Toward Assessing the Administrative Presidency: Public Lands, the BLM, and the Reagan Administration
研究了里根政府如何通过行政手段（而非立法）推动西部公共土地政策转向，基于新墨西哥州的三个案例分析了行政总统制的实施过程、政治影响及效果。
Assessing the leadership quandary confronting modern presidents, Bert Rockman avers that [political] system designed to rein in the opportunities for temporary majorities to achieve their goals, in practice, tends to prevent presidents from achieving theirs.' Indeed, recent scholarly research is replete with pessimism concerning the ability of any chief executive to propose, enact, and implement a coherent domestic policy agenda absent constitutional reform, uncommon bargaining skills, or uncanny good luck.2 Scholarly references, however, to the illusion of presidential and the no-win in no way diminish popular expectations that incumbents will provide leadership in defining the policy options available to us, [make] the appropriate choices among these options, and [transform] those choices into effective government action.' Indeed, as Theodore Lowi suggests, the personal has become the epicenter of public accountability in contemporary America.4 With bureaucratic performance widely recognized as problematic yet critical to presidential objectives, and with executive-legislative stalemate almost routine, recent presidents have turned to the to energize and implement domestic policy. As portrayed by Richard Nathan, this presidential strategy emphasizes administrative over legislative policy initiatives and relies for implementation on the managerial prerogatives of the president and his appointed emissaries as they effect budgetary, personnel, rulemaking, and reorganization decisions throughout the bureaucracy.5 This strategy, in turn, has spawned a rich, informative, and insightful literature on the administrative presidency that largely describes its policy formulation processes, triumphs, and travails. As yet, however, few empirical studies have systematically assessed the implementation dynamics of the administrative presidency once its policy initiatives have evaded or weathered congressional challenges or judicial review. Upon assuming the presidency, Ronald Reagan applied an administrative strategy to reorient public policy in a fashion and to a degree that is unprecedented in terms of its strategic significance, comprehensiveness, and philosophical zeal. Specifically, his Administration * With bureaucratic performance widely recognized as problematic yet critical to presidential objectives, and with executive-legislative stalemate almost routine, recent presidents have turned to the to energize and implement domestic policy. The Reagan Administration, however, has relied upon an administrative approach to executive leadership to an unparalleled degree in terms of its strategic significance, comprehensiveness, and philosophical zeal. This exploratory study chronicles three implementation experiences in New Mexico in order to enhance our appreciation of the process, politics, and efficacy of Reagan's use of the administrative presidency to reorient natural resources policy in the West. Analysis of these field experiences suggests (1) that the strategic and operational choices made by Reagan appointees were not always well linked, and thus jeopardized aspects of the President's policy agenda, and (2) that a more fruitful approach to executive leadership would effectively link the administrative presidency with a backward mapping implementation strategy.