American presidents enter office ready to enact a policy-
making agenda that will satisfy partisan interests and
facilitate reelection to a second term. Economic circum-
stances, however, may catch presidents in a vicious cycle
of economic growth and inflation versus recession and un-
employment. Faced with responsibility for the nation's
economic health, presidents are often forced to make trade-
offs between pursuing political objectives and stabilizing
the economy.
Vicious Cycle provides a theoretical framework for explaining
how presidents pursue partisan and electoral objectives in
office while simultaneously managing the nation's economy.
With an approach that bridges several literatures in presidential
studies and political economy, Constantine J. Spiliotes develops
an econometric model of postwar presidential decision making in
the American political economy and examines its relationship to
economic decision making in four presidencies. These extensively
documented case studies—of presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter,
and Reagan—offer variation across several analytic dimensions:
temporal, partisan, electoral, and institutional.
Spiliotes concludes that tradeoffs between political objectives
and institutional responsibility are driven by a transformation
in the nature of the American presidency, from an office in which
decision making is anchored in partisan accountability to one con-
strained by the chief executive's institutional mission.
Spiliotes's work contributes to a fuller understanding of the pre-
sidency and political economy and the methodologies that elucidate
them.
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CONSTANTINE J. SPILIOTES is a dean at the New Hampshire Institute
of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.
The Presidency and Leadership, A Joseph V. Hughes, Jr., and
Holly O. Hughes Book
