Burke focuses on the decision making processes that are established during the preinaugural weeks and tested during the postinaugural months. He gives due attention to the cabinet and to various units within the Executive Office, but his attention is fixed on the White House staff. He readily acknowledges that the White House office is an institution, which is to say that it evidences autonomy, adaptability, complexity, and coherence. Yet, Burke insists, it is remarkably flexible and even malleable. Presidents have conceptualized and managed the personnel and units within the White House office in very different ways, even in the most recent decades, which has significant implications for both executive and (by extension) legislative decision making. “The way in which transitions craft, or do not craft, those processes has consequences, sometimes severe” (p. 377).

The transitions of four presidents—Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton—are assessed from their preelection planning efforts through to their postinaugural outcomes. The work of presidents-elect is analyzed in terms of the transition organization, nomination and appointment decisions, and the development of a policy agenda; that of the presidents is examined in terms of decision making processes, presidential management of the White House staff, and domestic and foreign policy outcomes. Bracketing these discussions are chapters that consider the role of transitions in the modern presidency, the limitations of rational actor models in explicating this aspect of the presidency, and the lessons to be learned from the four administrations. As this array of topics suggests, Burke is as attentive to the concerns of practitioners as he is to the interests of scholars.

What distinguishes this work is an extensive reliance on (and cross-referencing of) primary documents and sources. The collections of the presidential libraries and other archives, as well as extended interviews with the principals, reveal the course of managerial and policy decisions. Without venturing into counterhistorical speculations, Burke weighs the importance of roads taken and not taken, including the implications of each for White House operations. Although the Clinton chapters necessarily rely more on secondary sources, they offer original data and insights. Burke explains this book's relationship to other works on presidential campaigning and governance, and it will undoubtedly serve as a springboard for future studies.

In essence, Burke's analysis can be distilled into a forceful assertion that the president is at the center of the presidency—notwithstanding the influential roles played by various other actors and offices—and that each president's managerial choices are important. Transitions matter, then, because they reveal a president-elect's organizational priorities vis-á-vis the White House, as distinct from the campaign or from prior executive positions. Although attuned to patterns of political behavior, Burke is sensitive to the distinctive character of each president, which makes his rejection of rational choice models, for example, entirely comprehensible. It also increases the likelihood that this volume will serve as a lightning rod for debates about research design and methods in presidency studies.

Martha Kumar, in her written and oral presentations as director of the White House 2001 Project, stresses four basic components in setting up the White House office: organization, process, personnel, and values. Burke, who contributed an essay to that project, considers each of these elements in Presidential Transitions, but he places greatest emphasis on organization and process. Who holds which position in the White House is important, but Burke maintains that their choices and actions occur within an organizational and procedural context. Values certainly matter, but he suggests that they are most routinely manifested through relationships and decision making. Thus, an investigation of personnel and values is part of the larger study of organization and process. Each is integral to the White House office, but Burke assigns a particular primacy to organization and process. This claim challenges the presumptions of many organizational theorists, as well as presidency and policy scholars, and fuels debate about the White House staff as a bureaucracy and as an institution. In turn, the book's empirical richness, in conjunction with its theoretical contentiousness, ensures that it will be a valuable resource for political scientists as researchers and as educators.