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This president's power to determine the number of appointed positions in bureaucratic agencies is an important and understudied aspect of presidential unilateral power. It can have a significant impact on policy implementation. In this article, I describe the mechanics of how presidents alter the number of political appointees and explain when presidents want to politicize. I focus on how presidents balance their competing desires for agencies to share presidential preferences but also be competent at what they do. I examine presidential staffing choices with new data on appointees in the Executive Office of the President during 1988‐2004. I find some preliminary evidence that presidents add more appointees when their preferences diverge from those of an agency and that presidents are mindful of how politicization will impact agency performance. I conclude that more attention should be paid to how presidents unilaterally influence the number and depth of political appointees in the federal bureaucracy.

The US Congress has often sought to limit presidential influence over certain public policies by designing agencies that are insulated from presidential control. Whether or not insulated agencies persist over time has important consequences for presidential management. If those agencies that persist over time are also those that are the most immune from presidential direction, this has potentially fatal consequences for the president's ability to manage the executive branch. Modern presidents will preside over a less and less manageable bureaucracy over time. This article explains why agencies insulated from presidential control are more durable than other agencies and shows that they have a significantly higher expected duration than other agencies. The conclusion is that modern American presidents preside over a bureaucracy that is increasingly insulated from their control.

This article examines agency mortality, 1946-1997, in the US government & argues that, contrary to popular belief, agencies are not immortal. Rather, agencies face significant risks of termination, particularly due to political turnover. When an agency's opponents gain power, the hazards of agency mortality increase. Principal among the findings are that 62% of agencies created since 1946 have been terminated & that political turnover is one of the primary causes of termination. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 3 Appendixes, 26 References. Adapted from the source document.

Este documento se propone ofrecer un analisis introductivo de las tendencias y los avances de los procesos de integracion hemisferica, su dinamica actual y algunos escenarios posibles de su desarrollo, el futuro del proceso del Area de Libre Comercio de las Americas y de los acuerdos de la segunda Cumbre de las Americas, y los mecanismos economicos y politicos de articulacion entre los diferentes esquemas de integracion. A su vez, mas que analizar en detalle las iniciativas especificas, el autor pretende identificar aquellos factores de mayor incidencia y aquellas areas de mayor avance, asi como los retos y oportunidades que ofrecen estos procesos para la participacion de los actores de la sociedad civil. (Pensam Propio/DÜI)

The central thesis of this paper is that the resources and conditions, both external and regional, for the continuation of traditional Caribbean subregionalized cooperation and integration processes no longer exist. Whereas in the past there existed a number of rationalizations and justifications for restricting and limiting the scope of regional initiatives, the scenario of the 1990s — regional, Hemispheric, and global — is one in which neither regional actors nor external hegemons can affordnotto cooperate beyond the limitations of the past.Moreover, the impetus for this change of direction is not only regional but sectoral: it includes civil society (business, labor, non-governmental organizations or NGOs) in a way never seen before.

Throughout the past decade, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Caribbean have been attempting to redefine their role vis-à-vis the state and civil society in order to be able to contribute substantively to the regional debate on development strategies. Their role has most often centered on both political and economic priorities, in contrast with the position of most international NGOs, which tend to stress their own apolitical character and to define Third World requirements in terms of economic rather than political necessities. This has meant a rethinking of the relationship with the state, promoting a debate between NGOs concerning the question of how NGOs should interact with the state.