Richard E. Neustadt ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Richard Neustadt (1919–2003) was an American political scientist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1919.After completing an AB degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1939, Neustadt attended Harvard University and earned a master’s degree in 1941. He then worked for a short while in the Office of Price Administration as an assistant economist and, beginning in 1942, served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II (1939–1945). After leaving the navy, he served as assistant director in the Bureau of the Budget and remained there until 1950. Neustadt became a special assistant to President Harry Truman in 1950, and held this position until 1953.

While working for Truman, Neustadt completed a PhD in government at Harvard University in 1951. In 1953, he joined the faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor in government. One year later he left Cornell to join the faculty at Columbia University, and he was there until 1965.While he was a professor at Columbia, Neustadt supplemented his teaching responsibilities by serving as a consultant to groups such as the Democratic Platform Committee, the Senate Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, the Senate Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, the Bureau of the Budget, the Ford Foundation, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of State, and the Rand Corporation. He also served as an advisor to president-elect John F. Kennedy. Neustadt solidified his reputation as an expert on presidential politics and further established his lasting legacy as a top authority on the presidency with the 1960 publication of his book, Presidential Power.

Neustadt was one of the first to articulate a new approach to the study of presidential power. Instead of focusing on the constitutional powers of the office, which was commonplace in political science, in Presidential Power Neustadt argues that a president’s power manifests itself in his ability to persuade. He maintains that all presidents come to power with the same constitutional powers; however, the personal abilities of the presidents are what distinguish them from one another. Those presidents adept at persuasion prove more successful, because presidents need to rely on such informal powers in order to execute their duties. This seminal work challenged conventional wisdom at the time and ushered in the concept of the “personal presidency,” which looked beyond the static constitutional powers of the office.

After the publication of Presidential Power, Neustadt took an active role in the founding of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and served as its associate dean from 1965 to 1979. He was also a professor of government at Harvard until 1989. In addition to Presidential Power, which was still being widely used in college classrooms in the early twenty-first century, Neustadt authored or coauthored several more books, including Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (1990) and Preparing to be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt (2000). After a long and distinguished career, Richard Neustadt died in London, England, on October 31, 2003.

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