Article

Presidential Administration

This Article examines a recent and dramatic transformation in the relationship between the President (and his staff) and the administrative state. Professor Kagan argues that President Clinton, building on a foundation President Reagan laid, increasingly made the regulatory activity of the executive branch agencies into an extension of his own policy and political agenda. He did so, primarily, by exercising directive authority over these agencies and asserting personal ownership of their regulatory activity – demonstrating in the process, against conventional wisdom, that enhanced presidential control over administration can serve pro-regulatory objectives. Professor Kagan offers a broad though not unlimited defense of the resulting system of “presidential administration” against legal and policy objections.