By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power

"How much does a president go it alone when issuing an executive order? While many assume that the president legislates with the stroke of a pen, Rudalevige expertly illustrates that there is so much more happening behind the curtain of the executive branch. By Executive Order highlights the bureaucratic politics inherent in presidential action, showing us that even in unilateralism there is pluralism."—Rachel Augustine Potter, author of Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy

"With this beautifully written, meticulously researched, and carefully crafted book, Andrew Rudalevige unearths the bureaucratic politics that precede unilateral activity in all their richness and complexity. Unilateralism, we discover, is rarely the product of unity. Rather, executive orders routinely emerge from the contentious pluralism that churns within the executive branch. This is a fantastic book."—William G. Howell, coauthor of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

"By Executive Order offers an important new way of thinking about the role of the president. Rudalevige demonstrates that presidents are not unilateral policymakers in the way the journalistic accounts often suggest, but rather they sit in the middle of a large bureaucratic enterprise."—David E. Lewis, author of The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance

"Rudalevige sheds light on one of the most important questions in contemporary American politics: has an increasingly unilateral presidency trampled on constitutional norms and threatened the constitutional system of checks and balances? By Executive Order opens new directions of research into the president's exercise of unilateral power."—Douglas L. Kriner, coauthor of Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power