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Is there a presidentialization of US presidential leadership? A European perspective on Washington

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Abstract

This article revisits the different notions and concepts of ‘presidentialization’ that have held an exceptionally prominent status in recent comparative European politics but have conspicuously failed to capture the attention of the American political science community. It then applies a slightly amended version of the influential conceptual framework suggested by Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb to the analysis of presidential leadership in the United States to demonstrate the analytical usefulness of the concept beyond the family of parliamentary democracies. This stock-tacking exercise reveals that there are some manifestations of presidential leadership that could in fact be described as ‘presidentialization’ and others that are better characterized as ‘de-presidentialization’. Interestingly, the recent developments towards a less ‘presidentialized’ mode of politics and leadership seem to have been induced by the institutional incentives of the presidential system.

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Notes

  1. The article by Dowding, (2012) has given rise to a whole series of thoughtful responses and reconsiderations of the presidentialization thesis (see Heffernan, 2012; Foley, 2012; Webb and Poguntke, 2012). Most of this critique revolves around the contested amount of similarity or dissimilarity of the characteristic features of politics in parliamentary and presidential regimes. Other reservations concern the terminological dimension of the debate with ‘presidentialization’ occasionally being considered ‘a prominent misnomer’, as it carries a major potential for misconceiving the status of presidents and prime ministers especially at the level of executive legislative relations (Peters and Helms, 2012, p. 30). However, as the advocates of the presidentialization paradigm would argue, and as this article seeks to demonstrate, such misunderstandings can at least to some extent be avoided by relating the key terms to reasonably carefully devised concepts.

  2. ‘Americanization’ in the sense that structures and politics outside the United States are becoming more similar to that found in the States – without actually being driven and shaped by the latter. As Bucur and Elgie (2012) suggest in their recent article on the development of the French executive, ‘endogenous Americanization’ might seem the most appropriate term.

  3. A notable exception is the important work by Foley (2012) who maintains that ‘the intention was never to set out to demonstrate a particular form of equivalence. It was not an end-oriented exercise so much as an instrumental strategy designed to release the subject of the British premiership into a wider range of perspectives … What has emerged is not a British version of the US presidency, but an authentically British presidency that has evolved out of the British political structure and in response to British political conditions and traditions’ (pp. 6–7).

  4. It is acknowledged that this is, strictly speaking, not a pioneer study. However, in the valuable historical account offered by Fabbrini (2005), the concept is only very briefly mentioned at the close of the chapter.

  5. This is not to say that the term ‘presidentialization’ has remained completely alien to recent American research. However, here ‘presidentialization’ has served primarily to describe a particular developmental pattern at the political systems’ level, namely, the historical rise of the presidency (see, for example, James, 2009, p. 59). A completely different understanding is suggested in the major study by Samuels and Shugart (2010) on the presidentialization of political parties. They define ‘presidentialization’ as ‘the way the separation of powers fundamentally shapes parties’ organizational and behavioural characteristics, in ways that are distinct from the organization and behaviour of parties in parliamentary systems’ (p. 6).

  6. Prime ministers tend to be less dependent on their parties than they once were and are likely to govern past rather than through their parties (party face), they tend to concentrate more and more executive decision-making power into their hands (executive face) and they tend to be fitted with ever stronger personal mandates by the voters (electoral face) – or so the thesis conveyed through this concept reads (Poguntke and Webb, 2005b, pp. 7–10).

  7. Strictly speaking, this aspect is presented by Poguntke and Webb (2005a) as an indicator of the ‘executive face of presidentialization’ (p. 19), however, it is apparently closely related to the suggested developments in the electoral arena. More important than such conceptual issues are the empirical limitations that can be identified even within the family of parliamentary democracies: What may seem a compelling argument in parliamentary regimes with single-party governments, has never found a full equivalent in parliamentary democracies with an established tradition of coalition government. This is simply because junior coalition parties normally have no vested interest in paying tribute to the leader of a different political party, however, strong his or her personal mandate may be.

  8. Apart from this, even in the United States the amount of ‘electoral personalization’ has remained contested. As Wattenberg (2011) concludes in a recent chapter, ‘in sum, personal image has been highly overrated as a decisive factor in presidential elections’ (p. 86). The presidential election of 2012, if viewed from a historical perspective, even suggests that the party affiliation of candidates has gained more independent weight. Over the past half century, all presidents whose popularity in terms of ‘job approval’ was above 50 per cent in the 6 months before the presidential election were re-elected, whereas all those whose popularity was lower than that were defeated (see Barisione, 2009, p. 487). Obama stands out as the first re-elected president of the past half century whose job approval ratings during the final 3 months before the 2012 election, according to data by Gallup, were almost constantly significantly below 50 per cent (see, http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-approval-center.aspx, accessed 21 February 2013). As late as in late August 2012, just 10 weeks before the presidential election, Obama’s support rate stood at just 44 per cent (ibid).

  9. All figures calculated by the author on the basis of data provided by Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Cabinets, accessed 22 February 2013).

  10. A wonderfully succinct overview of various concepts of party government can be found in Mair (2008).

  11. For the most recent figures including the 112th Congress, see Sanchez (2013)

  12. Needless to say, to arrive at realistic assessments of the performance of governments in the legislative arena, even in parliamentary regimes such statistical indicators have to be combined with empirical case studies on how a bill becomes a law.

  13. The average figures for 2012 by Gallup showed the lowest public support rate for Congress since the pollsters began (see http://www.gallup.com/poll/159812/congress-begins-2013-approval.aspx, accessed 21 February 2013).

  14. This marks an aspect not fully covered by Poguntke and Webb’s concept, as prime ministers are not involved in the promulgation of laws.

  15. See, for example, Blackwell and Klukowski (2012); Strassel (2012). Intriguingly, the allegedly ‘imperial presidencies’ of George W. Bush and Barack Obama stand out in comparative perspective for their sparse use of the presidential veto, which has been judged as a sign of weak leadership that has in particular failed to restrain congressional spending (see Mieczkowski, 2013).

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The subtitle of this article is of course borrowed from the classic article by Richard Rose (1980). The exceptionally useful suggestions and critique of the anonymous reviewers of this journal are gratefully acknowledged. All the possible remaining shortcomings are the author’s responsibility alone.

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Helms, L. Is there a presidentialization of US presidential leadership? A European perspective on Washington. Acta Polit 50, 1–19 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.20

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