PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

chief executive office of the United States. In contrast to many countries with parliamentary forms of government, where the office of president, or head of state, is mainly ceremonial, in the United States the president is vested with great authority, and he is arguably the most powerful elected official in the world. The nation's founders originally intended the presidency to be a narrowly restricted institution. They distrusted executive authority because their experience with colonial governors had taught them that executive power was inimical to liberty, because they felt betrayed by the actions of George III, the king of England, and because they considered a strong executive incompatible with the republicanism embraced in the Declaration of Independence (1776). Accordingly, their revolutionary state constitutions provided for only nominal executive branches, and the Articles of Confederation (1781-89), the first "national" constitution, established no executive branch. Forrest McDonald Additional reading General studies, organized historically, include Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (1994); Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson, The American Presidency: Origins and Developments, 1776-1998, 3rd ed. (1999); and a classic earlier work, Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers, 1787-1957, 4th rev. ed. (1957).Analyses of the office by its functions are Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency, 2nd ed. (1980); Louis W. Koenig, The Chief Executive, 6th ed. (1996); and Richard M. Pious, The American Presidency (1979).A wide-ranging study by a variety of specialists is Thomas E. Cronin (ed.), Inventing the American Presidency (1989). An important work whose approach is indicated by its title is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (1973; reissued 1998). Crucial to understanding the inner dynamics of the office is Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, rev. ed. (1990).For individual presidencies, the best works are those in the American Presidency Series published by the University Press of Kansas. The leading scholarly journal in the field is Presidential Studies Quarterly. Forrest McDonald