President George W. Bush's Influence Over Bureaucracy and Policy: Extraordinary Times, Extraordinary Powers

ISBN-13: 9780230609549 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 272 str.

Colin Provost; Paul Teske

Opis

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 provided President George W. Bush with unprecedented levels of public support. The Bush administration used this support to push forward many aspects of its policy agenda. Anecdotal evidence in the popular press provided many examples of the administration pushing the envelope on the politicization of federal agencies and policies. But, no comprehensive study has yet been prepared to examine how and whether the Bush administration was really able to substantially re-shape bureaucratic policy and outputs, especially in the domains of domestic policy. In this book, leading scholars of presidential influence over policy examine a wide range of agencies and policies to address this question. While the findings vary somewhat by policy area, the results suggest that the Bush administration was not able to achieve many of its goals, as agency processes are difficult to change.

Recenzje

"This book provides an important and original collection of essays about the development of the federal bureaucracy during the George W Bush administration. The editors have gathered contributions from leading scholars of the study of bureaucracy and the resultant collection brims with meticulous new research and theoretical insight. The volume will become a key text for scholarly understanding this period in American political development. I recommend it highly." - Desmond King, Andrew Mellon Professor of American Government, Nuffield College, Oxford University

"Focusing upon aspects of President Bush's domestic policy that have received less attention than his foreign, security, and judicial policy, Colin Provost and Paul Teske ask what effects the President's expansive view of executive power has had on policy making and policy outcomes. They and their able contributors find complex patterns of agency resistance, inertia, congressional politics, and implementation failures of a kind that make Mr. Bush's presidency often less radical in its policy effectiveness than in its policy initiatives, and less completely disruptive adeparture from its predecessors than either its proponents or critics have sometimes claimed. This is a fine and welcome book on a fundamental problem in and with American politics and public policy which deservesto be widely read." - Nigel Bowles, University Lecturer and Balfour Fellow in Politics, St. Anne's College, Oxford University

"This volume, based on a conference held at the University of Oxford, brings together papers that focus on the George W. Bush administration's efforts to gain control over the American federal bureaucracy. The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of the administration's drive to appoint officials in sync with the administration's policy objectives. They also examine the impact of these personnel on policy administration, and find that changes in top personnel do not always ensure the expected outcomes. Students of administrative politics and readers interested in the sorry history of the Bush years will find this book a source of useful information and provocative interpretations of the results of the administration's efforts." - Joel Aberbach, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, UCLA

Spis treści

Extraordinary Powers, Extraordinary Policies?; C.Provost  & P.Teske PART I: AN OVERVIEW OF THE BUSH BUREAUCRACY Personnel is Policy: George W. Bush's Managerial Presidency; D.E.Lewis Is the Bush Bureaucracy Any Different? A Macro-Empirical Examination of Notice and Comment Rulemaking Under '43'; S.Webb Yackee  & J.Webb Yackee Presidential Attention to Independent Regulators in the Bush Era; A.B.Whitford Coordinated Action and the Limits of Presidential Control Over the Bureaucracy: Lessons from the Bush Presidency; G.A.Krause  & B.M.Dupay PART II: CONTROL AND CONSTRAINTS IN CABINET AGENCIES President Bush and the U.S. Department of Education: The Texas Mafia, Scientific Education Policy and No State Left Behind; P.Teske The Paradox of Agency Issue Attention: The Bush Administration and Homeland Security; P.J.May  & S.Workman Policy Dominance versus Policy Success: Homeland Security and the Limitations of Presidential Policy Control; B.J.Gerber PART II: CONTROL AND CONSTRAINTS IN CABINET AGENCIES Flying Under the Radar? Political Control and Bureaucratic Resistance in the Bush Environmental Protection Agency; C.Provost , B.J.Gerber  & M.Pickup Efficiency, Enforcement and Political Control: The Case of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; S.Nicholson-Crotty  & J.Nicholson-Crotty Maintaining Political Control: George W. Bush and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; R.W.Waterman PART IV: AN ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE W. BUSH'S POLICY MANAGEMENT Evaluating Policy in the Bush II President; C.Provost

O autorze

COLIN PROVOST is Lecturer at University College of London, UK.
PAUL TESKE is a Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado, Denver, USA.