Congress and the Presidency

Part 1 The dynamics of institutional change in Congress: before the Constitution; the institutional development of Congress; four eras of institutional change. Part 2 Congress' electoral connection: the nature of Congressional elections; the formal context of Congressional representation; Congressional recruitment; incumbents and their constituents. Part 3 Congress as an organization - member enterprises and committees: a week in Congress; Congress and the problem of representation; House-Senate differences; members' personal enterprises; legislation and lawmaking; the committee system. Part 4 Congressional parties and legislative decision-making: party organizations; majority party leadership; Congressional decision-making. Part 5 The institutionalization of the Presidency: constitutional and historical roots; Presidents, precedents and institutionalization; executive government as a source of presidential power; executive government as a limitation of presidential power; benefits and problems of control devices; de-institutionalization. Part 6 The public Presidency: Federal conditions and party divisions; the Presidency and the promise of national leadership; primary elections as solutions and problems; dollar democracy; political television and media politics; party de-alignment and candidate-based electioneering; the public presidency and the "permanent election". Part 7 Presidential decision-making: the collective deficiencies of the American Cabinet; contraction as a response to the problem of decision making; the individual as the normative and empirical foundations of Presidential decision-making; the corrective dimension of the political environment. Part 8 Legislating together: the Constitution and the growth of the Presidency-centred tradition; the legislative Presidency; institutional competition within a separated system; Presidential leadership skills; Presidential popularity; the President and Congressional partisanship; the President and legislators' ideologies; the strategic environment for legislating; legislating together. Part 9 Interpreting the separation of powers: the conceptual, structural and cultural components of separated powers; the contemporary significance of the separation of powers; the Supreme Court and Presidential restraint; the Supreme Court and Congressional constraint; the Supreme Court and executive licence; the limits of judicial management; the politics of separated powers. Part 10 Policy controversies: foreign policy as an executive prerogative; the challenge; new environments and disrupted orthodoxies; administration as an executive function; administration as a Congressional interest; Congressional controls over the administrative process; Congress as co-manager of the executive. Part 11 The Congress, the Presidency and the democratic system.