In particular, the author seeks to explain the trade-offs that presidents accept in pursuit of partisan and electoral goals, while also endeavoring to oversee the American economy. Spiliotes argues that a president's ability to respond to such political incentives is significantly affected by the institutional responsibility each one faces as a political executive. In other words, he casts his theoretical net to include the pull of a president's party and the sometimes countervailing pull of the nation at large in the context of improving the macroeconomy. Further, the extent to which a president responds to these pulls is affected by the institutional structure inherited by that particular president.

The book proceeds in two parts. In Part I, comprising Chapters 1 to 3, Spiliotes develops a theoretical framework of presidential decision making on the macroeconomy and builds an accompanying empirical model of it. Chapter 1 is a thorough literature review of the various perspectives on presidential economic decision making. The author highlights the inconsistencies in existing work and makes a strong case that a president's response to partisan and electoral forces is conditional. This conditionality is the window through which the author offers a new take on the process by utilizing the notion of institutional responsibility as an intervening factor. Presidents are constrained in their decision making by the given structure and norms of behavior they assume upon entering office.

In Chapter 2, the most interesting in the book and especially vital to his case, Spiliotes traces the evolution of this institutional responsibility in the first half of the twentieth century. During this period, the presidency evolved from an institution with little interest in tinkering with the economy to one with regular and sustained leadership of it. Competing explanations of this development are presented. Chapter 3 constructs and tests an empirical model of presidential decision making designed to capture trade-offs in partisanship and institutional responsibility. Spiliotes uses archival sources to code a dependent variable of presidents’ decisions on the macroeconomy and independent variables tapping into key concepts from the literature. The multivariate test lends support for the notion of institutional responsibility.

Part II of the book, comprising Chapters 4 to 7, further tests the theoretical framework by means of four qualitative case studies. The cases involve four different presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan) and offer variation across different factors: temporal, partisan, electoral, and institutional. Chapters 4 and 5 assess the extent to which the presidents responded to partisan forces or the pull of institutional responsibility in making economic decisions. More evidence is presented for the author's notion of institutional responsibility. Chapter 6 tests the hypothesis (and conventional wisdom) that presidents manipulate the economy during election years in order to get reelected. Spiliotes writes on pages 142–43: “The case studies … suggest that a purely stimulative electoral incentive does not operate systematically on presidential decision making in the American political economy in years with incumbent presidents seeking reelection …. Presidential decision making is clearly mediated by the presence of a president's institutional responsibility and the concomitant need for stabilization during an election year.” In Chapter 7, the author concludes that a shift has occurred from partisan accountability to institutional responsibility. Moreover, this change was caused in part by a transformation in the American presidency.

The book is strong in two respects. First, Spiliotes is to be commended for bridging presidential studies and political economy. Beginning with a thorough and integrative literature review, he is relentless in pursuing an open dialogue between these two groups of scholars. He employs analyses traditional to each group (rigorous case studies and econometric modeling) and discusses each in language that is reachable by the other.

Second, to test the theoretical framework, which is built by merging theoretical literatures, Spiliotes executes a solid research design that is methodologically pluralistic. He employs multivariate, quantitative analysis together with qualitative case studies. These various tests yield important and interesting findings. For example, the author finds that presidents have more incentive—not less, as suggested by Alberto Alesina and Howard Rosenthal (Partisan Politics, Divided Government, and the Economy 1995)—to behave in a partisan manner during periods of divided government than during unified government. Had Spiliotes gone the journal route instead, this finding alone could likely have yielded a major article in a visible outlet.

While the book is strong in some ways, there are significant weaknesses. The main shortcoming is that the author uses dense and unclear language to express his theory, definitions, and arguments. In order to clearly understand some of the points, readers—even well-read American politics scholars—will have to reread many sections or refer back to them after examples of the construct have been given. It's all there; it just takes some work on the part of the reader to piece it together. A graphical representation of the theory would have brought some clarity to the ideas and arguments advanced by the author. A second shortcoming pertains specifically to Chapter 2. Spiliotes fails to make a persuasive case for his alternative explanation of the development of presidential responsibility on economic matters because he does not directly seek to undermine or explain away the various rival hypotheses.

Despite these shortcomings, scholars of the presidency, political economy, and American political development will find this book of value. It is appropriate for adoption in graduate seminars in these areas (and perhaps is reachable for advanced undergraduates). In the final analysis, Spiliotes should be commended for moving forward the scholarly literature on presidential decision making and political economy.