Pontificating about Moe's pontifications.

Wood, B. Dan

I have been asked to comment on Terry Moe's review essay "The Revolution in Presidential Studies." At the onset, I must say that I am not fully comfortable in this role. Accustomed to writing research reports on evidence of scientific findings, I often believe (rightly or wrongly) that I have something new and important to say. I am not accustomed to offering opinions about opinions.

And, of course, that is what this dialogue is all about--opinions. Terry's review essay consists of opinions about the occurrence of a revolution in presidential studies, rooted in rational choice, formal methodologies, and, according to Terry, destined to expand with new theories and methodologies in the future. Terry applauds the use of rational choice in recent presidential studies, and argues that a revolution is a good thing for the evolution of current and future work.

In my view, Terry's remarks should be taken seriously, because he has often been a precursor of future political science theory and research (see, e.g., Moe 1984, 1990; Moe and Howell 1999b). Indeed, many of the ideas Terry has espoused (sometimes borrowed from other disciplines) have also been used in my own work (e.g., see Wood 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 2010a, 2010b; Wood and Waterman 1991, 1993, 1994; Wood and Anderson 1993; Wood and Bohte 2004; Wood and Marchbanks 2007). Thus, I am an occasional user of the theories and methodologies endorsed by Terry.

On the Applicability of Rational Choice in Presidential Studies

Terry states that "while rational choice is destined to be the prime vehicle of theoretical progress in the near future (emphasis on "near"), it is not destined to drive out other approaches to presidential studies even in the short term--and it is likely to lose its dominance over the longer haul, both in presidential studies and in political science more generally, to competitors that are far more in keeping with the concerns of its critics" (Moe 2009, 703).

This is a different message than we have heard from Terry in the past when he advocated rational choice (Moe 1993), and one I think many readers will find more compelling. Terry continues to send the message that strong theory and formalization are important. In my view, how one views this message should depend on how one views science in relation to our field.

I came to political science and presidential studies along a different path than many others. My early training was in the physical sciences, not the social sciences. In the physical sciences, strong unifying theories are commonly applied to the study of physical phenomena. For example, the theory of quantum mechanics applies broadly to the behavior of electricity, magnetism, mechanical vibrations, sound waves, electromagnetic waves, radiation, superconductivity, and a plethora of other physical phenomena that occur at the particle level. Quantum mechanics displaced Newtonian mechanics, another strong unifying theory, as an explanation of some of these phenomena. Quantum mechanics also sometimes contradicts yet another strong unifying theory, Einstein's theory of general relativity. As a theory, quantum mechanics is heavily steeped in mathematical models, and even laws about the behavior of matter at the particle level. When I worked in the physical sciences, I found quantum theory very useful. Similarly, as a social scientist, I have always felt strongly that scientific advancement depends on strong theories such as those rooted in rational choice (see, e.g., Wood 2010a).

However, my experience is not the only perspective that should be considered. Before and during the time I was in graduate school, I had a friend, Dr. Thomas Goka, who was a biomedical researcher studying the causes of cancer. He is now a dean at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Tom is a medical doctor and also holds a doctorate in medical genetics. His methodology is not the application of formal mathematical models but experimentation. Further, he questioned the idea of a single unifying theory serving as an explanation for all cancers. Researchers have identified many potential causes of cancer, some genetic and some somatic. If the causes are genetic, then certainly Watson and Crick's double helix model of the structure of DNA would be an important theory. However, if the causes are somatic, then it would be less important to addressing questions about cancer. Beyond genetics, cancer may result from environmental risk factors that affect the cells, such as diet, exposure to carcinogens, birth control methods, use of hormone replacement therapy, or even levels of physical activity. Medical researchers do not know whether the causes of cancer are genetic, somatic, or both. As a result, multiple competing and complementary theories are at play in studying this phenomenon.

In my view, one's perspective on the utility of rational choice and its associated methodologies should depend on whether one views the object of our analysis as better fitting the first or the second example. If the particular research problem under investigation is more like the phenomena explained by quantum mechanics, with very strong regularities, then it makes sense to allow our explanations to be guided by a single unifying theory such as rational choice. However, if the problem we are addressing is more like studying the causes of cancer, with many competing and complementary theories, then it would be silly to have our research guided by a single theory. The causes of our research concepts are too complex to be characterized by the simplicity associated with rational choice and its formal methodologies.

On the Nature of Rational Choice

What is rational choice? Like quantum mechanics, rational choice is a unifying theory that has been applied to a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. It posits that patterns of individual behavior reflect the choices made as people strategically attempt to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs. It is a theory of self-interested behavior positing that individuals attempt to optimize their own welfare, or what is commonly called their "utility." As applied to institutions such as the presidency, it implies that presidents seek to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs through strategic behavior.

This seems a pretty simple idea--so simple, in fact, as to suggest that it is not very useful. However, from this idea flows a range of far richer, more detailed theories that scholars have found useful. For example, principal-agent theory is a subset of rational choice that has been used by political scientists to understand the politics of regulation, government contracting, congressional delegation to the executive, executive relations with the bureaucracy, and so on (see, e.g., Mitnick 1975; Moe 1984). It has also been used in international relations, political economy, economics, business management, health care, insurance studies, and a multiplicity of applications in which relations involve work delegated by a principal to an agent. For example, a principal or set of principals, say the president and/or Congress, might attempt to optimize their utility relative to a bureaucracy that is also self-interested and attempting to optimize its own utility. Elsewhere, I discuss this theoretical approach as it pertains to political control of bureaucracy, along with references to a variety of other potential applications in political science (Wood 2010a).

The rational choice approach also encompasses the theory of transaction cost politics, which has been used to explain economic policy making, congressional delegation, and the design of administrative agencies (Dixit 1996; Epstein and O'Halloran 1999; Moe 1984; Wood and Bohte 2004). Transaction costs are those costs incurred in making political exchanges. Those using the transaction cost approach seek to explain political behavior by assessing the relative costs and benefits of political transactions, both in the present and future. In another essay, I demonstrate how the transaction cost approach can be applied fruitfully toward understanding the politics of congressional delegation to the executive, as well as why presidents have become dominant in this process (Wood 2010b).

Scholars who use rational choice approaches often (but not always) employ formal methods. Formal methods commonly applied include spatial modeling, social choice, microeconomic analysis, mathematical modeling, and game theory. The advantage of formalization is that it forces scholars to state their assumptions and expectations a priori. People cannot engage in storytelling after the fact. Their storytelling must occur before the analysis, and it is an integral part of constructing the formalization.

Games and mathematical models are constructs that operationalize the analyst's beliefs about how the world works. The analyst sets up the model formally through a particular spatial, mathematical, or game theoretic design. In this process, the analyst states his or her assumptions, designates potential payoffs to the actors, and then solves for one or more equilibria. An equilibrium occurs when actors have no incentive to move from their current position. Following this process, formalization enforces discipline on one's theory. It can enhance one's story by yielding predictions that may be difficult to arrive at using intuition. More generally, formalization enables a deductive approach to hypothesis formulation and encourages rigorous empirical tests.

On the Limitations of Rational Choice

However, one should not lose sight of the fact that formalization, whether grounded in rational choice or some other framework, is just a more rigorous form of storytelling. Consider, for example, William Niskanen's (1971, 1975) work on budgeting. He posited a mathematical model of bureaucratic budgets in which Congress is a passive actor. His model also ignored presidents as potentially influential in budgeting. Niskanen's formalization told a very simple story, but one with fairly ridiculous assumptions. Predictably, Niskanen's formal analysis showed that bureaucracies dominate the budgetary process, achieving budgets that are too large, or in which bureaucracies have excessive slack. By constructing his story very narrowly, and with unreasonable assumptions, Niskanen produced a set of formal results that were highly consistent with his ideological predispositions.

Thus, while formalization has important advantages, it does not magically imbue research as being valid or somehow better than other research. Formalization is just a form of storytelling with mathematics, spatial analysis, or games. The accuracy of the story told depends on how the analyst sets up the model, its assumptions, projected payoffs, and resulting equilibria. If the formalization is either too narrow or too broad, or based on incorrect assumptions, then the analysis can produce results that are misleading.

Much of the work Terry touts as responsible for the revolution in presidential studies is strongly couched in formalization. I am not arguing here that the formalizations in this work tells incorrect stories. Just the contrary--the work that Terry discusses is, in my opinion, of very high quality. What I am arguing is that the use of formal methods does not automatically distinguish work as more valid or important than other work. In my view, the methodology one applies is not a plenary explanation for work being of high quality. Much high-quality work on the presidency has been done without formalization. Much has also been done with formalization. More generally, it is the relative contribution to our common endeavor, the development of a body of scientific knowledge, which is important to this judgment, not the methodologies used to produce that knowledge.

As Terry acknowledges, rational choice and its associated methodologies also have other limitations. These limitations are worth repeating and expanding. Rational choice models are virtually always an oversimplification of reality. As a result, they do not explain all behavior, and may sometimes be wrong. For example, Charles Cameron's (2000) work suggests that periods of divided government should be associated with higher numbers of presidential vetoes. Yet it is Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman during a long period of unified government who cast more vetoes than any modern U.S. president. And George W. Bush cast no vetoes in his first five years, even though his first two years were characterized by divided government. Even during periods of unified government, presidents usually cast a significant number of vetoes. Why these discrepancies? As Terry would undoubtedly acknowledge, the answer can only be supplied through a more complex and deeper analysis than rational choice methods entail. This suggests the need for presidency scholars to use multiple theories and methodologies, including the much-maligned descriptive and informal approaches of past eras.

Terry also notes that formal methodologies can have multiple equilibria, and that there is no guarantee that decision makers will even achieve equilibrium. In game theoretic applications, multiple equilibria are often Nash equilibria where players' ability to optimize depends critically on the actions of others. If other players make choices that are not conducive to an optimal payoff, then all decision makers may be forced to accept a suboptimal payoff. In other words, formalizations with multiple equilibria afford only a menu of predictions, much like those that sometimes occur with informal storytelling.

Further, there is no guarantee that a set of interactions is characterized by equilibrium behaviors of any kind. If a process is not characterized by equilibrium behaviors, then rational choice and its associated methodologies, which assume that people optimize to equilibrium, will often be wrong. For example, elsewhere I show in Wood (2009a, chap. 4-6) that presidential issue stances are regularly out of equilibrium with the mass public on which the presidency depends for continuing support. As a result, they generally lose support for their policies through time, and their approval ratings persistently decline.

Terry also notes that humans may not be capable of optimizing because of limited information and uncertainty. People make the best use that they can of available information, constraints on their alternatives, and uncertainty about the future consequences of their choices. However, they seldom optimize. Decision makers such as presidents satisfice (Simon 1947). Of course, satisficing may result in outcomes that lie outside the narrow and precise predictions of formalizations grounded in rational choice.

According to Terry, there are new methodologies on the horizon that will overcome this limitation. These methodologies are generally based on repeated games, evolutionary game theory, dynamic game theory, or simulation modeling. However, in my view, these approaches are unlikely to be a panacea. This is because the optimization assumption itself is fraught with much deeper problems when applied to the presidency.

It should be apparent by now that even presidents can be dim-witted. They not only do not optimize, but also can make very bad decisions based on poor analysis, selective information processing, miscreant motivations, stubbornness, or partisanship. This would not be a problem if the object of our analysis were voters, consumers, individual members of Congress, corporations, or even federal judges. For all of these objects of analysis, there is a relatively large N such that we should expect a distribution of outcomes, with the dim-witted in the tails and the successful optimizers near the center of the distribution. We could still successfully predict equilibrium outcomes, but with a distribution. However, presidential studies typically involve a relatively small N. Moreover, if the object of analysis is the presidency in general, then N is actually one at any single point in time. Thus, it may be that these methods are less appropriate for understanding the behavior of individual presidents.

In more technical terms, the optimization assumption is analogous to the oft-made assertion that players never play a dominated strategy. Is this really true? Don't dimwitted presidents sometimes play a dominated strategy? Don't ideologues often play losing strategies, knowing beforehand that they will lose, simply to stand up for their principles? A case in point is George W. Bush, who knew that he was losing public support because of his strong stands on taxes, the environment, Social Security, stem cell research, the Iraq War, and so on. Bush did not move toward the median voter on these issues, as some rational choice theorists might predict. Instead, he clearly played a dominated strategy, which resulted in a steady loss of public support through time. I have made this argument more generally for all modern presidents in formal terms and with empirical data (Wood 2009a). My theoretical and empirical results suggest that presidents have often been willing to lose public support in the interest of satisfying ideological and partisan imperatives. More generally, if presidents are partisans rather than centrists in their manner of political representation, then scholars must give careful consideration to what it is they are optimizing with respect to. Is it with respect to the median voter, as is commonly assumed, or is it with respect to the median partisan?

Another limitation of rational choice is that it is not suited for all research questions that presidency scholars might find interesting. Rational choice can be fruitfully applied to a wide range of important research questions, especially those involving presidential self-interest and strategic behavior. For example, if we believe that presidents are primarily self-interested and strategic actors in their interactions with the bureaucracy, Congress, the courts, the media, the public, and other nations, then these methods should be deemed extremely useful.

However, it is not reasonable to assume that all research questions relating to the presidency have these characteristics. There is a plethora of important research questions relating to the presidency that are better addressed from a broader perspective. For example, consider the research question, "How does the political environment facing a president affect presidential leadership and its relative success?" Stephen Skowronek's (1997) concept of political time speaks loudly to this question. Against the larger backdrop of history, he observes that presidential "leadership outcomes turn less directly on the powers or institutional resources of the presidency than on the incumbent's contingent political authority or warrants for changing things" (1997, xii). In other words, presidents are largely the victims of their circumstances in political time, and can do little to change this through rational action. This seems an important insight derived not through rational choice, but through systematic historical analysis.

Consider also some of the other important scientific research questions addressed by presidency scholars who used a broader perspective than is afforded by rational choice:

* What determines presidential approval ratings? (Brody and Shapiro 1989; Edwards 1983, 2003; Edwards, Mitchell, and Welch 1995; Kernell 1978; Mondak 1993; Ragsdale 1984, 1987; Sigelman 1980; Sigelman and Sigelman 1981; Wood 2000)

* How do presidential approval ratings affect presidential success in Congress? (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Bond, Fleisher, and Wood 2003; Brace and Hinckley 1992; Edwards 1980, 1989, 1997; Ostrom and Simon 1985; Rivers and Rose 1985)

* What determines the success of presidential nominations? (Krutz, Fleisher, and Bond 1998)

* How do presidents affect the political agenda? (Edwards and Barrett 2000; Edwards and Wood 1999; Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake 2005; Peake 2001; Wood 2009b; Wood and Peake 1998)

* How does presidential rhetoric on the economy affect economic behavior and performance?

(Wood 2007; Wood, Durham, and Owens 2005)

* What is the nature of presidential representation? (Wood 2009a

These are just a few of the scientific research questions that have been analyzed outside the rational choice paradigm. A full listing of the questions presidency scholars address would show definitively that always employing a rational choice perspective would be inappropriate. Certainly rational choice can be brought to bear on specific dimensions of these questions. However, a more general perspective can also be fruitful.

These examples illustrate that not all research questions relating to the presidency involve self-interested strategic behavior. More generally, we also should not forget that rational choice is borrowed from economics, where scholars are mainly interested in homo economicus, whose behavior is rooted in greed and strategies to optimize economic returns. Homo politicus may not actually be this type of animal that blindly seeks to optimize political returns, or at least not to the extent realized in economics. Rather, homo politicus may be motivated by a more diverse set of incentives.

President George Washington's words, in a letter to the selectmen of Boston on July 28, 1795, should remind us how different the presidency should be in relation to typical rational choice assumptions.

In every act of my administration, I have sought the happiness of my fellow citizens. My system for the attainment of this object has uniformly been to overlook all personal, local, and partial considerations; to contemplate the United States as one great whole; to confide that sudden impressions, when erroneous, would lead to candid reflection; and to consult only the substantial and permanent interests of our country. (Fitzpatrick 1931)

Washington's views on presidential representation are highly consistent with the founders' intentions for the presidency. Moreover, a litany of presidents from Washington through Barack Obama have expressed similar beliefs that self-interest should be secondary to the interests of the nation at large (see, e.g., Wood 2009a, chap. 1). Given this, it seems frivolous to discard explanations that involve statesmanship and the interests of the nation at large as potential explanations for presidential behavior.

Did a Revolution Occur in Presidential Studies About a Decade Ago?

From Wikipedia, "A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time." This definition implies a sudden shift from one regime to another. The two regimes suggested by Terry's essay are the "old style" presidential studies, which were descriptive, thoughtful, laden with informal theorization, and rarely tested hypotheses rigorously. The "new style" regime, according to Terry, finds "quantitative studies ... much more common than in the past, and there is far greater attention to hypothesis testing, measurement issues, research design, and other ingredients of scientific methodology" (Moe 2009, 703). Further, he states, "Over the past decade or so, there has been a revolution in the study of the presidency ... Most fundamentally, this has been a revolution in theory ... The mechanism of this transformation has been rational choice theory, which has become the dominant (but not the only) analytic approach among the cutting-edge works of greatest influence in the field" (703; emphasis added).

In my view, Terry is correct in asserting that modern research on the presidency is now more grounded in the scientific method. When and how this change occurred, however, is subject to question. Terry dates the revolution as occurring about a decade ago, when a generation of young scholars began studying the presidency from an institutional rational choice perspective, often combining formal theory with advanced statistical methods. To be sure, the new generation of presidency scholars is better trained than the old generation, and some employ rational choice theory and methods. However, was there actually a revolution that displaced an earlier regime?

My view is that there has not been and should not be such a displacement. Scholars have been using the scientific approach to studying the presidency much longer than 10 years. It would be a mistake, for example, to discount the work by George Edwards (1989) or Jon Bond and Richard Fleisher (1990) on the legislative presidency, Richard Nathan (1983) or Richard Waterman (1989) on the administrative presidency, Jeffrey Segal (1990) or Rebecca Salokar (1992) on the judicial presidency, George Edwards (1983) or Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro (1985) on the public presidency, Samuel Kernell (1986) on "going public," Charles Ostrom and Brian Job (1986) on presidential use of force, or Jeffrey Cohen (1995) on the president as an agenda setter. The recent work cited by Terry is important, but it does not constitute a sudden revolution or shift in regimes. It fits within a long string of rigorous scientific work extending back almost 30 years. Moreover, presidency scholars who attend only to recent rational choice based explanations of presidential activities are likely to be seriously undereducated if the goal is to understand presidency scholarship.

Clearly, rational choice theory is now used more often by a subset of presidency scholars. The composition of this subset is no coincidence. Several of the scholars alluded to in Terry's essay (Howell, Lewis, Canes-Wrone, Shipan, Volden) bear the Stanford imprint and undoubtedly have been strongly affected by Terry's ideas and methods, and those of other institutional rational choice scholars at the Hoover Institution. Rightfully, Terry and others should be proud of their mentoring role, because these scholars have produced important work. However, the question of whether they in particular were at the cutting edge of a revolution that made rational choice dominant in presidential studies is subject to question.

In my view, William Howell (2003) set a high standard for studying the politics of direct presidential action through executive orders, proclamations, and memoranda. He showed definitively that it is folly to think of all public policy as emanating from the separation of powers system. Power Without Persuasion showed that presidential power is more than "the power to persuade" (Neustadt 1990, 10). Presidents have specific formal and informal powers that enable direct presidential action independent of Congress. Similarly, David Lewis (2003) demonstrated that the design of administrative agencies depends critically on incentives and constraints emanating from the presidency. Presidents can definitively shape the design of new agencies to their own advantage using both formal and informal powers that have evolved through time.

Are these new insights? If so, what part did rational choice play in the development of these insights? Was it rational choice theory per se that was responsible for this work? Or was it the arduous collection of unique datasets by two young scholars that were more responsible for the work? The answers to these questions remain unclear and unspecified. What is clear is that the take away points from these studies were also developed elsewhere using different and less formal research methods (Cooper 2002; Mayer 2001). Further, early theoretical underpinnings of this work date back more than a decade (Moe 1989, 1990; Moe and Howell 1999a, 1999b; Moe and Wilson 1994). Thus, these ideas have been percolating more slowly through time than is suggested by the term "revolution."

While seemingly less influenced by Terry, Brandice Canes-Wrone (2006) also makes important contributions to the study of presidential politics from a rational choice approach. She expands Kernell's (1997) "going public" framework by developing a game theoretic model of when presidents are more likely to employ this strategy (i.e., when the policy associated with "going public" is already popular). She also develops a model of presidential leadership and pandering to the mass public. She argues that presidents will pander when their approval ratings are in the mid-range or when elections are approaching. Are these pathbreaking revelations or normal science? Readers should judge.

Similarly, Terry's assessment of work by Nolan McCarty (1997, 2000; McCarty and Poole 1995) and Charles Cameron (2000) on the strategic behavior of presidents in using or not using the veto may also attribute too much importance to rational choice. To be sure, theirs is rigorous scientific work done on a topic which is central to the president's legislative powers. However, it is unclear how rational choice makes this work unique so as to be part of a revolution in presidential studies. Because the veto is a tool that is employed strategically by presidents during the legislative process, it is ideally suited to rational choice methods. However, scholars have long known that the veto is used strategically by presidents for a variety of purposes (Conley and Kreppel 2001; Copeland 1983; Lee 1975; Ringelstein 1985; Spitzer 1988; Watson 1993; Woolley 1991).

Toward a More Complete Science of Presidential Studies

If there has been a revolution in presidential studies (as Terry suggests), and if rational choice has emerged dominant in both the short and the long term (which Terry does not suggest), then this would be, in my view, a very bad thing. As a field, presidential studies benefits from theoretical and methodological pluralism. Rational choice is a useful approach to studying the presidency where presidential behavior can be viewed as strategic and self-interested. However, attempting to stuff all presidency research into the narrow and rigid paradigm of rational choice would throw out many alternative approaches and explanations, past, present, and future.

A successful revolution whereby rational choice became the dominant paradigm for presidential studies would also isolate many presidency scholars who are rigorous in their theory and methods, but care little about storytelling through mathematics or games. Imagine our field without the deep understanding of the press and the presidency afforded by a Martha Joynt Kumar, or the sort of insightful analysis of presidential style provided by a Fred Greenstein, or the broad understanding of the public opinion and the presidency provided by a George Edwards. Diversity is our strength, not our weakness. Furthermore, encouraging presidency scholars to think that work grounded in rational choice is somehow better, purely on the basis of the theory or methodology applied, strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It would be a huge setback if such thinking were to prevail.

None of this is to say that presidency studies should not be guided by strong unifying theories. I have argued here and elsewhere (Wood 2010a) that an overarching theoretical framework such as rational choice can be of great use in advancing science. Strong theory is the engine that drives any advancing body of knowledge. Consider the importance of quantum mechanics to the advancement of particle physics, Einstein's theory of general relativity to the advancement of astrophysics, or Watson and Crick's double helix model to the advancement of genetics. These theories produced a steady stream of scientific advances in their respective areas which revolutionized our way of thinking about matter, the universe, human origins, human mortality, and even criminal justice.

An overarching theory provides a coherent framework that organizes research efforts. It facilitates communication among researchers. Strong theory can be a stimulus for scientific discovery. An overarching theoretical framework also keeps research from becoming too case specific, with little generalizability to other samples or related phenomena. It enables the research process to build on itself to produce a well-defined body of scientific knowledge. Without an overarching theory, a body of work is often characterized by patterns of disorganized effort, with research findings that often contradict and share few commonalities. Thus, strong theory is the glue that binds the scientific research process into a coherent stream of work.

In my view, presidency scholars in many areas can benefit from a better understanding of rational choice and its associated methodologies. Even if they do not formalize their stories, the theories associated with rational choice can provide a unifying framework. Similarly, scholars of the presidency who use rational choice can also benefit from openness to more informal work and different methodologies. In my view, we should be more accepting of theoretical and methodological diversity if we are to have a more complete science of presidential studies.

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B. DAN WOOD

Texas A&M University

B. Dan Wood is a professor and Cornerstone Fellow of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. His recent books include The Myth of Presidential Representation and The Politics of Economic Leadership.