Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige has picked up another award for his latest book, which explores the limits of presidential power.
By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power (Princeton University Press, 2021) challenges the commonly held view that the president of the United States wields extraordinary personal power through the issuance of executive orders. The book argues that the vast majority of such orders are proposed by federal agencies and shaped by negotiations that span the executive branch.
Three months after being honored by the American Political Science Association, By Executive Order has garnered another prize, this time from the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), which gave the book its Louis Brownlow Book Award. The Brownlow award was established in 1968, according to the NAPA website, to recognize “outstanding contributions on topics of wide contemporary interest to practitioners and scholars in the field of public administration.” The award typically goes to authors who provide “new insights, fresh analysis, and original ideas that contribute to the understanding of the role of governmental institutions and how they can most effectively serve the public.”
“It’s a great honor to be recognized by the National Academy of Public Administration, given that it houses both scholars and practitioners,” said Rudalevige, who described it as “particularly gratifying” that people with great experience in the “bureaucratic trenches” found his work useful. “For the book to make a mark in both political science and public administration is quite exciting—those two fields were virtually synonymous 125 years ago but now too often fail even to talk to each other. I hope By Executive Order might serve as an interdisciplinary bridge that helps revive conversations about the quality of governance and the importance of executive expertise,” he added.
This semester Rudalevige is teaching Political Leadership GOV 1002 and Presidents and Civil Rights (GOV 2006).
“For the book to make a mark in both political science and public administration is quite exciting—those two fields were virtually synonymous 125 years ago but now too often fail even to talk to each other. "
