The Presidency

The Presidency

Hoover scholars examine the policy decisions of the executive branch and whether those actions fall within the responsibilities and limits of presidential power as spelled out in the US Constitution. They address the impact of presidential decision making and executive branch regulations in a broad spectrum of policy areas including national security, the economy, the environment, energy, public health, and more.

Brandice Canes-Wrone

Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow | Director of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions

Brandice Canes-Wrone

Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow | Director of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions

Brandice Canes-Wrone is the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the Political Science department at Stanford. Canes-Wrone is the founding director of the Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions. Her current research focuses on representation and accountability, including projects on elections, campaign finance, and populism. She also writes on the effects of political phenomena on economic outcomes. During the course of her career, Canes-Wrone has published numerous articles and books on political institutions, mass political behavior, and political economy. Her book Who Leads Whom? Presidents, Policy, and Public (University of Chicago, 2006) examines how US presidents leverage public opinion to influence policy and how they respond to public opinion in their policy choices. This work was awarded the 2007 Richard E. Neustadt Book Award by the American Political Science Association for the best book on the US presidency. Her more recent scholarship on executive politics investigates how patterns of populism across the globe relate to the institutional features of the office of the chief executive. Other current research focuses on accountability and representation in the US context. She coedited Accountability Reconsidered: Voters, Interests, and Information in US Policymaking (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2023) with Chuck Cameron, Sandy Gordon, and Greg Huber, and in this volume she and Michael Kistner examine how changes in the US local media are associated with developments in congressional electoral accountability. Additionally, she has a series of recent publications on campaign finance, including on the motivations of campaign donors (with Michael Barber and Sharece Thrower) and congressional members’ responsiveness to donors (with Kenneth Miller and, in separate work, Nathan Gibson). Canes-Wrone has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on the editorial boards of numerous political science and political economy journals. She has also served on the boards of the American National Elections Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, and the Presidents and Executive Politics Section, for which she served as president, of the American Political Science Association. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Canes-Wrone was on the faculties of MIT, Northwestern, and Princeton. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a PhD from Stanford.

Jack Goldsmith

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Jack Goldsmith was a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution. Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. From 2003 to 2004, he served as the assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel; from 2002 to 2003 he served as the special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense. Goldsmith also taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2002 and at the University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 1997. In his academic work, Goldsmith has written widely on issues related to national security law, presidential power, international law, and Internet regulation. His books include Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (2012), The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment inside the Bush Administration (2009), Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World (with Tim Wu) (2006), and The Limits of International Law (with Eric Posner) (2005). He blogs on national security matters at the Lawfare blog,and on issues of labor law and policy at the On Labor blog. Goldsmith is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a JD from Yale Law School, a BA and an MA from Oxford University, and a BA from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Court of Appeals judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, and Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-US Claims Tribunal.

Terry M. Moe

Senior Fellow

Terry M. Moe was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University. He has written extensively on the presidency and public bureaucracy as well as political institutions more generally, publishing many scholarly articles on these topics. His most recent books are Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--And Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency (with William Howell, 2016), and Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (with William Howell, 2020). He has also written extensively on the politics of American education. His most recent books are The Politics of Institutional Reform: Katrina, Education, and the Second Face of Power (2019), The Comparative Politics of Education: Teachers Unions and Education Systems Around the World (edited with Susanne Wiborg, 2017), and Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools (2011). His prior work on education includes Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (1990) and Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education (2009), both with John E. Chubb, and Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (2001).