No Blank Check - Softcover

Reeves, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1316626474 ISBN 13: 9781316626474

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2022

Synopsis

Concerns about unaccountable executive power have featured recurrently in political debates from the American founding to today. For many, presidents' use of unilateral power threatens American democracy. No Blank Check advances a new perspective: Instead of finding Americans apathetic towards how presidents exercise power, it shows the public is deeply concerned with core democratic values. Drawing on data from original surveys, innovative experiments, historical polls, and contexts outside the United States, the book highlights Americans' skepticism towards presidential power. This skepticism results in a public that punishes unilaterally minded presidents and the policies they pursue. By departing from existing theories of presidential power which acknowledge only institutional constraints, this timely and revealing book demonstrates the public's capacity to tame the unilateral impulses of even the most ambitious presidents. Ultimately, when it comes to exercising power, the public does not hand the president a blank check.

About this title

About the Authors

Andrew Reeves is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is co-author (with Douglas Kriner) of The Particularistic President: Executive Branch Politics and Political Inequality, which received the 2016 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best book published in the field of the American presidency.

Jon Rogowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is co-author (with William Howell and Saul Jackman) of The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the Nationalizing Politics of Threat, which won the 2014 William H. Riker prize for the best book published in political economy.

From the Back Cover

Political scientists have forever, assumed that ordinary people have no meaningful views about the presidency and presidential power. No longer can that assumption stand. In a masterful work, Andrew Reeves and Jon C. Rogowski have shown that not only do people hold views, expectations, and judgments of the presidency but that their opinions are highly consequential for politics. Hats off to a path-breaking piece of research!
- James L. Gibson, Washington University in St. Louis

Executive orders, signing statements, budget impoundment, brinksmanship - has the system of checks and balances failed? Has the United States entered the era of the imperial President Andrew Reeves and Jon C. Rogowski, two of the nation's leading scholars of American institutions, offer a careful and thorough assessment of the ability of its President to act unilaterally. The public - through its commitment to ideas embodied in the Constitution - has time and again constrained what Presidents do. The public itself, more than Congress, has preserved the American system of checks-and-balances. No Blank Check is required reading for any serious scholar or student of American politics.
- Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard University

A president is by far the most public politician in America. How successfully they exploit public strategies remains an unsettled question, even after several decades of active research. Into this research field, Andrew Reeves and Jon C. Rogowski offer a fresh consideration: the American public's expectations about how presidents should and should not pursue their goals. For this, No Blank Check commands our attention.
- Samuel Kernell, UC San Diego

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1316626474
• ISBN 13: 9781316626474
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 338