Notice & Comment

Symposium on Rudalevige's "By Executive Order"

Notice & Comment

Not On My Own: The Delights of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Bureaucratic Politics, by Andrew Rudalevige

*This is the fifteenth and final post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. This post allows me to check off one of my New Year’s resolutions (one more than in 2021, already!): to express my deep gratitude […]

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Unilateral Powers and Shared Executive Branch Governance: Fundamental Principles from Organization Theory, by George Krause

*This is the fourteenth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. “The ‘political master’ finds himself in the position of the ‘dilettante’ who stands opposite the “expert”, facing the trained official who stands within the management of […]

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Administration Administration, by Shane Pennington

*This is the thirteenth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. By Executive Order is the culmination of Andrew Rudalevige’s exhaustive, multi-year study of presidential decision making. His excavation and examination of the long-forgotten backstories of hundreds […]

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Data As Antidote to Excessive Rhetoric

*This is the eleventh post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Complaining about the government is a perennial American pastime, but no one sensible thinks our federal government is functioning optimally.  Figuring out why that is, however, […]

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Reconsidering Agencies as Active Participants in Theories of Political Control, by Jennifer L. Selin

*This is the ninth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. In By Executive Order, Rudalevige details a long-utilized but understudied coordinating process for the development of executive orders. These central clearance procedures help reduce uncertainty regarding […]

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The Bureaucracy Also Empowers the Unitary Executive

*This is the eighth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. The President’s power over the administrative state is typically understood as the power to direct executive branch agencies and officials to act in accord with the […]

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By Quasi-Legislative Order: Busy Agencies, Feeble Execution

*This is the seventh post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Any book on the constitutional executive will contain more than a little Alexander Hamilton. It’s ironic: Hamilton’s famous argument for “energy in the executive,” so […]

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The Importance of Studying Things That Don’t Happen, by Kenneth Mayer

*This is the fifth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. It was clear early in the development of the unilateral powers literature that focusing on executive order issuance posed a selection bias problem. By definition, […]

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The Role of Federal Agencies in Presidential Administration

*This is the fourth post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Now-Justice Elena Kagan’s influential article Presidential Administration celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. Drawing on her experience working in the Clinton White House, Kagan explored […]

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Benefits of a Rowdy Bureaucracy

*This is the third post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Perhaps because they bear the president’s signature and don’t require ratification, executive orders are considered to be entirely within the president’s control. But early in […]

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Is Presidential Administration Harder for Republican Presidents?, by William Yeatman

*This is the second post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Andrew Rudalevige’s By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power is an important contribution to our understanding of modern policymaking. In particular, […]

Notice & Comment

Executive Order Formation and the Duration of Policy, by Sharece Thrower

*This is the first post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power, significantly advances our conceptual, theoretical, and empirical understanding of presidential […]