Presidential Leadership

Long established as a leading introduction to the American presidency, Presidential Leadership, Fourteenth Edition, provides students with a comprehensive survey that addresses the capacity of chief executives to fulfill their tasks, exercise their powers, and utilize their organizational structures to affect the output of government. The authors examine all aspects of the presidency in rich detail, including presidential powers, presidential history, and the institution of the presidency.
Edwards, Mayer, and Wayne analyze the institution and the presidents who hold the office through the key lens of leadership. The authors explain the leadership dilemma presidents face and their institutional, political, and personal capacities to meet it. Two models of presidential leadership help students understand the institution: one in which a strong president dominates the political environment as a director of change, and another in which the president performs a more limited role as facilitator of change. Each model provides an insightful perspectives to better understand leadership in the modern presidency and to evaluate the performance of individual presidents. With no simple formula for presidential success, and no partisan perspective driving the analysis, the authors help us understand that presidents and citizens alike must understand the nature of presidential leadership in a pluralistic system in which separate institutions share powers.
The fourteenth edition is fully updated through the start of Trump’s second administration, with recent policy developments, the 2024 elections, changes to the media environment, and the latest data. In addition, material from the prior edition’s chapter on domestic and economic policy has been incorporated into other chapters for an overall briefer text.

George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University. He has served as both the Winant Professor of American Government and the Olin Professor of American Government at Oxford. He was also the founder and from 1991-2001 the director of The Center for Presidential Studies. A leading scholar of the presidency, he has written or edited 26 books on American politics and public policy making and more than 80 articles and book chapters.

Kenneth Mayer is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His expertise is in the presidency, campaign finance, and election administration. He is the author of With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power, and an award-winning teacher.

Steve Wayne is professor of political science at Georgetown University. An expert on the American Presidency, he has authored over 100 articles, chapters, and book reviews and written 12 books, several in multiple editions, including?Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election?