chapter 16
...................................................................................................................................................EXECUTIVES—THE
AMERICAN
PRESIDENCY
...................................................................................................................................................william g. howell
In the early 1980 s, George Edwards took the presidency sub-Weld to task for its failure
to adopt basic norms of social science. While scholars who contributed to the various
other sub-Welds of American politics constructed hard theory that furnished clear
predictions that, in turn, were tested using original data-sets and the latest econo-
metric techniques, too many presidency scholars, it seemed to Edwards, insisted on
wading through a bog of anecdotes and poorly justiWed prescriptions. Unlike their
would-be closest kin, congressional scholars, presidency scholars tended to prefer
complexity to simplicity, nuance to generality, stories to data. Consequentially,
Edwards noted, ‘‘Research on the presidency too often fails to meet the standards
of contemporary political science, including the careful deWnition and measurement
of concepts, the rigorous speciWcation and testing of propositions, the employment
of appropriate quantitative methods, and the use of empirical theory to develop
hypotheses and explainWndings’’ (Edwards 1983 , 100 ). If the sub-Weld hoped to
rejoin the rest of the discipline and enter the modern era of political science, it would
need to nurture and reward scholars conducting quantitative research.
Edwards did not sit alone with such sentiments. In a damning report to the Ford
Foundation, Hugh Heclo summarized the state of the presidency literature circa