A Political-Economic Theory of Political Time

• In Event: Presidential Leadership and Political Time

Abstract

Skowronek’s theory of “political time” posits that presidential success follows historical cycles, but it does not specify a unique causal mechanism. Each president merely reacts to their predecessor or to historical circumstance. Skowronek also suggests that the power of history may be diminishing over time. This paper uses theory and evidence to address the causality issue in both instances. It argues two points. First, political time is ultimately driven by the perceived failure of existing political commitments to deal with a timely, deep, and prolonged economic crisis. Second, since the late 1970s, Reagan-era commitments to monetarism, deficit spending, a limited but reliable welfare and regulatory state, and innovation-based growth policies have been used to avoid a prolonged economic crisis. There may be sudden sharp economic downturns, but they do not last long enough for enough people to trigger a Disjunctive-Reconstructive transition. Hence it is not that the power of history has waned. Rather, the causal nature of political time has been under-specified.

The introduction of economic crisis as a causal variable solves several problems with the theory of political time. For example, critics have faulted political time for being too poorly delineated: it is not exactly clear what a regime is nor how to distinguish borderline cases (e.g., Cleveland, McKinley, TR). The less discussed “pre-emptive” mode is especially under-specified. Others argue that political time relies on an historical narrative that is “too abstract” and “oddly separated from the developments in American society in general.” Still others complain that political time has little predictive power (or at least, prediction is resisted by its author). In these views, political time is more a classification system with which to gain wisdom in hindsight rather than tool for prediction or real-time explanation.

The addition of economic crises to the analysis addresses each of these concerns. It allows regimes to be defined in terms of crisis management. It re-interprets Pre-emptives as specific types of failed Reconstructives. It provides far richer detail in the historical narrative and directly connects the evolution of the presidency with specific events in American history. It thereby provides us greater ability to predict change (or continuity) and to explain it in real time. In other words, the inclusion of economic crises allows us to transform political time from a classification system into a set of testable causal hypotheses and predictive claims.

Author

• Zak Taylor, Georgia Institute of Technology