THE MULTIPLE PRESIDENCIES THESIS (A First Draft) (original) (raw)

This paper examines presidential-congressional relations in foreign affairs by utilizing issue area and political time analyses. The theory proposed is the multiple presidencies thesis, a more nuanced updating of the founding work on the " two presidencies " by Aaron Wildavsky (1966). I suggest that between the presidency and the Congress a high politics arena characterized by presidency-centered conditions favors securitization and greater presidential dominance vis-à-vis the Congress. The low politics arena is characterized by Congress-centered conditions which favor domesticization and greater congressional penetration relative to the presidency. Both are subject to the vagaries of history which amount to a structuring element on the conduct of the inter-institutional relationship. I test this theory by conducting presidential roll call analyses on foreign policy issue areas. The findings support the issue area schema and show that political time is a factor in the executive-legislative construction of foreign policies.