UC Santa Barbara

The development of a “modern” presidency during the first three decades of the twentieth century shaped scholarly understandings of the presidency. Proponents of this view characterize the shift from a traditional to a modern presidency as abrupt and transformative, implying the non-comparability of presidents and the presidency across this dividing line. In this project, I argue that the modern presidency view overlooks the ability of individual presidents to alter their institutional environment. I develop a theory of institutional development that centers on presidential entrepreneurship. My theory claims that presidents can enhance their institutional authority by constructing their authority in novel ways and by deploying the institutional capacity of the executive branch in creative ways. To further develop my theory, I narrow my empirical focus to a single domain of governance in the nineteenth century – the maintenance of domestic order. I use process tracing methods within a set of cases to refine and evaluate the validity of my theory. My analysis of the cases was based on a wide range of evidence including digitized archival collections, presidential documents digitized by the American Presidency Project, congressional documents and historical newspapers digitized by ProQuest, and biographies and policy histories. I first analyzed a most-likely case for observing presidential entrepreneurship. The passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the use of the military against the Klan in South Carolina in 1871 were both driven by presidential entrepreneurship, providing preliminary validation of my theory’s explanatory value. I then analyzed two least-likely cases in which my theory would not expect presidential entrepreneurship to play a significant role. The Lincoln County War in the New Mexico territory from 1878-1880 and lawlessness in the Arizona territory from 1881-1882 were minor territorial disorders. Nevertheless, presidential entrepreneurship was present in the Lincoln County War, providing further corroboration of my theory’s validity. My project develops a new theory to explain the development of presidential authority that centers on the entrepreneurial actions of presidents. My theory is supported by the most-likely and least-likely cases analyzed in this project. While my research design does not directly test my theory against the modern presidency, it presents a plausible and supported alternative explanation. In doing so, my project will allow for future theory-building and theory-testing about the development of the American presidency.