(Page 9 of 24) - Killing Me Softly: George W. Bush, The Environment, And The Administrative Presidency authored by Cohen, David.

analysis for such an analysis. There are several ways to approach the question. The unit might be
defined as an individual presidential administration, where individual policy actions (those listed
in Table 1) taken by presidents either within a specific policy domain, or across several domains
across several administrations are measured. This approach seems straightforward but actually
presents some important practical difficulties of measurement. For instance: identifying,
obtaining, and analyzing an intra-agency instruction memorandum across administrations is a
daunting data collection task. The unit of analysis alternatively might be defined as an issue
domain, where characteristics of those issue areas are used to explain and predict presidential
policy action choices within a given administration. This approach also carries with it some
significant measurement challenges. For instance, the characteristics of each policy domain
include unique institutional details (internal agency organization, primary policy instruments for
implementation, federalism issues, etc.) and political dynamics (ideological makeup of oversight
committees, interest group competition, etc.) that are not easily measured or perhaps the data are
not readily accessible. Either design approach could is justified, but each has implications for
external validity.

A third challenge is closely related to the second: measurement of specific policy actions

is not necessarily straightforward. That is, operationalizing the individual policy actions listed in
Table 1 also presents practical difficulties of measurement and data acquisition. For instance,
counter-staffing requires some measure of the ideological disposition of senior executive
appointments as well as some reasonable indication of the policy preferences/ideological
disposition of career staffers at a given agency.

We do not propose to resolve these issues in this paper. Rather, we offer an initial

assessment of how the G.W. Bush administration has used a variety of policy-making tools—
especially several high autonomy tools—to shape environmental and land use management
policy. That is, we provide some context to the policy-making resource typology in providing
some illustrative uses of those tools by the Bush administration.

IV. BUSH, THE ENVIRONMENT, & THE ADMINISTRATIVE PRESIDENCY

In general, with respect to environmental and land use management polices, the Bush

administration has relied heavily on an administrative strategy whereby typical routes of
achieving goals by persuading Congress or by going public have been eschewed for less visible
tactics such as issuing executive orders, adjusting agency rulemaking, or making ideologically-
based sub-cabinet appointments. This use of an administrative governing strategy is reminiscent
of the Nixon and Reagan years. However, the Bush administration has moved beyond previous
utilizations of such a policy-making strategy by placing a greater emphasis on pursuing policy
goals through exceptionally low visibility avenues such as lawsuit settlements on terms favorable
to preferred interests and through issuance of internal agency directives. Neither of these tactics
is entirely new per se, but they took on a critical role in the early Bush presidency and afforded
policy changes without evoking public scrutiny—a sort of “under the radar” governing strategy.

A. Strategy and Tactics of an Administrative Presidency

In thinking about how the G.W. Bush administration has approached environmental