摘要：Though scholars have developed theoretically rich and empirically sophisticated accounts of presidential behavior within the modern era, it is less clear whether these insights shed light on presidents who served in earlier periods of history. In this paper, I sketch an outline of the incentive structures faced by late‐ nineteenth‐century presidents that focuses on their contributions to party building and use county‐level data from 1876 to 1896 to show that presidents’ core partisan constituencies were disproportionate recipients of federal post offices. While presidential incentives may have differed across history, presidents appeared to be well positioned to act upon them.
