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In this article, the authors explore a basis for presidential power that has gone largely unappreciated to this point but that has become so pivotal to presidential leadership that it virtually defines what is distinctively modern about the modern presidency. This is thepresident's formal capacity to act unilaterally and thus to make law on his own. The purpose of the article is to outline a theory of this aspect of presidential power. The authors argue that the president's power of unilateral action are a force in American politics precisely because they are not specified in the Constitution. They derive their strength and resilience from the ambiguity of the contract. The authors also argue that presidents have incentives to push this amibiguity relentlessly to expand the contract. The authors also arguers-and that, for reasons have rooted in the nature of their institutions, neither Congress nor the courts are likely to stop them.
What are the foundations of presidential power? Almost forty years ago, Richard Neustadt (1960) offered an answer that transformed the study of the American presidency. Neustadt observed that presidents have very little formal power, far less than necessary to meet the enormous expectations heaped on them during the modern era. The key to strong presidential leadership, he argued, lies not in formal power, but in the skills, temperament, and experience of the man occupying the office and in his ability to put these personal qualities to use in enhancing his own reputation and prestige. The foundation of presidential power is ultimately personal,
Neustadt's notion of the personal presidency dominated the field for decades, but its influence is on the decline. The main reason is that it seems increasingly out of sync with the facts, The personal presidency caught on among political scientists at just the time that the presidency itself was rapidly developing as an institution and as studies of presidential leadership found themselves focusing on the "institutional presidency" (Burke 1992; Moe 1985; Nathan 1983). As time went on, it became clear that the field needed to adjust to a new reality, in which formal structure and power have more central roles to play (Moe 1993).
This adjustment was hastened by the rise of the "new institutionalism" in political science generally. Scholars across...