Abstract Archival evidence sheds new light on the Truman administration's 1951 investigation into the “China Lobby” and its links to McCarthyism. Truman's advisors suspected connections among illicit funding streams generated by Chiang Kai‐shek's Nationalist regime in Formosa, illegal lobbying by unregistered agents, and a barrage of anti‐Communist propaganda from activists connected to McCarthy and the “China Lobby.” The White House worried that by flooding America's public discourse with charges of treason, the alleged conspirators were destabilizing the nation's ability to engage in reasoned deliberation about foreign policy. However, the White House could not persuade any congressional committees to manage an investigation, so it instead ran an executive operation that produced tantalizing clues but no prosecutable conclusions. Rather than proving its suspicions, the investigation created confusion and sowed doubts about Truman's judgment. Analyzing the administration's investigation provides new insights into the confusions and contradictions besetting America's grappling with the early Cold War and offers lessons on how not to defend democracy in a time of crisis.
{"title":"“Something uniquely sinister in U.S. history”: New evidence on the Truman administration's 1951 investigation of the China Lobby","authors":"Stephen J. Hartnett","doi":"10.1111/psq.12852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12852","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Archival evidence sheds new light on the Truman administration's 1951 investigation into the “China Lobby” and its links to McCarthyism. Truman's advisors suspected connections among illicit funding streams generated by Chiang Kai‐shek's Nationalist regime in Formosa, illegal lobbying by unregistered agents, and a barrage of anti‐Communist propaganda from activists connected to McCarthy and the “China Lobby.” The White House worried that by flooding America's public discourse with charges of treason, the alleged conspirators were destabilizing the nation's ability to engage in reasoned deliberation about foreign policy. However, the White House could not persuade any congressional committees to manage an investigation, so it instead ran an executive operation that produced tantalizing clues but no prosecutable conclusions. Rather than proving its suspicions, the investigation created confusion and sowed doubts about Truman's judgment. Analyzing the administration's investigation provides new insights into the confusions and contradictions besetting America's grappling with the early Cold War and offers lessons on how not to defend democracy in a time of crisis.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136154553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Persuading the Public: The Evolution of Popular Presidential Communication from Washington to Trump. By Anne C.Pluta, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2023. pp. 192","authors":"Karen Hoffman","doi":"10.1111/psq.12854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12854","url":null,"abstract":"The author declares no conflict of interest.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136152297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article reconstructs the bureaucratic and legal processes that culminated in the creation of the modern national security classification system in Executive Order No. 10,290, issued by Harry Truman in 1951. It argues that classification was shaped by processes of improvisation endogenous to the federal bureaucracy, which produced the problems of overclassification, definitional vagueness, and ambiguous constitutional status that have haunted the secrecy regime until the present. In so doing, it provides new insight into the development of the modern presidency, the national security state, and American democracy, and suggests possible paths to reform the contemporary pathologies of the classification system.
{"title":"Rethinking the origins of national security classification","authors":"Sam Lebovic","doi":"10.1111/psq.12851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12851","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article reconstructs the bureaucratic and legal processes that culminated in the creation of the modern national security classification system in Executive Order No. 10,290, issued by Harry Truman in 1951. It argues that classification was shaped by processes of improvisation endogenous to the federal bureaucracy, which produced the problems of overclassification, definitional vagueness, and ambiguous constitutional status that have haunted the secrecy regime until the present. In so doing, it provides new insight into the development of the modern presidency, the national security state, and American democracy, and suggests possible paths to reform the contemporary pathologies of the classification system.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136024545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coming to terms with John F. Kennedy By Stephen F.Knott, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2022. pp. 280","authors":"Steven R. Goldzwig","doi":"10.1111/psq.12853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12853","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41762565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Republican Evolution: From Governing Party to Antigovernment Party, 1860–2020 By KennethJanda (Ed.), New York: Columbia University Press. 2022. pp. 344","authors":"Seth Masket","doi":"10.1111/psq.12855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12855","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44009033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Federal spending has been a strong governing instrument for the president and governing party, who have pursued their political and electoral benefits by strategically allocating federal grants, procurements, and loans to subnational governments. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), in which the federal government issued almost $1 trillion in loans over three rounds between April 2020 and May 2021 to support small businesses' operations in response to the COVID‐19 crisis, was no different. I build on previous research in distributive politics by examining the third round of PPP loans, in which $277 billion was allocated in the first months of the Biden administration. I find significant evidence of presidential particularism, as the Biden administration issued a large amount of PPP lending to Pro‐Biden and core Democratic counties as well as to congressional districts with copartisan (Democratic) house members. Furthermore, the magnitude of these presidential particularism findings immediately following the presidential election year is considerably larger compared to previous studies.
{"title":"Presidential particularism, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and the Biden administration","authors":"Heon-Gu Ha","doi":"10.1111/psq.12850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12850","url":null,"abstract":"Federal spending has been a strong governing instrument for the president and governing party, who have pursued their political and electoral benefits by strategically allocating federal grants, procurements, and loans to subnational governments. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), in which the federal government issued almost $1 trillion in loans over three rounds between April 2020 and May 2021 to support small businesses' operations in response to the COVID‐19 crisis, was no different. I build on previous research in distributive politics by examining the third round of PPP loans, in which $277 billion was allocated in the first months of the Biden administration. I find significant evidence of presidential particularism, as the Biden administration issued a large amount of PPP lending to Pro‐Biden and core Democratic counties as well as to congressional districts with copartisan (Democratic) house members. Furthermore, the magnitude of these presidential particularism findings immediately following the presidential election year is considerably larger compared to previous studies.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45050381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The National Security Council (NSC) is the preeminent national security feature of the modern U.S. presidency. The NSC is the president's council, but presidents have varied dramatically in how frequently they have convened formal meetings of the NSC since the NSC system was created in 1947. Under what conditions are presidents likely to hold NSC meetings? I argue that presidents are pragmatic about when to engage personally in national security affairs and that presidents are incentivized to conduct NSC meetings more frequently early in a presidency. Using a novel data set of all NSC meetings from 1947 to 1993, I find that presidents are likely to hold NSC meetings most frequently in the first year of office and that NSC meeting frequency is likely to decline substantially over a president's first 3 years in office, even after controlling for important international security conditions and domestic political factors previously thought to influence presidential national security behavior. The results affirm prior scholars' description of the NSC as a presidential mechanism for international crisis management but also suggest that time in office is an important determinant of presidential national security behavior.
{"title":"National security in presidential time: The politics of the National Security Council","authors":"Neil Snyder","doi":"10.1111/psq.12849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12849","url":null,"abstract":"The National Security Council (NSC) is the preeminent national security feature of the modern U.S. presidency. The NSC is the president's council, but presidents have varied dramatically in how frequently they have convened formal meetings of the NSC since the NSC system was created in 1947. Under what conditions are presidents likely to hold NSC meetings? I argue that presidents are pragmatic about when to engage personally in national security affairs and that presidents are incentivized to conduct NSC meetings more frequently early in a presidency. Using a novel data set of all NSC meetings from 1947 to 1993, I find that presidents are likely to hold NSC meetings most frequently in the first year of office and that NSC meeting frequency is likely to decline substantially over a president's first 3 years in office, even after controlling for important international security conditions and domestic political factors previously thought to influence presidential national security behavior. The results affirm prior scholars' description of the NSC as a presidential mechanism for international crisis management but also suggest that time in office is an important determinant of presidential national security behavior.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42327138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite advising on thousands of important decisions, who serves on presidential transition teams in the United States is largely unknown. The secretive and transient nature of transition planning explains why this is the case, but also reinforces why it is important to have a better understanding of who a president‐elect might choose at this critical moment of the transfer of power. This article develops a theory of the transition team as well as a typology based on two factors: expertise and status. Original interviews with members of the 2020–2021 Biden–Harris transition team then demonstrate the utility of this typology for better understanding the transition period.
{"title":"Status and expertise: A typology of US presidential transition team members","authors":"H. Brown","doi":"10.1111/psq.12847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12847","url":null,"abstract":"Despite advising on thousands of important decisions, who serves on presidential transition teams in the United States is largely unknown. The secretive and transient nature of transition planning explains why this is the case, but also reinforces why it is important to have a better understanding of who a president‐elect might choose at this critical moment of the transfer of power. This article develops a theory of the transition team as well as a typology based on two factors: expertise and status. Original interviews with members of the 2020–2021 Biden–Harris transition team then demonstrate the utility of this typology for better understanding the transition period.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47638159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A hidden facet of democratization in the world over the past two centuries has been the increased weight of people's voice in electing presidents. On the basis of new data on all presidential elections in the world since 1789, we show that they evolved from systems in which the final decision was made by someone other than voters, to systems in which the choice of voters was decisive only if it generated a majority, to systems in which the final decision is made by voters. This means that in countries where presidents have executive powers, elections may not be the mechanism by which the people, as a collectivity, always selects its rulers, thus violating the fundamental norm of democracy. We document the history of presidential election rules, offer some tentative explanations, and explore the consequences of particular systems.
{"title":"Electing presidents: A hidden facet of democratization","authors":"J. Cheibub, F. Limongi, A. Przeworski","doi":"10.1111/psq.12846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12846","url":null,"abstract":"A hidden facet of democratization in the world over the past two centuries has been the increased weight of people's voice in electing presidents. On the basis of new data on all presidential elections in the world since 1789, we show that they evolved from systems in which the final decision was made by someone other than voters, to systems in which the choice of voters was decisive only if it generated a majority, to systems in which the final decision is made by voters. This means that in countries where presidents have executive powers, elections may not be the mechanism by which the people, as a collectivity, always selects its rulers, thus violating the fundamental norm of democracy. We document the history of presidential election rules, offer some tentative explanations, and explore the consequences of particular systems.","PeriodicalId":46768,"journal":{"name":"Presidential Studies Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44089799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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