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During the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson and his administration substantially altered the structure of the American administrative state. Creating intergovernmental programs to forward the goal of the Great Society, they changed the contours of national-state-local relationships, and these changes largely have remained, despite the attempts of later administrations to reverse them. Intergovernmental Relations in the American Administrative State is the first comprehensive study of how and why these changes occurred.

Drawn from a wealth of primary material in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, the study probes the objectives of the president and other framers of new policies and programs, within the institutional and political context of the time. The authors give special attention to the inherent incongruities that arise when intergovernmental programs are used to address problems defined in national terms. In addition, they reveal how certain programs actually challenged the power of established national bureaucracies. They conclude with a thoughtful overview of the Johnson legacy in intergovernmental relations during subsequent administrations.

Presidents and their advisors consistently seek to improve the management of their foreign policy decision processes. This book analyzes the successes and failures of administrations from Kennedy to Nixon as they sought to strike a balance between the personal style of the president and the need for a strong interagency structure that could systematically evaluate policy options. The narrative focuses on US decision making on China and Taiwan during the crucial era when the US was considering moving from a policy of isolating China to a policy of engagement, culminating in Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China. William Waltman Newmann has created an Evolution-Balancing model, tested with case studies focusing on China policy by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, showing how the relationships between a president and his advisors change based on the weaknesses or pathologies of the president’s management style. The author’s research is based on declassified archival material from the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford presidential libraries.