Remaking the Imperial Presidency: The Mayaguez Incident of 1975 and the Contradictions of Credibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-142
Author(s):  
Mattias Fibiger
Keyword(s):  
1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Adeniyi S. Basiru

The president and the network of offices that are linked to him, in modern presidential democracies, symbolize a neutral state that does not meddle in order-threatening political struggles. It however seems that this liberal ideal is hardly the case in many illiberal democracies. Against this background, this article examines the presidential roots of public disorder in post-military Nigeria. Drawing on documentary data source and deploying neo-patrimonial theory as theoretical framework, it argues that the presidency in Nigeria, given the historical context under which it has emerged as well as the political economy of neo-patrimonialism and prebendalism that has nurtured it, is a central participant in the whole architecture of public disorder. The paper recommends, among others, the fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian neo-colonial state and the political economy that undergird it.Keywords: Imperial Presidency; Neo-patrimonialism; Disorder; Authoritarianism; Nigeria.


2018 ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Michael A. Genovese
Keyword(s):  

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-352
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Pauley

Students of the exercise of emergency powers in the American governmental system have taken note in recent years of an obviously widening gap between what presidents assert they can do in emergencies and what congressional and court critics of presidents, and many serious scholars, say are the constitutional and statutory limits on executive emergency powers. The perceived widening gap is something new, though Americans seem to have accustomed themselves to it quickly enough. In the shadow of what has come to be called the era of the imperial Presidency, some say that one extreme tendency demands a compensating counterbalancing tendency toward the opposite extreme. Indeed, it is now widely believed that what had been an acceleratingquantitativeincrease in presidential power has largely resulted in aqualitativetransformation that threatens the continuance of “free government,” requiring intensified criticism of presidential practice as well as, perhaps, a temporary exercise of emergency powers by other branches of our government to restore the traditional balance of separated powers.


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