Presidential Power: Unchecked & Unbalanced - Hardcover

Crenson, Matthew; Ginsberg, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393064883 ISBN 13: 9780393064889

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007

Synopsis

A new history and evaluation of the "imperial presidency."

Recent presidents have exploited the power of the American presidency more fully than their predecessors―and with greater consequence than the framers of the Constitution anticipated.

This book, in the tradition of Arthur Schlesinger's great work The Imperial Presidency (1973), explores how American presidents―especially those of the past three decades―have increased the power of the presidency at the expense of democracy. Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg provide a fascinating history of this trend, showing that the expansion of presidential power dates back over one hundred years. Presidential Power also looks beyond the president's actions in the realm of foreign policy to consider other, more hidden, means that presidents have used to institutionalize the power of the executive branch.

About this title

About the Authors

Matthew Crenson is professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins University.

Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science, Director of the Washington Center for the Study of American Government, and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or coauthor of 20 books including Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public, Politics by Other Means, The Consequences of Consent, and The Captive Public. Before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1992, Ginsberg was Professor of Government at Cornell University. His most recent book is The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. Ginsberg’s published research focuses on political development, presidential politics, participation, and money in politics.

Reviews

As envisioned by our founders, the office of chief executive was to exercise primarily a supervisory role, curbing the excesses of a popularly elected legislature. During wartime, of course, the powers of the executive were expected to increase. However, as Arthur Schlesinger indicated in The Imperial Presidency (1973), the powers of the presidency have vastly expanded, even in peacetime. Crenson and Ginsberg, both political science professors, explain the reasons and consequences. They convincingly assert that the decline in popular participation in our political life has led to a dangerous power vacuum, this manifesting itself most clearly in the diminished role of political parties in selecting presidential candidates. Instead, presidential candidates today are generally able to define themselves without being moored to the beliefs of their party; thus, if elected, they feel free to pursue their own agendas. At the same time, the public withdrawal from politics has undermined both the prestige and the power of Congress. The result is a great increase in the power of the presidency, abetted by an accelerating expansion of the bureaucratic state. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393064883
• ISBN 13: 9780393064889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432