Beginning with the institutional presidency that emerged during the Roosevelt administration, this new edition includes a revised chapter on the Bush administration and a new chapter on Bill Clinton.

How institutions shape the American presidency This incisive undergraduate textbook emphasizes the institutional sources of presidential power and executive governance, enabling students to think more clearly and systematically about the American presidency at a time when media coverage of the White House is awash in anecdotes and personalities. William Howell offers unparalleled perspective on the world’s most powerful office, from its original design in the Constitution to its historical growth over time; its elections and transitions to governance; its interactions with Congress, the courts, and the federal bureaucracy; and its persistent efforts to shape public policy. Comprehensive in scope and rooted in the latest scholarship, The American Presidency is the perfect guide for studying the presidency at a time of acute partisan polarization and popular anxiety about the health and well-being of the republic. Focuses on the institutional structures that presidents must navigate, the incentives and opportunities that drive them, and the constraints they routinely confront Shows how legislators, judges, bureaucrats, the media, and the broader public shape the contours and limits of presidential power Encourages students to view the institutional presidency as not just an object of study but a way of thinking about executive politics Highlights the lasting effects of important historical moments on the institutional presidency Enables students to grapple with enduring themes of power, rules, norms, and organization that undergird democracy

Without a doubt, the institution of the presidency today is quite different from the one that existed throughout the early part of the nation’s history, despite only minimal revisions to its formal constitutional structure. The processes by which the institution of the presidency has developed have remained largely unexamined, however. Victoria A. Farrar-Myers offers a carefully crafted argument about how changes in presidential authority transform the institution. Her analysis tracks interactions between the president and Congress during the years 1881–1920 in three policy areas: the commitment of troops, the creation of administrative agencies, and the adoption of tariff policy. Farrar-Myers shows that Congress and the president have in fact “created a coordinated script that provides the basis of precedent for future interactions under similar circumstances.” Changes in presidential authority, she argues, “are the residual of everyday actions,” which create new shared understandings of expected behavior. As these understandings are reinforced over time, they become interwoven into the institution of the presidency itself. Farrar-Myers’s analysis will offer theoretical guidance for political scientists’ understanding of the development of presidential authority and the processes that drive the institutionalization of the presidency, and will provide historians with a nuanced understanding of the institution from the period between the end of Reconstruction and the Progressive era.

. The authors emphasise the dynamism of America's foremost political institutions within a democratic system. They examine recent developments in relation to the wider context of United States politics and reassert the importance of institutions in understanding this unique political system.