In recent decades, political scientists have made less progress in understanding the presidency than in studying almost any other political institution. The study of the U. S. Congress, for example, has proceeded at a rapid pace. One reason for this is that numerous academics have enjoyed internships on Capitol Hill and have had the opportunity of learning from senators and representatives and observing them at close range. Reflecting on these experiences after they returned to their campuses, political scientists have developed a rich literature about legislative politics. The result has been a sophisticated understanding of congressional behavior and processes. This award is for a conference to be held at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for International Studies. The purpose of the conference, to be organized by three distinguished scholars of the presidency, is to chart new theoretical and research directions in the study of the presidency. While there has been some distinguished work by academics on the presidency while they have served on White House staffs, political science has fewer students of the presidency than of almost any other political institution. Consequently, our understanding of executive processes is less well informed. The goals of this conference are to increase the number of presidential scholars, and to enrich the set of concepts on which they can draw. This will be accomplished in two stages. The first stage will be the conference itself. Two sets of papers will be prepared for the conference. The first will be written by presidential scholars, each of whom will do an inventory of a segment of the existing literature. The second will be written by theorists in other social science research fields, such as cognition, group theories, leadership theory, and statistical and formal modeling. Each author will be asked to suggest new perspectives that could be applied to the presidency. The second stage will be the preparation of a book based on the conference proceedings. Here the presidential scholars will have an opportunity to reflect on the theorists' sugestions, and the theorists can augment their suggestions by understanding what the scholars are trying to accomplish. This effort should spread the dialogue to a far wider audience than the small group attending only the conference.
