The Puzzle of Presidential Leadership: Persuasion, Bargaining, and Policy Consistency

Political science can offer few theoretical generalizations about the exercise of presidential power. From one perspective, this is no disadvantage: there are few presidents, and presidential leadership so intrinsically involves the interplay of ideas and persuasive deliberation that success depends on personal traits and the fit of the president's ideas with the times. Striving for inductive generalizations in such a case would mistake rote scientific method for the pursuit of knowledge. Others argue, however, that the dearth of theoretical generalizations is a temporary weakness, remediable by shifting to a deductive approach. Deductive theorizing can claim insights in other areas once typified by historiographic methods, notably in studies of Congress, and formal models of legislation have been extended to generate hypotheses about transactions between president and Congress. I suggest that neither side of the dilemma offers a satisfactory and complete approach to the puzzle of presidential leadership; it then goes on to specify how the contributions from each side fit together. Rational choice models, based on bargaining as the mode of influence and the repeated game as the image of process, show how institutional structures can produce stable decisions where majority rule tends toward endless cycling. But the cost is that the resulting decisions are typically ad hoc and disjointed. Achieving consistent and coherent policy requires more subtle coordination of individual expectations than legislative organizations can manage, and it is this limitation of bargaining that establishes the potential for presidential leadership. Presidents can attempt to capitalize on this opportunity either by intervening as an additional (but situationally advantaged) bargainer, or by employing persuasion, the explicit appeal to collective goals rather than particularistic trades. I develop the distinction between bargaining and persuasion as alternative strategies of advocacy, and illustrate their use with examples from President Reagan's interactions with Congress over his key economic policy proposals.     

THE ‘NEW PUBLIC GOVERNANCE’ AND EMPLOYABILITY SERVICES IN AN ERA OF CRISIS: CHALLENGES FOR THIRD SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN SCOTLAND

Third sector organizations (TSOs) have emerged as key players in the delivery of public services to assist jobless people to improve their employability and move from welfare to work. Drawing on in‐depth research with employability providers in Scotland, this article explores how TSOs have responded to the challenges of a rapidly changing public services environment. Specifically, we use the concept of the ‘New Public Governance’ to explore TSOs' relationships with UK, devolved and local government stakeholders. TSOs demonstrated a pragmatic approach to shaping their services to reflect the priorities of public funders, and identified some opportunities arising from the new emphasis on ‘localism’. However, the evidence suggests that opportunities for collaboration at times remained constrained by certain forms of ‘contractualism’ and top‐down performance management. Based on the evidence, lessons for future policy and practice are considered.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM IN THE UK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions – health care, housing, and social services – significant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.