Return to Skowronek
Jun. 3rd, 2007 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowAs promised, I want to talk a bit more about Stephen Skowronek's The Politics Presidents Make. This will probably take a couple of posts; in this one, I'd like to lay out (what I see as) Skowronek's basic paradigm. For length's sake, it's under the cut.
Central to Skowronek's argument is a distinction between two broad patterns in the history of USAn politics. On the one hand, there is what he calls secular time, "the progressive development of the institutional resources and governmental responsibilities of the executive office". More broadly, secular time refers to the long-term growth in power of the government as a whole, and also of its components. (Andrew Jackson could defy a Supreme Court order with impunity; his successors - Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon - despite, in the latter two cases, having much greater actual power, could not.)
On the other hand, there is political time, including "the various relationships incumbents project between previously established commitmennts of ideology and interest and their own actions in the moment at hand". To unpack that last: Skowronek sees USAn political history as being divided into periods during which there is a prevailing orthodoxy as to what the government is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. Such a period begins with a president who repudiates the previous orthodoxy and establishes a new one. (Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan play this reconstructive role.) So long as the orthodoxy remains resilient, a president may choose either to affiliate with it (Skowronek calls this stance "articulation") or oppose it ("preemption"). Over time, the orthodoxy weakens; ultimately, an affiliated president finds himself trying to shore up a system in collapse, producing a politics of "disjunction". The failure of a disjunctive presidency leads to a new reconstruction, and the pattern begins anew.
On this model, there are four general molds into which a presidency may fall. Each president, attempting to establish himself as president in his own right, does so with different constraints. Freest are the reconstructive presidents, as the old orthodoxy has broken down and new avenues open. Presidencies of articulation are somewhat less free; a Polk, a Theodore Roosevelt, a Lyndon Johnson may extend the orthodox position in new directions, but he may not, ultimately, defy it. Even such changes as he may make weaken it, by exposing tensions between different parts of his coalition. (Polk's expansionism exacerbated the slave state/free state strain; TR's presidency set the progressive and conservative factions of the Republican party at odds; and one need only look to the streets of Chicago '68 to see what Johnson did to his party.) A preemptive president, though he may reject the prevailing orthodoxy, will not - if he is wise - push too hard against it; in their different ways, Wilson, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Clinton exemplify this pattern. A disjunctive president - JQ Adams, Pierce, Hoover, Carter - faces the toughest challenge of all; the prevailing system is no longer working, but he cannot make the necessary changes - his legitimacy rests on his allegiance to the system. Presidents of this time often present themselves as technocrats, as effective managers who can maintain what has been working for so long, but this is no more than an attempt to paper over collapse, and is usually followed by a new repudiation and reconstruction.
Nothing repeats perfectly, of course, as political time interacts with secular time. Each reconstruction is harder than the one before, as the president struggles against increasingly powerful rival institutions. Jefferson could crush his congressional challengers with ease. Jackson could wage war against the Bank of the United States and ignore Chief Justice Marshall. Lincoln had to endure a slapdown from Chief Justice Taney in ex parte Milligan; Franklin Roosevelt's First New Deal was largely struck down by the courts, and his attempt to break with the southern conservatives of his party failed. Reagan's revolution was more a matter of talk than of substance. (This is not to ignore the changes he did bring about, but to point out that they were less far-reaching than previous reconstructions.) Over secular time, Skowronek suggests, the cycle of political time is being damped down, and it is possible that future presidencies will be forced into preemptive stance: rejecting the orthodoxy to some extent, but unable to push too hard against it.
There are a couple of implications of Skowronek's model that I'd like to explore further, but that will have to wait for another post.
Central to Skowronek's argument is a distinction between two broad patterns in the history of USAn politics. On the one hand, there is what he calls secular time, "the progressive development of the institutional resources and governmental responsibilities of the executive office". More broadly, secular time refers to the long-term growth in power of the government as a whole, and also of its components. (Andrew Jackson could defy a Supreme Court order with impunity; his successors - Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon - despite, in the latter two cases, having much greater actual power, could not.)
On the other hand, there is political time, including "the various relationships incumbents project between previously established commitmennts of ideology and interest and their own actions in the moment at hand". To unpack that last: Skowronek sees USAn political history as being divided into periods during which there is a prevailing orthodoxy as to what the government is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. Such a period begins with a president who repudiates the previous orthodoxy and establishes a new one. (Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan play this reconstructive role.) So long as the orthodoxy remains resilient, a president may choose either to affiliate with it (Skowronek calls this stance "articulation") or oppose it ("preemption"). Over time, the orthodoxy weakens; ultimately, an affiliated president finds himself trying to shore up a system in collapse, producing a politics of "disjunction". The failure of a disjunctive presidency leads to a new reconstruction, and the pattern begins anew.
On this model, there are four general molds into which a presidency may fall. Each president, attempting to establish himself as president in his own right, does so with different constraints. Freest are the reconstructive presidents, as the old orthodoxy has broken down and new avenues open. Presidencies of articulation are somewhat less free; a Polk, a Theodore Roosevelt, a Lyndon Johnson may extend the orthodox position in new directions, but he may not, ultimately, defy it. Even such changes as he may make weaken it, by exposing tensions between different parts of his coalition. (Polk's expansionism exacerbated the slave state/free state strain; TR's presidency set the progressive and conservative factions of the Republican party at odds; and one need only look to the streets of Chicago '68 to see what Johnson did to his party.) A preemptive president, though he may reject the prevailing orthodoxy, will not - if he is wise - push too hard against it; in their different ways, Wilson, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Clinton exemplify this pattern. A disjunctive president - JQ Adams, Pierce, Hoover, Carter - faces the toughest challenge of all; the prevailing system is no longer working, but he cannot make the necessary changes - his legitimacy rests on his allegiance to the system. Presidents of this time often present themselves as technocrats, as effective managers who can maintain what has been working for so long, but this is no more than an attempt to paper over collapse, and is usually followed by a new repudiation and reconstruction.
Nothing repeats perfectly, of course, as political time interacts with secular time. Each reconstruction is harder than the one before, as the president struggles against increasingly powerful rival institutions. Jefferson could crush his congressional challengers with ease. Jackson could wage war against the Bank of the United States and ignore Chief Justice Marshall. Lincoln had to endure a slapdown from Chief Justice Taney in ex parte Milligan; Franklin Roosevelt's First New Deal was largely struck down by the courts, and his attempt to break with the southern conservatives of his party failed. Reagan's revolution was more a matter of talk than of substance. (This is not to ignore the changes he did bring about, but to point out that they were less far-reaching than previous reconstructions.) Over secular time, Skowronek suggests, the cycle of political time is being damped down, and it is possible that future presidencies will be forced into preemptive stance: rejecting the orthodoxy to some extent, but unable to push too hard against it.
There are a couple of implications of Skowronek's model that I'd like to explore further, but that will have to wait for another post.
