Bert A. Rockman - Böcker

The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the 'new institutionalism', the study of institutions has returned to its place in the sun. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions draws together a galaxy of distinguished contributors drawn from leading universities across the world. Authoritative reviews of the literature and assessments of future research directions will help to set the research agenda for the next decade.

In uneasy partnership at the helm of the modern state stand elected party politicians and professional bureaucrats. This book is the first comprehensive comparison of these two powerful elites. In seven countries—the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands—researchers questioned 700 bureaucrats and 6OO politicians in an effort to understand how their aims, attitudes, and ambitions differ within cultural settings.One of the authors’ most significant findings is that the worlds of these two elites overlap much more in the United States than in Europe. But throughout the West bureaucrats and politicians each wear special blinders and each have special virtues. In a well-ordered polity, the authors conclude, politicians articulate society’s dreams and bureaucrats bring them gingerly to earth.

“Hope” and “change” were the keywords of President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, and in his farewell address on January 10, 2017, he cited the evidence that he'd delivered—from reversing the Great Recession, rebooting the auto industry, and unleashing the longest stretch of job creation in the nation's history to winning marriage equality and securing the right to health insurance for another 20 million citizens. At the same time, and with a view to the country's divisive polarization, he made a plea for “the decency of our people” and “the sense of common purpose that we so badly need right now.”In hindsight, it is increasingly possible to understand whether and how Obama's legacy matched his rhetoric as well as to evaluate from various angles what his presidency accomplished and what this has meant for US politics, public policy, and civic life going forward. In The Obama Legacy some of the leading observers and scholars of US politics take up this challenge. In twelve essays these writers examine Obama's choices, operating style, and opportunities taken and missed as well as the institutional and political constraints on the president's policy agenda. What were Obama's personal characteristics as a leader? What were the policy aspirations, output, and strategy of his presidency? What was his role as a political and public leader to the various constituencies needed to generate presidential power? And how did his presidency interact with other political forces?Addressing these questions and others, the authors analyze Obama's preferences, tactics, successes, and shortcomings with an eye toward balancing the personal and institutional factors that underlie each—all the while considering how resilient or fragile Obama's legacy will be in the face of the Trump administration's eager efforts to dismantle it.

An insightful and nuanced examination of a controversial and consequential presidency, written by some of the top presidential scholars in the nation.It was the election result that shocked the world.In November 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the forty-fifth president of the United States, thereby bringing an end to the political power of one family and, in retrospect, beginning the era of his own family’s dominance. At times, Trump’s presidency posed new, sometimes unprecedented, challenges to the constitutional order, while in other respects he continued the trajectory toward greater executive power that had been decades in the making.In this latest installment in a series that began with the George H. W. Bush years, the nation’s leading scholars of the American presidency assess Donald J. Trump’s first term—what many assumed would be his only term, following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. Divided into five parts, the authors examine Trump’s first four years in terms of electoral politics, public politics, national institutions, and policy outcomes, with a final section placing Trump in the context of the larger story of American politics.In addition to the volume editors, the book includes chapters by Kelly Dittmar, John D. Graham, David Patrick Houghton, Nicole Mellow, Molly Reynolds, Brandon Rottinghaus, Theda Skocpol, Candis Watts Smith, Sharece Thrower, Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., and David Yalof.Ideal for use in the classroom, this volume will be the definitive scholarly resource on Trump’s first term for years to come.

Most people think of governmental bureaucracy as a dull subject. Yet for thirty years the American federal executive has been awash in political controversy. From George Wallace's attacks on ""pointy headed bureaucrats,"" to Richard Nixon's ""responsiveness program,"" to the efforts of Al Gore and Bill Clinton to ""reinvent government,"" the people who administer the American state have stood uncomfortably in the spotlight, caught in a web of politics. This book covers the turmoil and controversy swirling around the bureaucracy since 1970, when the Nixon administration tried to tighten its control over the executive branch. Drawing on interviews conducted over the past three decades, Joel D. Aberbach and Bert A. Rockman cast light on the complex relationship between top civil servants and political leaders and debunk much of the received wisdom about the deterioration and unresponsiveness of the federal civil service. The authors focus on three major themes:the ""quiet crisis"" of American administration, a hypothesized decline in the quality and morale of federal executives; the ""noisy crisis,"" which refers to the large question of bureaucrats' responsiveness to political authority; and the movement to ""reinvent"" American government. Aberbach and Rockman examine the sources and validity of these themes and consider changes that might make the federal government's administration work better. They find that the quality and morale of federal executives have held up remarkably well in the face of intense criticism, and that the bureaucracy has responded to changes in presidential administrations. Pointing out that bureaucrats are convenient targets in contemporary political battles, the authors contend that complexity, contradiction, and bloated or inefficient programs are primarily the product of elected politicians, not bureaucrats.The evidence suggests that American federal executives will carry out the political will if they are given adequate support and realistic

As a stunning tide of democratization sweeps across much of the world, countries must cope with increasing problems of economic development, political and social integration, and greater public demand of scarce resources. That ability to respond effectively to these issues depends largely on the institutional choices of each of these newly democratizing countries. With critics of national political institutions in the United States arguing that the American separation-of-powers system promotes ineffectiveness and policy deadlock, many question whether these countries should emulate American institutions or choose parliamentary institutions instead.The essays in this book fully examine whether parliamentary government is superior to the separation-of-powers system through a direct comparison of the two. In addressing specific policy areas—such as innovation and implementation of energy policies after the oil shocks of 1970, management of societal cleavages, setting of government priorities in budgeting, representation of diffuse interest in environmental policy, and management of defense forces—the authors define capabilities that allow governments to respond to policy problems.Do Institutions Matter? includes case studies that bear important evidence on when and how institutions influence government effectiveness. The authors discover a widespread variation among parliamentary systems both in institutional arrangements and in governmental capabilities, and find that many of the failings of policy performance commonly attributed to American political institutions are in fact widely shared among western industrial countries. Moreover, they show how American political institutions inhibit some government capabilities while enhancing others. Changing American institutions to improve some aspects of governmental performance could hurt other widely valued capabilities.The authors draw important guidelines for institutional reformers while emphasizing that institutions do have predictable risks and opportunities. They caution that a balance between such risks and opportunities must first be reached before policy reformers try to change political institutions.

This collection brings together two groups of scholars. The first, persons active in presidential research, assess the state of the literature in the recruitment and selection of presidential candidates, presidential personality, advisory networks, policy making, evaluations of presidents, and comparative analysis of chief executives.A second group of scholars, specialists in cognitive psychology, formal theory, organization theory, leadership theory, institutionalism, and methodology, apply their expertise to the analysis of the presidentcy in an effort to generate innovative approaches to presidential research. By taking a fresh look at a well-established field, these groundbreaking essays encourage scholars to renew their emphasis on explanation in research.