Synopsis

Stephen Skowronek’s study of presidential leadership and recurring patterns of regime development in The Politics Presidents Make (1993) has added a significant amount of depth and richness to the scholarship of both the presidency and American political development. However, this line of analysis remains limited because of its inflexibility in regards to the cumulative evolution of the presidential institution. In this paper we reconceptualize the concept of “political time ” one of the central constructs of Skowronek’s work, by adapting the evolution of the presidency to the approach introduced by historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1939). In doing so, we better define the dynamics of ‘regime building ’ by suggesting that presidents have a greater range of challenges and therefore meet them with a greater range of responses than has been previously thought. This allows us to correct for the deficiencies in Skowronek’s work that have led him to suggest that we are at the end of “political time”. 2 The Problem of Evaluating the Presidency In reviewing the existing literature on the presidency two observations become apparent. First, there seems to be a considerable amount of pessimism about the future of the institution. Second, the scholarship tends to separate into two schools of thought: th