The Environmental Presidency.
Waterman, Richard W.
The Environmental Presidency. Dennis L. Soden, ed. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1999. 366 pp. $73.50 cloth.
Dennis L. Soden's The Environmental Presidency is one of only
a few books to focus on the presidency and a specific policy area;
another example is Steven Shull's work Kinder, Gentler Racism?
(1993) on civil rights policy and the presidency. Soden's book is
thus a valuable contribution to two literatures. It expands our
knowledge of the presidency and the environment. As such, this book
should be a useful text in both types of classes.
With regard to environmental policy, in addition to providing much
useful and interesting information, the book clearly demonstrates why we
need to look beyond domestic political affairs to understand the nature
of environmental politics. The chapters on the president as chief
diplomat and commander in chief in particular provide a different
approach to the study of environmental policy.
Soden and his contributors also help us to better understand the
presidency by providing an analysis of Clinton Rossiter's thesis of
the roles (or hats) of the presidency: the president as chief executive,
legislative leader, party/opinion leader, chief diplomat, and commander
in chief. It also tests Daynes, Tatalovich, and Soden's
hierarchical ordering of these presidential roles. In so doing, the book
shows that the role traditionally viewed by presidential scholars as
having the most influence--commander in chief--actually had the least
influence with regard to environmental policy. Likewise, the most
powerful presidential role was chief executive, which again runs
contrary to conventional wisdom, but which is consistent with the
findings of much past principal- agent literature on the presidency and
the Environmental Protection Agency. Hence, Soden's book
demonstrates that scholars need to reevaluate the five roles of the
presidency in relation to a variety of specific policy areas. This will
allow scholars to determine whether and how presidential influence
varies across different roles and policy types.
Soden's edited volume has a clear structure and point of view.
The book is nicely divided into sections on the history of the
presidency and the environmental movement and the five presidential
roles. After Soden's introduction, chapters 2 and 3 examine the
history of the environmental movement as it relates to the presidency.
One would think there would be little to write about with regard to the
environment and our early presidents. One would be wrong. It is
fascinating to find that presidents as far back as John Quincy Adams
recommended major environmental reforms, as well as learning how and why
environmentalism eventually developed as a major item on the
presidential agenda. This historical analysis of the presidency explores
administrations from George Washington's through Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's.
The fulcrums of the book, however, are the next six chapters. They
relate the policies of Truman through Clinton to the five presidential
roles. These chapters include a combination of empirical and historical
analysis. They describe how active each president used his powers (e.g.,
diplomatic, opinion leader) in relation to the environment. This
delineation of presidential power should be an excellent heuristic tool
for teachers who want to do more than merely enumerate the five
presidential roles. Here we see how presidents actually perform in each
capacity. As noted above, we also learn the relative strengths and
weaknesses of each role.
While Soden's book represents a solid contribution to two
literatures, I do have a few quibbles with it. In chapter 1, Soden
presents two hypotheses and then encourages readers to look for evidence
related to them throughout the book. It would have been better had the
individual authors of each chapter addressed the hypotheses directly.
Second, some of the chapters are overly long, particularly the ones on
Bill Clinton and the president as commander in chief. Still, even with
these criticisms, it is clear that Soden and his contributors have
provided us with a valuable new book on both the presidency and
environmental policy. Not only is the book useful for classroom use, but
scholars too will find much of interest here.
Reference
Shull, Steven A. 1993. Kinder, gentler racism?: The Reagan-Bush
civil rights legacy. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
--Richard W. Waterman
University of New Mexico
