The Political Economy of the US Presidency

This article looks at the political economy of the US Presidency. It provides a brief review of how the American political and constitutional order helps shape the presidents' incentive structure and how it defines the available tools of governance. It examines the intellectual roots of the political economy approach, before looking at significant developments. The article also claims that scholars have been able to identify three causal mechanisms at work in presidential governance, namely: proposal power, veto power, and strategic pre-action. A review of works on these three causal mechanisms is included in the article.