A Question of Balance: The President, The Congress and Foreign Policy (Political, and Economic Development)

In recent years, a more active and aggressive Congress has often sharply disagreed with the president over the ends and means of American foreign policy. The normal tensions that arise in the U.S. system of separate institutions sharing power have been exacerbated by the contemporary pattern of split-party control of the two branches. The ensuing conflict in areas ranging from Central America to China has stimulated a spirited debate about the constitutional authority and institutional competence of the president and Congress to make foreign policy. In this volume, noted authors, led by Thomas Mann, examine executive-legislative relations in five major policy areas: war powers, intelligence, arms control, diplomacy, and trade. They offer a fresh analysis of the sources and consequences of conflict between the President and Congress as well as constructive suggestions for strengthening each branch's comparative advantages.

Born in 1875, Thomas Mann was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. He began his writing career by contributing short stories to magazines, and he published his first novel Buddenbrooks in 1901. When Hitler came to power, Mann left Germany to live in Switzerland and became a key contributor to the Exilliteratur, which was composed of work written by German authors who fled the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Throughout the Second World War, he was vocal in his opposition to the Nazis, and he was later suspected of being a communist when he lived in the US during the 50s. He eventually returned to Switzerland where he died in 1955.