Ever since Edwin Corwin opined that the Constitution incentivized an “invitation to struggle,” scholars have been interested in how the executive and legislative branches of government share and savor institutional power. In the balance are important questions about the function of government and the role of each branch (and those who run them) in making public policy. The President's Legislative Policy Agenda and The President's Czars both embrace this erstwhile research agenda.

The President's Czars is a thoughtful and thorough analysis of the history and problematic escalation of presidential “czars.” The authors define a czar as an official who is not confirmed by the Senate but exercises final decision–making authority over budgets or rules (p. 7). These positions are either established by statue or by executive unilateral action (which is more common for recent presidents). Even czars who serve in Senate-confirmed and congressionally sanctioned positions, the authors claim, “may be in violation of the Constitution by exercising powers not properly delegated to them” (p. 7) because Congress has faltered on norms of delegation, which require an “intelligible principle.” Mitchel Sollenberger and Mark Rozell explore this topic from a public law approach, using a longitudinal historical narrative to trace the evolution of these offices and the short and long-term implications.

Modern czars evolved from presidential commissions that chief executives as early as George Washington used as a way to extend the reach of the executive branch by gaining organizational oversight. The first official czar by the authors' standard was Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, whom Woodrow Wilson appointed (by executive order) to the War Industries Board in 1918 with the task of “increasing the production of materials needed for the war effort” (p. 42). Although there was internal concern from within the committee and external concern on Capitol Hill (in the form of “grave wondering” and “criticism in the cloakroom” [p. 45]), the practice continued unabated. Although not all presidents established or retained individuals as czars, the growth in such positions was especially prominent starting with George W. Bush. Under Barack Obama, present czars include those for consumer protection, Asian carp, health foods, climate, diversity, and the Great Lakes.

Over time, the expansion of government, national emergencies, periods of foreign conflict or war, and political polarization (related to the president's inability to get traction on policy or personnel matters) led to more extensive use of executive czars. Although not formally tested in a quantitative sense, the authors establish a framework for exploring the interaction of the branches in the future.

Worried about the slippery slope of rising executive power, Sollenberger and Rozell sketch out several issues at risk given the reliance on executive czars, including violation of the checks and balances of the Constitution with respect to policymaking, lack of oversight due to conflicts of officials serving in multiple administrative roles, overdelegation to (and therefore overreliance on) the executive branch, bureaucratic inefficiency, and, in some instances, outright policy failure.

Ultimately, the authors admonish that “czars do severe damage to our principles and the practice of creating and appointing them should be stopped” (p. 3). They offer several sensible reform proposals, including mandating that all positions in the White House and Executive Office of the President be statutorily limited and involve mandatory congressional reporting requirements, limiting the president's ability to unilaterally create new czar positions, prohibiting the president's ability to transfer staff among departments, and establishing more detailed annual personnel reports.

Many of these proposals, however, may run the risk of tilting the power pendulum too far back toward total legislative control of the executive branch's management of staffing. It is not clear that Congress would want such limitations, given that some of the logic of delegation presumes that Congress, for politically selfish reasons, defers action to the executive branch. Indeed, the analysis would also have been complemented by a more formal parallel story of congressional delegation. The relationship among the branches (even including the courts) is interconnected, and the prospect of mutual satisfaction whereby Congress delegates more to the White House on multiple policy domains needs a more robust treatment. On a related point, the authors need to clarify the precise role that Congress has played in allowing czars (by establishing inter- and intrabranch reporting requirements) or acquiescing (by funding the positions) to their creation and distribute the blame more evenly across Pennsylvania Avenue. Even when congressional effort was mustered to limit the president's authority with respect to czars, it was often temporary, uncreative, or toothless.

These are minor quibbles as much as they are an agenda for future research on this important subject. The President's Czars is a sharp and smart exploration of interbranch relations, the president's complicated roles in managing the bureaucracy, and the trajectory of executive power during the modern presidency. Although the full text is expertly documented and thorough, the first chapter in particular should be required reading for scholars interested in debates on presidential power and separation of powers.

Similarly attentive to matters of the balance of power among the branches, The President's Legislative Policy Agenda examines the factors that predict the volume and type of legislation presidents submit to Congress. Jeffrey Cohen's book is full of rich historical insight leveraging plentiful data on legislative proposals over an impressive time period spanning George Washington to George W. Bush. Modern presidents (including and following Franklin Roosevelt) are more legislatively active than their predecessors, beginning primarily in the 79th Congress (1947–48) due to the “pent-up” demand for domestic policy legislation after almost a decade of focus on the war effort (p. 101). The rise in legislative activism is fostered by a larger government, rising public expectations on the president, and the White House's expanded capacity to act. The foci of the president's legislative agenda changes over time as well, from Indian removal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to diplomacy in the middle of the nineteenth century to fiscal and taxation matters in the twentieth century, then back to diplomacy in the last part of the twentieth (Table 5.2).

Cohen examines two puzzles. First, if presidents gain more support for their legislative agenda in Congress when government is unified, “why do presidents allow themselves to be defeated so often in the face of opposition congresses when they can lessen the likelihood of defeat by modifying or reframing from submitting their legislative proposals?” (p. 2). Second, why do modern presidents allow themselves to be defeated so often, when they have alternative means of enacting their preferred policy (such as unilateral executive action)?

The author creates a deceptively simple hypothesis that argues that presidents should take the congressional environment into account when deciding how many and what kind of proposals to submit to Congress. On the basis of “congressional anticipation,” presidents “factor in the congressional context to estimate the likelihood that Congress will accept or defeat a legislative proposal” (p. 48). Because losing in Congress can have both negative political and policy implications, presidents can be strategic about the introduction of their legislative agenda. In order to minimize the chances for legislative defeat, presidents are expected to refrain, modify, and acquire. That is, if the White House senses a greater likelihood of failure for its proposals (such as divided government), presidents refrain from submitting proposals, modify their policies by making them more ideologically moderate, and acquire resources to improve their bargaining positions, including more popularity or legislative seats (p. 69). Each chapter of The President's Legislative Policy Agenda is systematically organized around one of these central questions.

Using a careful data collection and analysis strategy, Cohen finds consistent support for these expectations. Divided government, in particular, reduces the number of proposals overall, as well as on the specific policy domains of government operation, international affairs, and domestic policy. Minority presidents also moderate their policy positions ideologically during divided government, which in turn leads to higher success rates (p. 257). War has a positive effect on the size of the president's legislative agenda, but only if the president pursues the “guns-and-butter” strategy like Lyndon Johnson did during the Vietnam War (p. 135). Just as a system calibrated for responsiveness would predict, a more liberal public mood leads to more proposals from the president, while a larger government leads to fewer proposals (p. 136). Connecting to the organizational questions in The President's Czars, Cohen finds that the legislative clearance process introduced in 1949 to centralize executive power increased the size of the president's agenda. Larger agendas for modern presidents have led to more legislative success (but not for earlier presidents).

This latter point may be somewhat underdeveloped in the book. The size of the president's agenda and the nation's agenda may be related such that the president chooses an agenda within a larger universe of possible policy choices generated by the public or the media. That is, there are agenda items that the president did not chose to support or submit that may be important. To his credit, Cohen acknowledges this in the conclusion (p. 259). Another somewhat underdeveloped point is the depth of the cost of failure on legislative matters to the White House. Clearly, legislative failure can be a disaster for presidents, especially on highly visible matters or on key electoral promises. However, the public and media may not be as attentive to smaller matters that are with less public fanfare, lessening the cost to the White House of failure. With an average of 300 proposals per congressional session, variation in cost structures may provide insight into the president's strategies.

These modest issues pale in comparison with the important contribution of The President's Legislative Policy Agenda, which, in a comprehensive stroke, aligns studies of presidential legislative agenda building with presidential success in Congress. Cohen's research design and findings also speak to other persuasive recent themes concerning the president's adaptation to institutional limitations.

Both books address how presidents administer control over their political world in either management of the bureaucracy or their legislative successes. Both works speak to questions about interbranch relations, evolving constitutional legal roles, unilateral presidential action, and the institutional friction with which presidential scholars from Edward S. Corwin to Richard Neustadt to George C. Edwards have grappled. Both works will (and should) be read extensively by scholars interested in the institutional functionality between two branches of government with overlapping lawmaking responsibilities and in the question of the modern struggle for constitutional clarity.