Presidents

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Major presidential decisions are at the heart of the American presidency, yet they remain one of its least studied features. What a major decision is and how it is made remain elusive in presidential scholarship. This investigation offers the first attempt to conceptualize and empirically analyze major presidential decisions from Truman to Bush (1945-1992). Conceptually, the project defines a major decision as a novel initiative which pertains to one or more basic values of the decision makers, involves high levels of uncertainty, risk, and conflict, and is notable in its scope and effect at the time it is made. To explain the decision process, the research advances a theory of successive updating describing decision makers as intuitive, experienced problem solvers who successively update their estimates of the problem, options, and actions needed to move the decision process to completion. Empirically, it develops the first exhaustive data set of presidential decisions, distinguishing between major decisions and other newsworthy, yet less extraordinary, ones. It constructs a narrative for each decision based on a collection of material from primary and secondary sources. These narratives substitute for more encyclopedic case studies, while still capturing necessary information about the means, goals, players, and events, which comprise the decisions as they unfold over time. The narratives provide the material to systematically code various aspects of the decisions, such as the length of the decision process, its phases, the players who are present and absent, the involvement of the president, media visibility, and types of policies involved. The project offers two models of presidential decisions. One employs sequential analysis to capture the decision process as it unfolds over time. The other offers a multi-level model of major presidential decisions which estimates the effects of factors in three interrelated levels of decison-making presidents' immediate decision group, the presidential institution, and the political environments. Thus, the project advances understanding of what are among the most significant outcomes of a presidential term - - major decisions.