise national priorities whilst also encouraging and facilitating EU policy continuity. By extending agenda-management beyond a six month spell, the trio can strengthen the agenda-setting powers of incumbent Member States, particularly on issues that concern establishing urgent responses or developing Council procedures. Moreover, evidence suggests that the arrangement can produce a specific spirit of collegiality, trio solidarity, which sees trio Member States support each other during negotiations, thus affecting EU policy-making beyond agenda-management.

The struggle between the President and the Congress over the power to control the use of military force is an enduring dimension of U.S. foreign policy. In the 20th century Arthur Schlesinger labeled the growth of Presidential war power the “Imperial Presidency.” While some scholars have attempted to explain the expansion of Presidential power based on the Cold War or nuclear weapons, there has been little work studying the link between America’s ascending role in international legal frameworks and this domestic legal transformation. In this dissertation, I argue that America’s participation in international legal frameworks, such as the United Nations and NATO, has been a central factor in enabling the growth of Presidential war power. These international frameworks allow the President to circumvent Congress and to assert that the use of military force was something other than a ‘war’ that would need Congressional authorization. In case studies of pre-WWII aid to Great Britain, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, I demonstrate how the rise of executive war power relied on America’s growing participation in international legal frameworks. The dissertation contributes to the nexus of International Relations and Constitutional scholarship. It offers a unique interpretation of Presidential war power while also offering new insights on the nature of the United States’ relationship with international legal frameworks. I argue that participation in international legal frameworks has been ‘democracy-undermining’ as the President utilizes those frameworks to circumvent the Constitution’s restrictions on Presidential war power.

In virtually every military crisis encountered by the United States, questions of the authorityunder which the president is acting (and whether the legislature should grant some kind of authorization) are heavily debated in Congress and in the press. Despite this, political science has given little attention to the war powers debate in domestic politics and even less to the effect such internal discussion has on perceived American credibility internationally. This project proposes a theory of how the war powers have worked in actual practice since the end of the Second World War, and then demonstrates the explanatory value of the theory through both quantitative and qualitative evidence. In contrast to the conventional wisdom of an “Imperial Presidency” and the irrelevance of congressional war powers since 1945, this project suggests questions of war powers have consistently featured prominently in both executive branch decision-making and in the perceived credibility of American threats in the eyes of U.S. allies and adversaries.

The development of a “modern” presidency during the first three decades of the twentieth century shaped scholarly understandings of the presidency. Proponents of this view characterize the shift from a traditional to a modern presidency as abrupt and transformative, implying the non-comparability of presidents and the presidency across this dividing line. In this project, I argue that the modern presidency view overlooks the ability of individual presidents to alter their institutional environment. I develop a theory of institutional development that centers on presidential entrepreneurship. My theory claims that presidents can enhance their institutional authority by constructing their authority in novel ways and by deploying the institutional capacity of the executive branch in creative ways. To further develop my theory, I narrow my empirical focus to a single domain of governance in the nineteenth century – the maintenance of domestic order. I use process tracing methods within a set of cases to refine and evaluate the validity of my theory. My analysis of the cases was based on a wide range of evidence including digitized archival collections, presidential documents digitized by the American Presidency Project, congressional documents and historical newspapers digitized by ProQuest, and biographies and policy histories. I first analyzed a most-likely case for observing presidential entrepreneurship. The passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the use of the military against the Klan in South Carolina in 1871 were both driven by presidential entrepreneurship, providing preliminary validation of my theory’s explanatory value. I then analyzed two least-likely cases in which my theory would not expect presidential entrepreneurship to play a significant role. The Lincoln County War in the New Mexico territory from 1878-1880 and lawlessness in the Arizona territory from 1881-1882 were minor territorial disorders. Nevertheless, presidential entrepreneurship was present in the Lincoln County War, providing further corroboration of my theory’s validity. My project develops a new theory to explain the development of presidential authority that centers on the entrepreneurial actions of presidents. My theory is supported by the most-likely and least-likely cases analyzed in this project. While my research design does not directly test my theory against the modern presidency, it presents a plausible and supported alternative explanation. In doing so, my project will allow for future theory-building and theory-testing about the development of the American presidency.

I argue that understanding executive action requires examining the conditions that precede and motivate that action. In a series of three papers, I explore those conditions. The first paper studies how Congressional anticipation of presidential unilateralism conditions the production of legislation. If members of Congress can anticipate unilateral action, their failure to legislate cannot be explained by ``gridlock intervals'' in a standard spatial model. I argue instead that they may willingly surrender authority to the president to head off potential attacks from voters or interest groups. This helps to explain the president's accumulation of authority over time. More broadly, I argue that just as a large literature has examined outside pressure on Congress in isolation, we should examine its influence in the presence of the president's unilateral powers.The second paper examines credible political communication, which may include symbolic executive orders. I present a cheap talk model in which a politician (sender) is aligned with one of two opposed groups (receivers) and seeks to communicate her preferences to win support. An increase in the weaker group's capacity may enable credible communication by the opposed type of politician, ironically making the weaker group worse-off. I illustrate the model with the case of the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, in which Donald Trump credibly communicated alignment with anti-immigration groups through harsh messaging against immigrants, whose power was increasing. More broadly, the model and case show how shifts in relative group power can enable politicians to use messaging to assemble novel political coalitions.The third paper (coauthored with Joseph Warren) presents a novel explanation for the origins of bureaucratic agencies, which are an important venue for executive action. Early support for expert policymaking through administrative agencies was rooted in concerns over political power. We argue that potential policy feedback effects made an anti-business coalition between liberals and populists in the late 19th-century United States unachievable. However, agencies diminished feedback effects and facilitated a successful progressive-liberal coalition. The strategic dilemma created by a changing distribution of power thus explains the development of broad political support for bureaucratic agencies.

Research in the last two decades has established that administrative powers are central to the president’s agenda. My dissertation is a three-paper compilation that answers several remaining questions about how these powers relate to other parts of the political system. The first chapter, “The Limits to Power without Persuasion,” co-authored with Matt Dickinson, argues that executive orders are imperfect substitutes for legislation. We show that an increase in the number of significant executive orders issued does not correspond to a decrease in the number of legislative proposals the president sends to Congress. A case study of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which the president created first as a small office by executive order before supporting legislation for a department, suggests that executive orders are likely to be the first move in a policymaking process, because they offer advantages like speed while legislation offers durability and comprehensiveness. Examining the generality of this case, we find that presidents sometimes follow significant orders with proposals to enshrine them in statute. Our research supports viewing orders as a tool in the president’s toolbox rather than a challenge to the legislative process. The second chapter, “Does the Messenger Matter?,” presents a survey experiment to test whether presidents can influence public support for the policies of their administration by manipulating whether they’re seen as taking the policy action themselves. I find that, in most cases, manipulating whether the president, an agency, or the government is responsible for a policy has no effect on whether survey respondents support the policy. Instead, respondent partisanship is the biggest factor in explaining policy support. In less salient cases, "presidentializing" policy may polarize public opinion by lowering support among those inthe opposite party. The results affirm the importance of partisanship to public opinion and the limited ability of the president to manipulate credit and blame for the actions of his administration. The third chapter, “How Unilateral is Unilateral Action?,” examines two areas of delegated presidential authority to test whether congressional constraints on administrative power vary by policy domain. I find that in land policy, where Congress gave presidents broad authority, presidents are more likely to create national monuments when Congress is gridlocked, a pattern consistent with a strong theory of unilateral action. In trade policy, where Congress left itself a continuing role by requiring reauthorization of presidential authority, presidents are less likely to issue proclamations when Congress is gridlocked, consistent with a cooperative approach to administrative action. With these cases, I show that presidents do not take executive action in a constant strategic environment, because congressional delegation often determines the limits of presidential power.

This dissertation sets out a fresh approach to understanding presidential decision-making by connecting the presidency to information processing theories. This approach to behavioral choice highlights how the structure of the presidency creates a decision-making process that relies on the cognitive and emotional capacities of the individuals in the office, while the political and policy environment put pressures on their choices. Once presidents have decided to get involved in policy making, they have to process information about the responsibilities of the office, the policy and political environment, as well as their own political strength, to make decisions about what policy areas to prioritize and what strategies they should use to pursue those policy goals. To examine those decisions and understand the forces that shape them, I analyze ten datasets of presidential actions, seven of which are original to this project: presidential press conferences, budget messages, State of the Union addresses, major televised addresses, addresses to a joint session of Congress, proclamations, memoranda, signing statements, executive orders, and veto threats. By examining these datasets of presidential policy action, from Ronald Reagan (1981) to Barack Obama (2014), we gain a clearer insight into the decisions that presidents make about the policy process, their strategies, and the factors that affect their abilities to make trade-offs between their policy priorities and strategies. This dissertation makes a contribution to the presidency and policy process literatures by moving towards a empirically-grounded study of the presidency, one which relies on the combination of theory and data to better understand the decisions that presidents make and the factors that shape those decisions.

Under what conditions do women in office leverage their power on behalf of women? Despite Latin America’s deep gender inequalities, women have democratically won the presidency more times here than in any other region in the world. Presidentas could have a major impact on these inequalities because Latin American presidents enjoy vast formal powers. Though similarly situated, Presidents Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil dramatically diverged in their use of these prerogatives to advance pro-women change. This dissertation solves the Bachelet-Rousseff puzzle with a novel, constituency-centered theory. I argue that female politicians are most likely to deploy their power to promote change favoring women when they have (1) successfully mobilized women on the basis of gender identity (core constituency); and (2) extensively networked with elite feminists and other female politicians (personal constituency). The theory explains why female politicians overall are more likely than their male counterparts to use their power to advance pro-women change, articulates the conditions under which female politicians will make a difference and predicts the kinds of pro-women policies they are most likely to pursue. It therefore provides fresh insights on the benefits and limitations of women’s presence in political office. To illustrate and test this constituency theory, I employ newspaper archives to trace the formation of constituencies of all viable candidates in Chile’s and Brazil’s presidential races from 1999-2010. I then measure the use of legislative and delegative power to advance pro-women change by the winners of these elections with three original databases. Challenging existing theories of representation, the results of the qualitative and statistical analyses support my argument that gendered and sex-related characteristics of presidents’ core and personal constituencies largely determine the extent to which and how they use of power to promote pro-women change.

This thesis examines the ways in which millennial women are prone to gender bias in their evaluations of female presidential candidates and the factors that contribute to millennial women’s gendered expectations for female presidential candidates. In order to respond to these areas of inquiry, the researcher applied social role theory and system- justification theory to survey and interview data collected from a population of Boston College undergraduate women. Ultimately, it was found that millennial women are prone to gender bias when evaluating female presidential candidates and that the gender beliefs that prompt this bias are so deeply ingrained that they appear almost inevitable.

Scholars, lawyers, and, indeed, the public at large increasingly worry about what purposive presidential inaction in enforcing statutory programs means for the rule of law and how such discretionary inaction can fit within a constitutional structure that compels Presidents to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Yet those who have recognized the problem have been hesitant to assign a role for the court in policing the constitutional limits they articulate, mostly because of the strain on judicial capacity that any formulation of Take Care Clause review would cause. In this Article, I argue that courts still can and do constrain presidential nonenforcement discretion, and that they are far better situated to do so when they operate under the rubric of conventional administrative law. Often caricatured as categorically deferential to questions of enforcement discretion, the law of agency inaction is in fact nimble enough to constrain the most egregious instances of executive overreach in nonenforcement, and unique doctrinal features, such as the doctrine of finality, give courts a safety valve to control strains on judicial capacity.

By examining the interactions between the presidency and the other branches of government, research illuminates the causes and mechanisms by which the presidency, and its power, ebbs and flows. Due to the nature of the powers directly granted to the president within the Constitution, much consideration has been given to presidential power through the prisms of national security, international affairs, and times of national emergency. Yet the presidency consists of more than the roles of commander- and diplomat-in-chief. By looking beyond the more obvious considerations of presidential power, the complexity of the institution’s development is not only revealed, but more fully explained. Consequently, this dissertation analyzes the development of presidential power by looking at the less obvious. It considers the use of formal executive tools to implement congressionally delegated and supported authority in an area of domestic policy: the creation of federally protected public lands. Instead of seeking to understand how the use of presidential power impacted an area of public policy, this research flips that perennial question on its head by asking: how has public land policy contributed to the development of presidential power? The research presented here shows, through the analysis of five public land categories, that the consistent application of executive power within this policy realm, combined with Congressional acceptance of this application, enhanced the overall power of the American presidency.

This research contributes to the current scholarship regarding the influence of domestic interest groups on United States (U.S.) foreign trade policy and it is unique in that it specifically considers the likelihood for approval of protectionist trade policy by an executive administration. It investigates this question: What is the relationship of influence between domestic interest groups and presidential trade policy protection? Research that considers this research question may have important policy implications in that it allows scholars, citizens, and state officials to better understand how interest groups influence foreign trade policy. Specifically, one may find the following contributions from this work: scrutiny of the relationship between interest groups and presidential foreign trade policy output, unique interest group operationalization, specific case study analysis of the Bush Administration's aberrant favor toward protectionist trade policy during the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) case of United States--Countervailing duty measures concerning certain products from the European Communities (WT/DS212)_2002, and insight into the influence of interest groups of various kinds as I apply my theory in a time series analysis of administrations from 1964-1992 in order to observe the accuracy of my theory across time and when considering various administrations and industries of trade.

This thesis will address the following question: Is there such a thing as the prerogative power in the presidency, and if so what are the different avenues in which the prerogative power is used by the President?

Modern presidents have increasingly engaged in public governing to reinforce their leadership role. They have also developed various administrative strategies designed to centralize bureaucratic decision making under White House authority. These actions have been prompted by changes such as a growing bureaucracy, increased partisanship, and inflated public expectations (Nathan 1983; Waterman 1989; Light 1995; Moe and Howell 1999; Rudalevige 2002; Howell 2003). One of the ways the president can juggle his role as the nation’s central political figure, exhibit leadership, and administratively communicate to the federal bureaucracy is through signing statements. Presidential signing statements are unilateral devices delivered in written or verbal form that are attached to a bill when the president signs it into law (Cooper 2002; Kelley 2003). Presidential signing statements do not have legal authority but they do become part of a bill’s legislative history and can be used as a reference during implementation (Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010). At times, they can serve to satisfy the public relations aspect of the presidency when delivered during public signing ceremonies (Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010; Korzi 2011). Previous research has shown that signing statements are designed to help the president manage the executive branch (Kelley 2007; Magill 2007; Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010; Evans 2011). This dissertation examines the administrative rhetoric of presidential signing statements through empirical analysis and illustrative examples. The dissertation adds to the presidency literature by providing insight into how bill signing statements are used as an administrative communication tool.

Two concurrent developments have been taking place in American politics over the past few decades: the development of social media and the growth of presidential power. It is the assertion of this work that the emergent social media is offering the presidency the ability to bypass the fourth estate. In short, the presidency is gaining autonomy in the 21st century not just from other governing institutions, but from the press itself. In order to document this change, this work proposes to examine the data from the current Obama administration to assess and examine how social media is changing executive governance and offering the presidency new press autonomy. Such an evolution can only serve to not only change the executive interaction with the press, but also with the populace at large.

The President performs many roles, but one role of increasing importance over time is that of Chief Manager of the Economy. In the era of the modern presidency, there has been a growing institutionalization of the executive branch’s management of the economy. Presidents approach economic management differently depending upon their personalities, management style, and their time within both the crisis and the administration. Three case studies will be used to explore the differences and similarities in presidential actions during times of economic crisis: these case studies will examine the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon, and William J. Clinton. The different methods and policy actions taken by these presidents are described as change oriented economic policy, electoral gain economic policy, and preemptive economic policy. This research will examine these methods to determine: 1.) How did each president approach economic policy? 2.) Were their approaches similar to a domestic policy or foreign policy? and 3.) What factors influence these approaches?

The battleground state is ubiquitous in the discourse and scholarship surrounding American presidential campaigns, but the concept remains poorly understood, measured, and operationalized. The nature of presidential geographic targeting carries potentially significant consequences for the nation's issue agenda, political institutions, and voter behavior, and this dissertation details the need to re-conceptualize the battleground state as both an explanatory and dependent variable if these consequences are to be better understood. Beginning with the 1960 presidential election, I use an original archival data set collected at the nation's presidential libraries to confront the myths that exist in both popular coverage and much of the existing political science literature about battleground states, and I work to correct the record. Media content analysis establishes the significant increase in attention paid to battleground strategies over time in the press. A conceptual analysis highlights both the stability and the evolution of the battleground state concept. The archival records reveal the presidential campaigns' multiple goals, the various geographic strategies adopted to meet those goals, and the elements campaigns use to prioritize geographic areas. The findings challenge many leading assumptions and expose misconceptions made about battleground strategies, and I suggest ways to improve our understanding of the concept. Next, a constitutive analysis using multiplicative interaction models explores the preconditions that guide campaign classification and campaign resource allocation patterns in presidential elections. This analysis demonstrates a fundamental shift in the factors that predict state battleground status and offers more evidence of why it is necessary to more rigorously conceptualize the battleground state. Finally, a causal analysis of the effects of the battleground state on voter evaluations of the candidates reveals the critical link between conceptualization and measurement validity. I demonstrate that different levels of measurement tell us very different stories about the causal processes of campaign effects, and I argue for the increased use of a categorical dummy variable to measure battleground status. Finally, using a block recursive model, I demonstrate that the inclusion of multiple campaign mechanisms and campaign classifications of the states in battleground effects models clarifies the direct effects of different strategies on voter behavior. In presenting these and other findings, I improve our understanding of the battleground state concept and enhance its usefulness as a tool for future research.

Of the 3,300 university and college presidents in higher education in the United States, only 23% are held by females (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2007). The percentage of female students in most institutions in higher education is higher than those of male students. The Central questions that guided this research study are as follows: What are the roles and responsibilities of presidents of higher educational institutions? How do presidents of higher education celebrate their professional and personal accomplishments? Additionally, what are the post-presidency aspirations of the eight women interviewed who all currently are in their first presidency position in either a private or public four-year institution? Qualitative research methods were used for this study. The collective case study tradition (Creswell, 2003) was used in order to capture thick, rich descriptions of the cases. Eight female college presidents in their first presidency participated in the study. Interviews, documents, and observations were collected and included in the data analysis. Within-case analyses were conducted for each participant, followed by a cross-analysis, with major themes emerging. While feminist leadership theories and culture theory were used as a lens and guided the current research, themes emerged from the study that may assist future women as they pursue presidencies in the future. Nine conclusions are presented that relate to the themes that emerged for each secondary research question. The nine conclusions were determined based on the research findings. The conclusions relate to the areas of interest for women in presidencies and/or seeking a presidency which are summarized as follows: (1) Becoming the Institution; (2) Understanding the Financial Complexities; (3) Involvement in Community, State, Regional, National Associations; (4) Family and Personal Responsibilities; (5) Professional Sacrifices; (6) Family and Personal Sacrifices; (7) Celebrations of Accomplishments; (8) Post-Presidency Aspirations; (9) Strategies for Post-Presidency Plans. Recommendations for females who aspire to become a president are detailed. Suggestions for future research are presented.

In this dissertation I advance a new, regime style, governing cycle theory to account for the constitutional origins and political dynamics of new majority formation. It is these periodic attempts to reorder politics and overcome conditions of entropy that I argue best account for the broad contours of American political development. Using a historical institutional approach, I argue that the U.S. Constitution’s durable separation of powers design interacts with America’s two party system to unintentionally structure political conflict in ways that makes it almost impossible for anyone to address the inevitable build up of entropy in the political system. Recurrently, this challenges partisan leaders to renew politics via the formation of a new governing majority. Partisan leaders accomplish this goal by completing three tasks: 1) shifting the main axis of partisan conflict; 2) assembling a new majority coalition that allows for effective control of federal governing institutions; and, 3) locking-in partisan priorities and advantage through institutionalization of a new governing regime. Through case study analysis, I demonstrate that the dynamics of new governing majority formation can play out in either a straightforward or a protracted manner depending on whether or not partisan leaders initially succeed or fail to accomplish these tasks. This leads to new interpretations of the crucial “System of 1896” and “Reagan Revolution” cases, which allows me to argue for the superiority of my new cyclical theory and to conclude that the governing cycle contains the American polity’s best opportunity to reorder and revitalize itself.

Studies on Presidential-Executive relations fails to empirically analyze whether or not modern presidential scandal can impact presidential-congressional relations. Meinke and Anderson (2001) find that presidential scandal impacts House of Representatives voting behavior on key votes cited by Congressional Quarterly. A slight revision and replication of Meinke and Anderson's research finds presidential scandal impacts Senate aggregate key votes reported by Congressional Quarterly. In addition, political party plays a more important role than scandal in determining the logged odds of Senate key votes and presidential agreement.

This paper attempts to describe the religious and civil religious discourse used by presidents during their inaugural addresses and State of the Union speeches, overlooked in the literature. This deductive, plausibility probe categorizes different words into different categories. It begins by offering definitions of religion and civil religion, separating interested words into either religious or civil religious categories, and then further attempts to subcategorize relevant words into groups that may explain a possible usage for their choice in the speech. From these subcategories, possible hypotheses were developed for future research. From the study, results show that religious and civil religious discourse is used for several purposes (ties to history, links to a common heritage, creating a common belief, policy objectives). This paper also presents limitations with the study and directions for future research into political discourse regarding religious and civil religious usage.

During the latter half of the 20th century, Presidents have often invoked the language of war to push through their policy initiatives. Despite the vast literature on presidential speeches, there has been little in the way of studying these rhetorical wars in any systematic fashion. This paper seeks to address that deficiency by studying several high-profile rhetorical wars that presidents have declared, from Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty to George W. Bush’s war on terror. The purpose is to trace the evolution of metaphorical wars from rhetoric into public policy. In tracing this process, many other questions will be addressed, including: What message was the president hoping to send to the American people through rhetoric? What were the original goals of the president? What are some of the reasons the “wars” failed or succeeded? Finally, to what extent did future administrations adopt their predecessor’s policy and to what extent did future presidents establish their own strategy for fighting the wars?

The interaction between the President and Congress is many times quite public and well documented (Cronin 1980; Covington et al. 1995; Fisher 1994; Schlesinger 2004). Similarly, relations between the Congress and the Supreme Court are well documented; Congress makes law and, if requested, the Court interprets it. The interaction between the president and the Court, however, is not nearly as well defined, and certainly not as public. Supreme Court cases involving the president directly are fairly rare. King and Meernik (1995) identify 347 cases involving the foreign policy powers of the president, decided from 1790 to 1996, which is roughly 1.5 cases per calendar year. This study will examine the influence of attitudinal and extra-attitudinal factors on the individual level decision-making of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in cases involving presidential power. By using both attitudinal and extra-attitudinal factors, such as public opinion and armed conflict, this study will explore the limitations of a simple attitudinal model in complex and highly salient cases such as those that involve presidential power. The cases to be examined will be all presidential power cases decided from 1949 to 2005 (N = 38). The unit of analysis will, however, be the justice's individual-level vote (N = 337).

This multi-disciplinary project examines the style, structure, and performance of presidential management of international crises in order to determine both the impact of earlier crisis management experiences on subsequent crisis management behavior, and the role of a structured presidential approach to crisis management in either encouraging or discouraging such institutional learning. The aim of such an approach is twofold. First, it is to discover the level of learning and adaptation, from both positive and negative experiences, that takes place among presidents and their advisors during and after the handling of an international crisis, including how that learning may be maximized and directed toward more effective management efforts in the future. Second, it is to determine the role of a structured crisis management approach in shaping decision-making behavior, including how such an approach may affect the ability of presidents and their advisors to learn from prior experiences. The study integrates research from the international crisis, presidential management, and organizational learning literatures, utilizing George’s (1979) comparative case study method to examine several crises during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The paper concludes with a presentation of findings and discusses the relevance of such findings on issues such as; recent and looming international crisis situations in North Korea, the Middle East, and elsewhere; the impact of a changing global landscape that includes such dangers as nuclear proliferation; and the prospects for successful crisis management efforts by the current and future American presidents in the 21st century.

This thesis seeks to determine if there is a relationship between a vice president of the United States governing influence and his involvement in a presidential reelection campaign. The period for this thesis will begin with Richard Nixon'­s vice presidency and end with Al Gore's. To find a connection I will create factors that will examine both governing influence and reelection campaign involvement.

This thesis explores the notion of personality as it impacts presidential behavior. Relying on the arguably fragmented field of personality and policymaking, the paper offers a case study of President Richard Nixon's experience with the Family Assistance Plan, a landmark piece of welfare reform. In contending that character is most evident in situations that are less structured or that permit individual expression, I argue that President Nixon's personality greatly impacted his rhetorical style and was also evident through his reluctance to conduct bargaining with members of Congress. To add rigor to the analyses, I borrow heavily from the work of Erwin Hargrove (1998) who, in putting forth a model of political leadership that draws upon elements of moral commitment, character, integrity and cultural discernment, holds that effective democratic leadership combines strong personal aptitude with a coherent assessment of what action history will permit. Furthermore, this thesis contends that President Nixon failed to discern the grains of history that had characterized past welfare reform; the proposed major overhaul of welfare, commenced in the aftermath of the War on Poverty, was attacked from both the left and right, and thus failed to make it intact through the 91st Congress.

There are many facets of the institution of the presidency that warrant examination. Individual presidents, cabinets, staffs, wives...have all been studied in depth but one aspect of the presidency still remains fundamentally unexplored: the presidents' children and the political roles that each has had or has the potential to have. This thesis is based upon role analysis and the basic assumption that all presidential children from FDR through Clinton have performed political roles. Among the 32 presidential children studied, four roles were designated. First is the role of symbol. Symbols serve to display the presidential candidate or president as a person that is a good family man, loving father, and someone with high moral integrity. Surrogates serve to stand in for the president when the president cannot be present. The bulk of a surrogate's role takes place on the campaign trail. Informal advisors/confidant(e)s provide opinions and advice to the president. Lastly, skeletons tend to embarrass the president. If an individual presidential child performs several of these roles equally, they have been labeled as hybrids. Each of the 32 children from FDR through Clinton have been categorized in one of the above roles and their actions are analyzed in depth. Through the course of the thesis, three hypotheses are tested. The first two are whether or not the political roles of presidential children vary be age and by sex. The third hypothesis is whether or not there is an increased need for symbols and surrogates as 1960 as opposed to before.