Curt Nichols

Exploiting the Opportunity for Reconstructive Leadership: Presidential Responses to Enervated Political Regimes

We seek to extend discourse on“the reconstructive presidency” to the edge of new frontiers in two interrelated ways. First, we argue that reconstructive presidents act within critical junctures in which they exploit periodic opportunities to revitalize enervated political regimes, but that failure to exploit such opportunities can also occur. Second, we clarify the tasks necessary for reconstructive success, contending that reconstructive presidents must (a) shift the main axis of partisan cleavage, (b) assemble a new majority coalition, and (c) institutionalize a new political regime.Through conducting typical and crucial case studies, we show how reconstructive dynamics unfold in either a straightforward or protracted manner depending on whether presidents initially handed reconstructive opportunities, via encountering enervated political conditions, succeed in accomplishing the tasks we delineate. In doing so, we depart from previous interpretations and recast the “System of 1896” as a successful reconstruction.

Court Curbing via Attempt to Amend the Constitution: An Update of Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court from 1955–1984

This study investigates the validity of the common practice of differentiating between “high” and “low frequency” periods of congressional attacks on the Supreme Court. In-depth examination of the Congressional Record from 1955–1984 reveals 1,497 previously uncounted constitutional amendment attacks. Rather than starting and stopping, the never-ending court curbing efforts of this era evolved in four phases, differentiated by shifts in an unexamined dimension—leadership of attacks. This suggests that modern attacks may be a way for partisan and regional coalition managers to “signal” others (including those outside the Court) in efforts to maintain, build, or assert their partys dominance. Court curbing may therefore play a greater role than realized in party system development, making congressional attacks an overlooked “mechanism” through which coalitional change may be both opposed and wrought.

Modern Reconstructive Presidential Leadership: Reordering Institutions in a Constrained Environment

Abstract Modern “reconstructive” presidents face an institutional environment that affords strong veto possibilities to defenders of the status quo, making today’s politics resistant to the “order shattering” and “order creating” style of change most frequently associated with the leadership type. This project responds to the possibility that the rise of these conditions suggests the end of such reconstructive politics. It applies fresh insights gleaned from historical-institutionalist scholarship to investigate the full range of options that are available to presidents inheriting the opportunity to reorder politics. Mathematical simulation, via Polya’s urn model, is used to demonstrate how institutional displacement, layering, conversion, and drift can be used – independently and together – to recalibrate the equilibrium of a “path-dependent” system and thus alter developmental pathways. This not only suggests that modern presidents can still reorder and rejuvenate politics in a constrained environment; it updates expectations and warns of potential dangers.

Military Family Attitudes toward Senior Civilian Leaders in the United States

This article examines Army spousal attitudes toward senior civilian leaders in the United States. Based on the 2004 Military Families Survey, it investigates the demographic, political, and institutional factors that structured the job approval ratings of then-President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Partisanship, race and ethnicity, and opinions about the war in Iraq were consistently significant predictors; experiences directly related to the Iraq war were not. For instance, while Republicans and Latinos were highly likely to support the leadership, past and present deployments were not significant. In addition, Army spouses appear to have distinguished between the three leaders. The results have implications for researchers interested not only in military families but also the role of race and ethnicity in the armed forces, retention dynamics, the civil–military gap, and the Army in a time of war.

The Presidency and the Political Order: In Context

George C. Edwards. The Strategic Presidency: Persuasion and Opportunity inPresidential Leadership. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.Stephen Skowronek. Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprisal andReappraisal, 2nd ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011.Walter Dean Burnham. Voting in American Elections: The Shaping of the PoliticalUniverse Since 1788, ed. Thomas Ferguson and Louis Ferleger. Palo Alto, CA:Academica Press, 2010.Curt Nichols,

Executive behavior and the influence of religious factors: evidence from gubernatorial State-of-the-State Addresses, 2000–2013

As scholars and pundits increasingly note, debate has intensified over religion in contemporary American politics. Yet, Presidency and Executive Politics researchers know relatively little about how executive behavior is influenced by religion, especially in regard to the impact religious identity and context may have on gubernatorial decision-making. It is the core purpose of this study to explore this understudied topic and begin to fill a large, overlapping, gap that exists across multiple literatures. In pursuit of this goal, the “president-/presidency-centered” framework of analysis is employed to examine religious rhetoric found in a new data-set containing all State-of-the-State Addresses (SoSA) from 2000 to 2013. The study provides the first evidence that gubernatorial decision-making is influenced by both identity-based and contextual factors. Indeed, the probability of whether “God” (or an equivalent term) is mentioned in the agenda-setting SoSA is significantly influenced by the governors gender, race/ethnicity, and partisan and religious affiliations as well as the racial, partisan, and religious composition of the states population.

Latino Veterans and Income: Are There Gains from Military Service?

Using national cross-sectional data from 2006 through 2009, we test hypotheses concerning the effects of military service on later-life earnings for men. The results suggest that serving in the armed forces augments or penalizes civilian income later in the life cycle depending on race and ethnicity when controlling for formal educational attainment. Although some of the results for race and ethnicity vary according to model specification, we conclude that Latino veterans earn more money than nonveteran Latinos. Further, our data imply that age does not substantially condition the influence of military service on earnings after discharge. Past research has conceptualized the military experience in various ways vis-a-vis income: negatively, as a “tax” or “disruption,” or positively, as an enhancement of “social capital,” serving as a “bridging environment,” or as a “screening device” to signal employability. Our results suggest that these perspectives should be seen as context dependent related to the individuals’ race and ethnicity.