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The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making
The conventional wisdom regarding the Carter Presidency is that it was essentially a failure. Although the President was well-intentioned, his inexperience and ineptitude had a debilitating effect on many areas of policy. The White House staff was similarly inexperienced with the result that it augmented rather than compensated for the President's shortcomings in dealing with congress, the bureaucracy and the press.
While there is something to this view, it requires much closer scrutiny than it has hitherto received. First, was the failure across the board or did the record of achievement of the Administration differ from one issue area to another? Second, in those areas in which the Administration was unsuccessful, was this merely a result of ineptitude, or was it rather the case that the Administration faced overwhelming and entirely unprecedented problems in its dealings with Congress, the bureaucracy and with other states, both allies and adversaries?
This book poses these and similar questions in a more systematic and explicit manner than other work on the Carter Presidency. It is an attempt to identify the major constraints on the Administration's capacity to achieve its objectives in both foreign and domestic policies. This is of particular importance given the great hopes that were placed in a Democratic presidency after the Nixon administration's fall from power.
About the authors:
M. Glenn Abernathy is Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Right of Assembly and Association and Civil Liberties Under the Constitution, as well as numerous monographs
and articles.
Dilys M. Hill is Reader in Politics at the University of Southampton. During the mid-1970's she held a Ford Foundation Fellowship and carried out research at a number of universities and research institutes in the United States. This material appeared in a number of journals and was followed by further research on American politics in the 1980's. She is the author of Participating in Local Affairs.
Phil Williams is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Southampton and Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of Crisis Management, a co-author of Contemporary Strategy and has recently edited The Nuclear Debate.
While there is something to this view, it requires much closer scrutiny than it has hitherto received. First, was the failure across the board or did the record of achievement of the Administration differ from one issue area to another? Second, in those areas in which the Administration was unsuccessful, was this merely a result of ineptitude, or was it rather the case that the Administration faced overwhelming and entirely unprecedented problems in its dealings with Congress, the bureaucracy and with other states, both allies and adversaries?
This book poses these and similar questions in a more systematic and explicit manner than other work on the Carter Presidency. It is an attempt to identify the major constraints on the Administration's capacity to achieve its objectives in both foreign and domestic policies. This is of particular importance given the great hopes that were placed in a Democratic presidency after the Nixon administration's fall from power.
About the authors:
M. Glenn Abernathy is Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Right of Assembly and Association and Civil Liberties Under the Constitution, as well as numerous monographs
and articles.
Dilys M. Hill is Reader in Politics at the University of Southampton. During the mid-1970's she held a Ford Foundation Fellowship and carried out research at a number of universities and research institutes in the United States. This material appeared in a number of journals and was followed by further research on American politics in the 1980's. She is the author of Participating in Local Affairs.
Phil Williams is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Southampton and Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of Crisis Management, a co-author of Contemporary Strategy and has recently edited The Nuclear Debate.
227 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1984
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