Title: Summary of Neustadt: Presidential power -- Adam Brown, BYU Political Science
Headings: Neustadt: Presidential power
Neustadt: Presidential power
In Brief
Place in the Literature
Argument
Presidents must persuade/bargain, not command
Shared, not separated powers
President's sources of power
Illustrations
Executive bargaining
Congressional bargaining
Research on similar subjects
Tags

Content: Alternatively, choices are the means by which he dissipates his power. The outcome, case by case, will often turn on whether he perceives his risk in power terms and takes account of what he sees before he makes his choice. A President is so uniquely situated and his power so bound up with the uniqueness of his place, that he can count on no one else to be perceptive for him" (150). Place in the Literature
Like Madison (1787), #10 and Truman (1951), Neustadt uses a pluralist view to understand politics. In the pluralist world, competing factions mobilize and counter-mobilize, persuading and arguing until policy ultimately arrives at what the typical citizen would want. ( For critiques of pluralism, see the summary of Truman.) Kernell (1997) later argued that presidents have shifted from Neustadt's bargaining model to a more confrontational tactic that he calls "going public." Argument
Presidents must persuade/bargain, not command
The president's primary power is to persuade and bargain, not to command. When a president has to resort to commanding people, he is showing weakness. Commands only work in very special circumstances. "