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In his landmark work The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek concludes that an earlier cycle of presidential politics in America is fading. Calling this phenomenon the "waning of political time," he predicts the declining importance of the president as a source of political change in American politics, and makes the conjecture that in the future, presidents will act more pragmatically and will more frequently clash with office holders in other political institutions. Applying hypotheses recently advanced by Curt Nichols and Adam Myers, this article considers some additional challenges to presidential authority that complement Skowronek's original thesis. Through a comparison of the presidencies of Obama and Ronald Reagan, the article also illustrates the relevance of the waning-of-political-time thesis to politics today.

In his landmark work The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek concludes that an earlier cycle of presidential politics in America is fading. Calling this phenomenon the "waning of political time," he predicts the declining importance of the president as a source of political change in American politics, and makes the conjecture that in the future, presidents will act more pragmatically and will more frequently clash with office holders in other political institutions. Applying hypotheses recently advanced by Curt Nichols and Adam Myers, this article considers some additional challenges to presidential authority that complement Skowronek's original thesis. Through a comparison of the presidencies of Obama and Ronald Reagan, the article also illustrates the relevance of the waning-of-political-time thesis to politics today.

This article argues that the way we understand presidential success should be different for presidents in different contexts. It provides the first deeper exploration of success for Skowronek's "disjunctive" presidents and finds that, particularly when these presidents engage in policy experimentation, they can play an important role in preparing the way for a later reconstruction. Although the presidents of disjunction are particularly constrained, they are capable of success as long as we judge them realistically and acknowledge that they may receive little credit for their concrete achievements. We illustrate this contention through the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, which exemplify the degrees of success available within the constraints of a faltering partisan regime.

This chapter introduces, modifies and applies American political scientist Stephen Skowronek�s influential contextual theory of presidential leadership in political time to prime-ministerial leadership in parliamentary democracies. The theory is based upon a cyclical notion of political time in relation to the rise, consolidation and decay of political �regimes� (or policy paradigms). Different opportunity structures for political leadership are created by the interplay of these regime cycles and a president/prime minister�s degree of affiliation with the regime or policy paradigm they inherit upon taking office. The applicability and efficacy of transplanting Skowronek�s political time theory to Westminster democracies is explored through empirical cases studies of the comparative leadership records of three modern Australian prime ministers, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

Seen from the outside, the leadership position in a political party or government is coveted by many. Yet party leadership and, possibly in its wake, a prime-ministership or a presidency are 'hot seats' in more than one sense. They are not just hot in terms of the potential for power and authority they bring to those that occupy them; they are also hot in terms of attracting competition and controversy. Leadership of a party is more often than not a precarious possession: not only do political leaders lead their lives constantly in the public eye with all the drawbacks that this entails, but there are also plenty of people ready to criticize their performance. There is no shortage of potential competitors either, all whom are brooding on how and when to take over the top job.

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader's survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we propose a perceptual theory of leadership survival, focusing on the expectations of party constituents (or indirectly, the voting public) who have the power to remove a leader. Specifically, we argue that they 'benchmark' their expectation of a current party leader's performance by comparing it against their memory of that leader's immediate predecessor. Empirically, we show that party leaders who succeeded a (very) long-serving party leader and/or a leader who had also been the head of government experience lower longevity than others, making these types of predecessor 'hard acts to follow'.

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader's survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on instit

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader's survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on instit

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader's survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we propose a perceptual theory of leadership survival, focusing on the expectations of party constituents (or indirectly, the voting public) who have the power to remove a leader. Specifically, we argue that they 'benchmark' their expectation of a current party leader's performance by comparing it against their memory of that leader's immediate predecessor. Empirically, we show that party leaders who succeeded a (very) long-serving party leader and/or a leader who had also been the head of government experience lower longevity than others, making these types of predecessor 'hard acts to follow'.