The Presidency, Democratic Mobilization, and the State

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Panel Proposal: The Presidency, Democratic Mobilization, and the State


Donald Trump’s iconoclastic presidency and its bellicose aftermath has focused scholars attention on the relationship between the White House, political parties, and the bureaucracy. Yet as Stephen Skowronek, John Dearborn and Desmond King have argued in the Phantoms of the American Republic, Trump’s attack on the deep state has deep constitutional and historical roots. The Constitution vested presidents with executive power, but this authority was somehow to be “detached from political factions, interested cabals, and popular enthusiasms.” However, the framers’ formula for insulating the executive office from popular pressures was a chimera. Throughout American history, a changing kinetic relationship between presidents, political partis, and social movements has reshaped partisan alignments and politicized the bureaucracy.
This panel will convene a diverse group of scholars who will offer a rich array of perspectives on the complex interplay between presidents, parties, and the state. Chandler James’s (University of Oregon) study of Barack Obama will examine how the modern president’s position as head of government and as a symbol of the nation has put a premium on a performative politics informed by social norms and public expectations. He shows how the first Black president eluded stereotypical preconceptions in two presidential campaigns by strategically joining his positions on race and gender to demonstrations of his competence and broadly appealing priorities. Robert Lieberman (Johns Hopkins University) and Desmond King (Oxford University) shift attention to institutions, investigating how democratic mobilization pressured the American state “to transform” into “an agent of racial equality” -- a “civil rights state” -- during the middle of the twentieth century. Taking account of developments since the 1960s, Sidney Milkis (University of Virginia) and Daniel Tichenor (University of Oregon) show how the weakening of party organizations, the rise of movement politics, and the expansion of presidential power have cultivated a direct, highly combustible relationship between the White House and social activism that has fractured the nation – given rise to a polarized struggle for the services of the administrative state that poses both unprecedented opportunities to move toward a more inclusive democracy and perilous forces of exclusion that threaten to reverse hard won gains since the forging of the civil rights state. William Howell (University of Chicago) and Terry Moe (Stanford University) fear that the forces of darkness are more powerful than the forces of light in this struggle for the soul of American democracy. They see the partisan struggle over state power as asymmetrical – and trace the efforts of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan to dismantle, rather than redeploy, the administrative state. This attack on the modern bureaucracy, they argue, is driven by conservative claims about a vastly more powerful presidency, encapsulated most clearly in the Unitary Executive Theory, that threatens both the rule of law and democracy itself.
To sort out this intriguing mix of perspectives on the modern presidency, the state and self-government, the panel includes two distinguished scholars of the presidency and American democracy: Meena Bose (Hofstra University), who will also chair the session, and Rachel Potter (University of Virginia). Seeking to shed light on the causes and consequences of America’s present discontents, their commentary will highlight the points of contention and agreement among the papers and seek to identify the enduring and emergent patterns that shape the formative and contentious relationship between the modern state and grass roots insurgency.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• The Asymmetric Logic of Presidential Power - William G. Howell, University of Chicago; Terry M. Moe, Stanford University

• Inclusion, Exclusion, and Executive Power in the Movement-Party Era - Sidney M. Milkis, University of Virginia; Daniel Tichenor, University of Oregon

• Barack Obama and the Choreographed Performance of Racial and Gender Identity - Chandler James, University of Oregon

• The American Civil Rights State: Federal Power and Racial Justice - Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University; Desmond King, University of Oxford

Chair

• Meena Bose Hofstra University

Discussants

• Rachel Augustine Potter University of Virginia

• Meena Bose Hofstra University