Presidential Leadership - 13th Edition by George C Edwards & Kenneth R Mayer & Stephen J Wayne (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

This classic text on the American presidency analyzes the institution and the presidents who hold the office through the key lens of leadership. The thirteenth edition is fully updated through the Biden administration, with recent policy developments, the 2022 midterm elections, changes to the media environment, and the latest data.

Review Quotes

Presidential Leadership is the preeminent guide to the institutional motivations and limitations facing presidents who seek change but upon discovering durable constraints have a humbling choice--revert to bargaining in Washington or face politically punishing policy defeats and the potential of electoral repudiation. The new edition applies this important account of the presidency to new presidents through Joe Biden.

Presidential Leadership is without a doubt the top textbook on the American presidency. Apart from learning the essential 'nuts and bolts' about the executive branch, readers will gain valuable knowledge about how recent presidents have navigated their 'ships of state' through the turbulent storms in American politics.

This indispensable book has been my topmost resource for teaching the U.S. presidency for the last 15 years and counting! For this 13th installment, Edwards, Mayer, and Wayne add essential updates and judicious insights on the latest institutional leadership challenges in presidential politics.

Three of our top presidential scholars have written a new edition of their classic work on the American presidency. This is a magnificent work that provides unique insights into the growth and development of the American presidency, as well as the consequences of such developments in the era of Donald Trump. Edwards, Mayer, and Wayne demonstrate that power, and the presidency's use of it, is a subject that requires our attention at this pivotal moment in American history.

Understanding presidential leadership today is as important as it has ever been, particularly in the face of significant challenges to democracy in the United States. Presidential Leadership does an outstanding job of guiding students through the foundational aspects of studying the presidency, while also highlighting important examples to bring those lessons to life. Perhaps the greatest contribution Presidential Leadership makes to the study of the presidency is the delicate balance between historical examples of presidential action that provide rich knowledge and contemporary cases that make the presidency relevant to current students.

About the Author

George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies Emeritus at Texas A&M University. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Oxford and has held appointments at Oxford, Sciences Po Paris, the US Military Academy, Peking University, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the University of London. A leading scholar of the presidency, he has written or edited twenty-seven books on American politics. He was also the editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly for 24 years and general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics series. Professor Edwards has served as president of the Presidency Research Section of the American Political Science Association, which has named its annual dissertation prize in his honor and awarded him its Career Service Award. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he has received the Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service from the US Army and the Pi Sigma Alpha Prize from the Southern Political Science Association. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Edwards applies his scholarship to practical issues of governing, including advising other countries on their constitutions, presidencies, building democratic national party systems, elections, and democracy generally. He has also authored numerous studies for US presidential transitions.
Kenneth R. Mayer is a professor of political science and an affiliate faculty member at the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author or editor of twenty-two books, including With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power, which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidency and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association for the best book on the American presidency. He was the inaugural Fulbright distinguished chair in political science at Australian National University and the first distinguished chair position in the Pacific region. He returned to Australia as part of the US State Department Public Speaker Program to give a nationwide series of lectures on the 2012 presidential election. An award-winning teacher, he also regularly serves as an expert witness on voting rights, campaign finance, and redistricting cases in both state and federal courts.
Stephen J. Wayne is a well-known author and lecturer on American presidents and the presidency. As a professor of government at Georgetown University, he taught courses on the American presidency, US elections, and psychology and politics. A presidential and a Washington-based "insider" for more than fifty years, Wayne has written or edited twelve books, many in multiple editions, and authored numerous articles, chapters, and reviews that have appeared in professional journals, scholarly compilations, newspapers, and magazines. In addition to Presidential Leadership, his best-known works include Personality and Politics: Obama for and against Himself, Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election? and The Road to the White House, now in its twelfth edition. His latest book is The Biden Presidency: Politics, Policy, and Polarization. Professor Wayne is frequently quoted by White House journalists, regularly appears on television and radio news shows, and has been interviewed in documentaries on the presidency and political leadership. He lectures widely at home and abroad to international visitors, college students, federal executives, and business leaders. He has testified before Congress on the subjects of presidential elections and governance and before the Democratic Party and Republican Party advisory committees on the presidential nomination processes.