Wildavsky's Two Presidencies: Foreign vs. Domestic Power
This paper examines Aaron Wildavsky's 1966 "Two Presidencies" thesis, which argues that the American president exercises substantially greater authority in foreign policy than in domestic affairs. Drawing on Wildavsky's analysis, the paper traces how this divide played out from the Johnson administration through Reagan and beyond, with particular attention to budgetary politics, the Vietnam War's domestic impact, and the ongoing struggle between executive and legislative branches over spending authority. Key legislation—including the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, and the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act—is examined as evidence of Congress's repeated efforts to reclaim domestic policy influence from an executive whose foreign policy imperatives tend to dominate the entire governing agenda.
- Introduction to the Two Presidencies Framework: Introduces Wildavsky's dual domestic and foreign presidential roles
- Presidential Power in Foreign vs. Domestic Policy: Compares presidential success rates in each policy domain
- Budgetary Politics and the Johnson Era: Johnson's conflicting spending priorities and Vietnam's budget impact
- Congressional Responses and Incrementalism: Wildavsky's incrementalism theory and its political complications
- Legislative Efforts to Restrain Executive Spending: Key spending laws limiting executive budgetary authority
- The Ongoing Balance of Executive and Legislative Authority: Circular logic of foreign policy driving domestic executive dominance
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors its analysis consistently in Wildavsky's original text, using direct quotations to ground each major claim before extending the argument with historical examples.
- It traces a clear chronological arc—from Johnson through Reagan and beyond—demonstrating how the Two Presidencies thesis played out across multiple administrations, giving abstract theory concrete historical weight.
- The paper connects legislative milestones (the 1974 Budget Act, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act) directly to the theoretical framework, showing how real policy events confirmed or complicated Wildavsky's predictions.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper effectively demonstrates theory application: it begins with a theoretical framework (Wildavsky's thesis), extracts specific testable propositions (that presidents win ~70% in foreign policy vs. ~40% domestically), and then evaluates those propositions against a sequence of historical case studies. This approach—moving from theory to evidence and back—is a standard and persuasive method in political science writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by introducing the Two Presidencies concept and its core tension, then establishes Wildavsky's specific claims with direct quotations. The middle sections apply the thesis historically, using the Johnson administration's budgetary paradoxes as the central case study before widening to subsequent administrations. The final sections shift toward legislative counter-responses, examining how Congress sought to rebalance power, before a brief conclusion returns to the paper's opening claim about the presidency's inherently dual character.
Introduction to the Two Presidencies Framework
When Aaron Wildavsky refers to the Two Presidencies, his argument concerns the precarious balance that every chief executive must establish in navigating the space between responsibilities to the domestic population and an interest in stewarding America's role on the world stage. The domestic and international priorities that both fall under the purview of the president are often of distinctly different character and will demand distinctly different approaches. Sometimes, weighing in on this balance will carry a direct political cost or a direct policy cost. It is the job of the president to serve as the face of the American government on both sides of this divide.
It is within that framework that Aaron Wildavsky composed his 1966 analysis, which touches upon the varying issues of war, taxation, and especially budgetary discretion in identifying the two sides of the presidency.
As Wildavsky contends, "the President's normal problem with domestic policy is to get congressional support for the programs he prefers. In foreign affairs, in contrast, he can almost always get support for policies that he believes will protect the nation — but his problem is to find a viable policy." (23)
Works Cited
Wildavsky, A. (1966). The Two Presidencies. Society.
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