Unilateral Powers - William G. Howell

Introduction

To advance their policy agenda, presidents have two options. They can submit suggestions to assembly and wish that its constituents very reliably shepherd bills into laws; or they can exercise their unilateral powers—issuing such directives as boss orders, boss agreements, proclamations, nationwide security directives, or memoranda—and thereby conceive policies that assume the weight of regulation without the prescribed endorsement of a sitting Congress. To pursue a unilateral strategy, of course, presidents must be adept to justify their actions on some combine of statutory, treaty, or constitutional powers; and when they will not, their only recourse is legislation. But granted the ambiguity of Article II powers and the massive corpus of regulation that presidents can draw upon, as well as the well-documented travails of the legislative process, the apply of unilateral powers is gladly apparent.

Power and Persuasion

What theoretical tools actually permit us to discern when presidents exercise their unilateral powers, and what leverage they glean from managing so? For answers, scholars customarily turn to Richard Neustadt's seminal publication Presidential Power, initially published in 1960 and revised several times since. This publication not only set an agenda for research on the American presidency, it structured the ways scholars believed of presidential power in America's own highly fragmented system of governance.

When considering about presidents since FDR, Neustadt argues, “Weak remains the phrase with which to start”. The up to date president is more clerical assistant than foremost, struggling to stay atop world events, congressional dealings, newspapers cycles, and dissension inside his party, cabinet, and White House. Though held responsible for just about everything, the president controls nearly nothing. Congress, after all, enacts laws and the bureaucracy implements them, putting the president at the peripheries of government action. The pursuit of his principle agenda is assessed more by compromise than ...