The “Proper Organs” for Presidential Representation: A Fresh Look at the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Dearborn

Abstract:The presidency is now thought of as a representative institution. I argue that the idea of presidential representation, the claim that presidents represent the whole nation, influenced the political development of the institutional presidency. Specifically, I show that the idea was the assumption behind creating a national budget system in the United States. While the challenge of World War I debt prompted Congress to pass the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, the law’s design owes much to reformers’ arguments that the president lacked institutional tools to fulfill his representative role. Congress institutionalized presidential representation in budgeting by including two key components: a formal license for presidential agenda setting in the budget process and an enhanced executive organizational capacity with the Bureau of the Budget. However, the law also revealed the problems raised by attempting to provide the “proper organs” for presidential representation, which push against the written constitutional frame.

Author(s):  
Martin Crotty ◽  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Mark Edele

This chapter investigates the cases of victory and defeat and explains what politically influential veterans were able to produce to secure benefits and rights. It focuses on China after its long period of war and civil war that ended in 1949, the United Kingdom after both world wars, the United States after World War I, and the USSR after World War II. It analyses the cases wherein veterans had little or limited success in securing meaningful social and political status. The chapter identifies factors that determine the veterans' status, where it is victory or defeat, or authoritarian versus democratic systems of government. It discusses the political process and the attempts to convert claims into entitlements in order to explain the negative outcomes for the veterans of victorious armies.


1985 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Baack ◽  
Edward Ray

Despite the attention given by scholars to the military-industrial complex few studies have attempted to pinpoint and explain its origin. In this paper we argue that the coalescing of business, military, and political interest groups in support of a military build-up in the United States during peacetime occurred in the years between the Civil War and World War I. It was during this period that we observe the roots of institutional arrangements between the military and industry for the purpose of large-scale weapons acquisitions.


1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Geyer

The histories of Germany and the United States became deeply entangled in the century of total war. After (re)unification on the battlefield in the midnineteenth century, both countries underwent rapid transformations through national programs of industrialization based on new products and technologies and emerged as great powers with global pretensions at the beginning of the twentieth century. An initial, and somewhat hesitant, confrontation in World War I was followed by a period of oscillation and confusion during the 1920s and 1930s, as leading elements in the two economies sought grounds for collaboration even as the political development of the two nations diverged, one moving toward fascism, the other toward a liberal democratic renewal. This produced the deeply ideological collision of the Second World War, which resulted in an equally dramatic turnabout, as the Germans endured what Americans then most feared, a grim (albeit partial) communist takeover, and the United States became the staunch ally of the German west in its faceoff with the east. Recently this close partnership has turned into a more perplexed and occasionally suspicious friendship, as the familiar terrain of the cold war is ploughed up. This is a history of extreme reversals is tied inextricably to war and preparations for war.


1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Manfredo

Throughout most of its history, the importance of the Panama Canal — to the United States, to Panama, and to the international shipping community — was never questioned. This situation changed when the political confrontation between the United States and the Noriega regime took place in the 1980s, and most of the media began to suggest that the usefulness of the Panama Canal was on the decline and no longer of much importance to world trade. In this regard, the media seriously misrepresented the facts. Let us take a closer look at the Canal in order to gain a better perspective on the actual situation.Prior to World War I, the volume of trade going through the Panama Canal, though a useful transportation artery, was relatively small. In fact, in 1929, its peak pre-War year, the total volume was just 30 million tons.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth D. Esch

AS THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY’S PLACE in multiple national economies deepened in the decades after World War I so, too, did analysis and assessment of the political and cultural implications of Ford’s various presences. No one offered greater insight into the promise and peril represented by Ford than Antonio Gramsci, despite the stark limits imposed on him by incarceration and the multiple deprivations that attended it. In “Americanism and Fordism” Gramsci described the process through which the United States had relatively easily “made the whole life of the nation revolve around production” through a combination of “force … and persuasion.”...


Author(s):  
Tetiana Klynina

The article is devoted to the issue of the activities of the American consul of the United States of America in the years of the existence of the Ukrainian National Republic, and also provides a historiographical analysis of works devoted to this problem (in particular, the works of I. Matyash, I. Datskiv, A. Pavlyuk, etc.). The author notes that with the proclamation by the Central Rada of the Third universal, which created the Ukrainian National Republic, the Ukrainian Central Rada was faced with the task of establishing external relations with various countries, including the United States of America. However, before the outbreak of World War I, the concept of “Ukrainian question” and “Ukraine” was “terra incognita” for Washington, which was primarily explained by the isolationist policies of the American government. In its foreign policy, the United States has traditionally been guided by the idea of ​​federalism in questions about the approaches of the state system. The United States did not pursue a separate course towards Ukraine. Washington viewed it as a component of its policy towards Russia. In the US attitude toward the Ukrainian National Republic, the reluctance to complicate the political choice for America was outweighed. There was fear that an inaccurately chosen priority would lead to an unwelcome conflict with Russia. It is stated that as the United States did not carry out a separate course towards Ukraine, so the leaders of the Central Rada did not develop a clear position towards the United States. However, the situation that developed at the end of 1917 made the American diplomatic community “look” at the situation in Ukraine. That is why the American consul Douglas Jenkins was sent to “assess” the capabilities of the young state. Douglas Jenkins had clear instructions from the ambassador to do nothing, in the absence of a further word from Washington that could be interpreted as recognition of the Ukrainian Council. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of his seven reports, which the consul sent to the US State Department through the Consulate General in Moscow, and which is an important source in understanding the Ukrainian situation in late 1917 – early 1918.


1981 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Arthur S. Link ◽  
Paul L. Murphy

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document