Building reliable theories of the presidency.

Giovanni Sartori's seminal analysis warns that the essential task of theory building is hampered by a false choice between two extreme views. At one extreme, grand theory seeks an all-encompassing explanation that can stretch across heterogeneous contexts; it offers a discipline-wide model that combines maximum extension and minimal depth of analysis. Sartori warns that grand theory produces "macroscopic errors of interpretation, explanation, and prediction" because its propositions are inaccurate and lack "informational value" about core empirical features (1970, 1052). At the other extreme is research at the lowest level of abstraction. According to this approach, "the differentiae of individual settings are stressed above their similarities" (1041). Sartori concludes that its particularistic attention to cataloguing detail results in "microscopic errors."

Framing theory building as a choice between grand theory and particularism produces, according to Sartori, an "oscillar[ion] between two unsound extremes"--either a fixation on detail that abandons the necessity of conceptual development, logical rigor, and the search for similarity, or a devotion to theorizing that is ungrounded in empirical reality (1970, 1033). Sartori's important contribution is to explain why theory building is essential: it identifies enduring questions, specifies core concepts as reliable data containers, and engages in logical and rigorous analysis--and does not require an embrace of grand theory with its insufficient regard for empirical reality. "[T]he need for highly abstract, all-embracing categories does not require us," Sartori insists, "to inflate, indeed to evaporate, the observational, empirically-linked categories that we do have" (1052).

Sartori's alternative to the false choice of particularism or grand theory is middle-level theorizing--an approach that "make[s] extensional gains (by climbing the abstraction ladder) without having to suffer unnecessary losses in precision and empirical testability" (1970, 1041). Instead of the no-win situation of seeking both universalism and precision, Sartori recommends developing theory "along a medium level of abstraction with better intermediate categories.... to bring together ... a relatively high explanatory power and a relatively precise descriptive account [as well as] macro-theory and empirical testing" (1053). The key is to "reduc[e] the number of qualifying attributes" (1051) nd, instead, to engage in "intra-area comparisons among relatively homogenous contexts" in ways that balance and allow for the interplay of conceptual extension and empirical depth (1044). In other words, theorizing should abandon the pursuit of law-like generalizations across heterogeneous contexts in favor of specifying concepts and expectations for guiding research to identify empirically accurate similarities within relatively homogeneous contexts.

The Lessons of Theory Building for the Study of the Presidency

Sartori's scrutiny of theory building offers two critical insights for the contemporary study of the presidency.

The Need for Theory

The first implication of Sartori's investigation is that presidency research requires theoretical and conceptual extension to propel it up the ladder of abstraction from its lowest rung. Like bird watchers, there is a (shrinking) component of presidency research that continues to be fascinated with spotting odd particularistic details of individualized personality traits (from the president's to those of key staff, such as the expressive features of certain press secretaries), idiosyncratic staffing arrangements, and other features. This preoccupation with the particular makes a fundamental omission: the similarities and central tendencies across presidents and their actions. What is needed is an interpretative framework and a set of theoretically informed concepts to explain (not just to describe) presidential behavior and the institutional formation of the presidency and its place in American governance.

The cost of inadequate theorizing is evident not only in the readily apparent limitations of the bird watchers, but also in some of the field's most important empirical research. For instance, Mark Peterson's (1990) fine-grained analysis of congressional handling of the president's legislative program concludes that the two lawmaking branches are engaged in "legislating together." Peterson surmises that interbranch relations are characterized by cooperation rather than ubiquitous conflict based on evidence that Congress blocked only a third of the president's domestic program, while it supported a majority of his initiatives. This analysis reveals an important empirical pattern, but the absence of a broadly articulated theoretical model may omit an alternative conclusion--namely, that the apparent agreement reflects legislative concessions and acquiescence in interbranch conflicts that the president routinely wins. Charles Cameron's (2000b) theoretical and empirical model of interbranch bargaining suggests that the absence of overt conflict may reflect congressional anticipation of presidential vetoes, and therefore its willingness to make concessions to achieve change. According to this theoretically guided account, the absence of outward conflict may reflect presidential advantage in an adversarial system.

The Limits of Grand Theory

Sartori's searching scrutiny suggests a second insight for contemporary presidency research--rational choice represents one approach to theory building, and one that suffers from limitations that are familiar to a long line of previous efforts at theory building over the past half decade from Sartori's target (structural functionalism) to systems theory and modernization theory. In particular, the importation and application of rational choice to presidential studies may have produced three missteps characteristic of macrotheorizing.

Inaccuracy. To begin with, it has generated accounts of critical aspects of presidential politics that are inaccurate or contradict bodies of rigorous research. The questions about the explanatory power of rational choice accounts are not simply a cataloguing of misdescribed detail as might be expected from the bird-watching particularists.

Brandice Canes-Wrone and her coauthors have produced a series of theoretically elegant models of the president's role in political representation, placing presidents in a tug-of-war between acting as responsible leaders who pursue policies that advance the "national interest" but lack the support of the mass public, on the one hand, and "pandering" by selling short the national interest to promote policies favored by most Americans, on the other (Canes-Wrone, Herron, and Shotts 2001). Terry Moe lauds this work as exemplifying the "stunning surge of new books that brought the [rational choice] revolution to fruition" and thrust "[s]tudies of the presidency ... [to] the cutting edge of political science theory."

Research in the substantial field of political representation suggests that these models of "pandering" may offer theoretical insights that are intriguing but incorrect. A growing body of research finds no evidence of government officials "pandering" to the policy preferences of most Americans. Research by Larry Bartels (2008) demonstrates that the votes of U.S. senators are highly correlated with the preferences of higher-income individuals but exhibit virtually no responsiveness to the preferences of the majority of Americans. Using a quite different methodology, Martin Gilens (2005) reaches a broadly similar conclusion of segmented responsiveness instead of the broad pandering that Canes-Wrone models. In addition, Lawrence Jacobs and Benjamin Page (2005) respecify the bivariate relationship posited by Canes-Wrone's theoretical model, with devastating effect. Jacobs and Page initially find a bivariate correlation between public opinion and policy, which is consistent with Canes Wrone's model; but this relationship disappears when critical omitted variables are included. The result is that the effect of public opinion is overtaken by the direct and indirect influence of powerful interest groups--namely, organized labor and, especially, business. In other words, presidents may fail to respond to the mass public's policy preferences because they are toadying up to the well-connected and well-funded and not because they are responsible guardians of the national interest.

A more telling limitation concerns assumptions about motivations. Generations of research have documented that the calculations and motivations of politicians cannot be telescoped into a simplistic trade-off between irresponsible "pandering" and responsible leadership (Aldrich 1995; Kingdon 1984, 1989; McChesney 1997; Schattschneider 1960; Walker 1991). Policy makers are driven to a substantial degree by political philosophy and by a host of intense, concentrated pressures (from party activists to campaign contributors and interest groups that disproportionately represent business). Even when researchers have studied how presidents use their own private surveys, the findings make clear that the policy preferences of most Americans fail to dominate presidential policy (Druckman and Jacobs 2006, forthcoming; Druckman, Jacobs, and Ostermeier 2004).

The Groundhog Day Pathology. There is a tendency (though not a uniform one) for rational choice studies of the presidency to re-present previously well-known findings as remarkable new insights and as confirmation of the unique capability of this idiom of theorizing. Trumpeting the epoch-changing "revolution" ushered in by rational choice, Moe reports that before its arrival, presidency research was dominated by microstudies of the "personal and informal" aspects of the executive and oblivious to the "impersonal and structural" features that increasingly characterized the institution of the presidency as it was "becoming a larger, more complex, more formal institution."

In reality, the field has shifted since the 1970s toward studying the impersonal and institutional features of the presidency, independent of and before the "arrival" of rational choice. Even a cursory review of work outside the rational choice and positive theory silos reveals a long-standing, wide-ranging, and intensive investigation of the development of the institutionalized presidency (Burke 1992; Milkis 1993; Milkis and Nelson 1990; Ragsdale and King 1988; Ragsdale and Theis 1997), the administrative presidency (Arnold 1986; Durant 1992; Krause and Cohen 1997; Mayer 1999; Nathan 1975), and the structuring of presidential choice and success (Skowronek 1993), as well as institutionally nested analyses of presidential interactions with White House agencies and staff (Walcott and Hult 1995), executive branch agencies (Krause 1996; Wood and Waterman 1991), legislative action (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1980), and the mass public (Kernell 1986; Tulis 1987).

Quite apart from rational choice, the field of presidency research has been engaged in a decades-long, thoroughgoing, and decisive shift from personalistic and particularistic accounts to impersonal and institutional analyses. Reflecting this recasting of the field, new syntheses emerged over time that focused on the president's "marginal" influence (Edwards 1989) and, tellingly, sought to correct the sharp pendulum swing that altogether dismissed the personal aspects of the president as "irrelevant" (Peterson 1990). Of course, these developments have been widely discussed among serious presidency scholars with a broad knowledge of the field; indeed, their breadth of acceptance was codified several decades ago in textbooks for undergraduates that focused on the institutional and impersonal nature of presidential politics (e.g. Edwards and Wayne 1985; Milki's and Nelson 1990).

The "Heresthetics" of Scholarly Research, Rational choice proponents frame presidency research as facing a mutually exclusive choice between either theory building or particularism. In reality, this is a false choice, as Sartori makes plain, and as several decades of research on the institutional and systematic features of the presidency demonstrate.

Rational choice promoters engage in an academic version of what William Riker (1986) referred to as "heresthetics'--the strategic framing of the structure of issues for advantage. Riker studied the strategic use of rhetoric in the realm of American state building. The framers of the U.S. Constitution strategically manipulated the debate over the document's ratification by positioning themselves as the "federalists"; in fact, they advocated the radical new departure of establishing a national government while their opponents were actually defending a federal distribution of powers in localities and other subnational units of government.

In the realm of presidential studies, the "heresthetic" approach poses rational choice as delivering "simplicity, clarity, logical rigor, and deductive power," while alternative approaches are portrayed as backward particularists who "weigh the presidency field down ... [by] burying it in detail and driving out theory." Presidentialists who recognize the value of theory building are presented with a stark choice.

Several tools are used to manufacture this false choice of an irreconcilable divide. One tool, which was observed earlier, is to oversell the empirical accomplishments of rational choice and to obscure the theoretical advances in middle-level research on the impersonal and institutional dynamics of the presidency. Another tool is to claim effective middle-level research as an exemplar of rational choice analysis. For instance, Andrew Rudalevige's (2002) research operates at a middle level of abstraction by drawing on the intermediate concept of transaction costs to guide empirical analyses of the presidency's formulation of about 400 legislative proposals. Rather than focusing on a paninstitutional theory, Rudalevige concentrates on improving the explanatory power of our empirical analyses of the process of presidential legislative policy formulation. Indeed, his findings challenge Moe's (1985b) earlier argument of a persistent "developmental" escalation of centralization within the White House since John E Kennedy; Rudalevige reports that centralization varies significantly across administration and is contingent on specific institutional and political conditions rather than reflecting a monotonic trend.

The polarizing of presidency research is costly to the field's development. One set of downsides are the missed opportunities for anchoring grand theory in reality and, second, widening the theoretical and conceptual extension of the field's research. Moe lauds Cameron's (2000b) analysis of presidential vetoes because it "reveals" that "most vetoes occur during periods of divided government." In fact, this is a well-known and long-established finding (see, e.g., Woolley 1991). In Moe's rush to praise what was already well established, he neglects an opportunity to build on past research in order to strengthen a key foundation of theory building--the development of core concepts. The headlong campaign of Moe and others to demolish Richard Neustadt misses the opportunity to build on his intuitive and insightful work. For instance, Neustadt's concept of "professional reputation" as flowing out of presidential exercise of his constitutional authority provides a stepping stone to Cameron's (2000b) effort to explain how sequential vetoes shape the perceptions and information of legislators as they evaluate the need and extent of their concessions. (Indeed, Cameron has acknowledged this connection; see Cameron 2000a).

Another cost of propagating an imagined Maginot Line is to bifurcate research in ways that discourage or drive away presidency researchers from drawing on the helpful theoretic contributions of rational theory. As I mentioned earlier, Cameron's (2000b) study of veto bargaining reveals the causal mechanisms of interbranch relations that might explain adversarialism amid empirical data of apparent cooperation--namely, congressional concessions. Frontal assaults may discourage workaday presidency scholars from using rational choice and other bodies of theory about institutions and political representation as an intellectual quarry for deepening the conceptual repertoire and for strengthening the specification of logical and rigorous theoretical expectations.

Terry Moe as a Case: Grand Theory Versus Middle-Level Theorizing

Terry Moe's own research over the past two and a half decades lays bare the tension between the aspiration for encompassing grand theory and hard-headed empirical sobriety. Indeed, Moe's own intellectual struggle for universalism and for empirical precision makes a compelling case for the value of Sartori's middle-level approach, which seeks both theoretical extension and analytic intention.

Practicing and Promoting Middle-Level Theorizing

Moe began his scholarly career with a series of impressive studies that were sharply critical of global applications of positive theory to legislative and executive politics; these influential studies made a compelling case for using intermediate concepts and grounded theoretical expectations for in-depth rigorous research. His careful studies in the early 1980s of independent commissions were attuned to context and pinpointed systemic and complex differences in their operation based on party, institutional competition, staff agency, constituency pressure, and economic conditions (Moe 1982, 1985a).

In 1987, he offered a penetrating critique of positive theory's global application to bureaucratic politics, pointing to significant gaps in logic and empirical accuracy. He warned against simple models that rest on "the notion that somehow we can learn about bureaucracy without actually studying it ... or devoting serious attention to the enormous existing literatures on bureaucracy, organizations, and public administration" (Moe 1987, 514). The result, he presciently observed, are models that supply theoretical "insights" that are actually incorrect: in the case of the Federal Trade Commission, the "inattention to the history, organization, and politics of the FTC promotes expectations about its behavior that has little foundation in either fact or theory" (513). Making one of the earliest persuasive cases for middle-level theorizing in the study of executive politics, Moe insisted on analyzing the "interplay of theory and data ... [to] produce far more complex theories of dynamic political processes and relationships, theories much more representative of political reality than current models--and much more complicated than modelers would like" (1984, 773). In important respects, the Terry Moe of the 1980s provides the basis for a penetrating critique of certain recent rational choice research on the presidency as well as anticipating the most fruitful direction for presidency research in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Following the Tidal Shift to Positive Theory

As the professional winds shifted, Moe became a Paul Revere of positive theory, heralding the end of research on individual presidents and the arrival of a theory of institutions that would equally apply to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. As the mid-1990s approached, he pronounced that positive theory is "invad[ing] presidential studies" and has already "pu[t] us on the threshold of a broadly based theory of institutions" (Moe 1993). Reviving the inclination that Sartori's contemporaries had harbored for structural functionalism and other grand theoretical models, Moe trumpeted the prospect of "linking everything together, providing the same explanation for the legislature, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary" (1993, 356).

Returning Doubts

As the twenty-first century begins, Moe struggles to reconcile his veneration of rational choice theory with the commitment to analytic accuracy with which he began his career. A kind of intellectual schizophrenia characterizes Moe's simultaneous praise for rational choice's "profoundly consequential developments" in ushering in a grand theory of all institutions and his criticism of "serious weaknesses ... inherent in the methodology," which confirm that "there is much truth to what its critics say" about rational choice's empirical inaccuracy and conceptual imprecision.

Moe is strikingly candid in conceding that his search for maximal theoretical extension produces "built-in" "drawbacks." He pinpoints first-order breakdowns in rational choice's assumptions and conceptual accuracy: he reports now that its expectations about "calculation and information processing are typically light years beyond those of real people," and that its models "ten[d] to be overly simplified ... in stripping away much of what is necessary.... to handle complexity" and to account for the interactions and "contextual effects" that generate change over time.

Moe makes a compelling case that the flaws of rational choice are fundamental and put into doubt its viability moving forward. There is a broader implication that confirms Sartori's conclusion--grand theory is an untenable foundation for future research on the presidency that balances theoretical extension and sufficient intention to generate accurate analyses.

Toward Middle-Range Theory

The most productive future for presidency research lies in middle-range theorizing. Two guideposts are particularly helpful moving forward. First, theoretically guided and accurate research must remain within relatively homogeneous environments. Maximal extension across heterogeneous contexts inherently produces, as Sartori warns and as research on the presidency demonstrates, a poor grasp of reality. The best recent and most compelling future research requires theoretically informed and conceptually precise analysis of the presidency.

Second, the convergence of diverse theory and research methods will continue to produce the most worthwhile accounts of the presidency. Although particularistic research continues and has a delimited role, theoretical and methodological pluralism committed to rigorous analyses offers several advantages. It fuels the further specification and elaboration of interpretative frameworks that explain rather than merely itemize and describe presidential behavior. In addition, a robust platform of analysis will position presidency scholars to address a wide and perhaps growing range of significant and underexamined real-world developments, thereby avoiding the trap of having methodology or theory drive research questions.

Presidential power is increasingly intertwined with the most basic and dire challenges of American governance and political economy. The study of the presidency has rarely been more important; its repertoire of theory and methods positions scholars to take on the challenge.

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LAWRENCE R. JACOBS

University of Minnesota 

Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute and Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His most recent books include Class War?, The Unsustainable American State, Talking Together, and The Private Abuse of the Public Interest.