From the provocative title one might expect a lively polemic against the civil rights record of the Reagan and Bush
administrations. Instead we are offered a comprehensive but mostly dispassionate discussion of civil rights policymaking during
these presidencies, with a special emphasis on the question of how much influence presidents have on the policymaking
process. Professor Shull's mastery of the conventions of policy analysis are evident in the way he marshals his eclectic evidence
in support of his conclusions regarding the power of presidential agenda setting and the centrifugal forces that dominate later
stages of the process. His thorough and balanced overview of recent civil rights policymaking should satisfy undergraduate
instructors who are looking for a supplemental text for courses on the presidency or public policy. At the same time, because
Shull chose to focus on the question of how different players influence the process, he has little to say about the more
politically- charged question raised in the title of his book, which is whether the Reagan-Bush civil rights legacy represented a
kinder, gentler form of racism. Caveat emptor.
Shull organizes his discussion around what he refers to as a "stimulus-response model" of the policymaking process, which is
just a fancy way of saying that he starts by reviewing presidential statements and actions and then examines how people inside
and outside the government reacted. This organization is appropriate enough considering how the "primary question" driving his
analysis is "Can presidents influence civil rights directly, and what factors limit their influence?" (p.7). Shull breaks down the
question even further by focusing on policy debates surrounding three distinct issue areas -- school desegregation, equal
employment, and fair housing -- as they relate to five different "target groups" who are ostensibly served by these policies. He
justifies his selection of issue areas by noting that the historical record suggests that in each case policy was driven by different
"significant actors": school desegregation was driven by courts and interest groups, equal employment was driven by the
executive, and fair housing was driven by Congress. While these differences make it possible to examine whether the dynamics
of the policy process vary depending on the political origins of particular policies, little is made of this opportunity. The "target
group" categories he used to organize data collection are blacks, women, Hispanics/Native Americans, the elderly, and other
(including disabled and institutionalized persons) (p.26). One can see that at least one of these categories is vulnerable to the
charge that it includes within it target groups with different experiences, agendas, and relationships to the state; but as it turns
out the problems that could arise from this conflation do not call into question the sort of analysis conducted by Shull in
subsequent chapters. Critical theorists who worry about how the culture constructs The Other may regret that one of Shull's
categories is "other," but he means and does no harm by the use of this convenience.
The book takes us sequentially through the various stages of the policymaking process in order to demonstrate that (a)
presidents can have an important influence on agenda setting, but (b) other agents within the government have significant roles
to play during the formulation, modification, adoption, and implementation of policy, and (c) agents outside the government
"move to the forefront" when these policies are subsequently evaluated (p.45). These points are so commonplace that they are
hardly worth making, but thankfully in this case making these points gives Shull a chance to carefully catalogue recent battles
over civil rights policy, and Shull performs a service by gathering this material in one volume. After a twenty-page review of the
history of civil rights policy debates (from the slave-trade to the present) he begins his analysis with some fairly comprehensive
selections of Reagan and Bush statements relating to the different issue areas and target groups, and then supplements these by
offering measurements of different aspects of
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presidential statements from Eisenhower to Bush, including the frequency and length of statements, whether they expressed
support for policy action (as opposed to being merely rhetorical), whether they expressed support for "liberal" civil rights
positions, and whether they addressed the issue areas and target groups on which Shull focuses. The permutations produced by
all these measures are dizzying, but the findings Shull considers most important are that Bush was more attentive to civil rights
than Reagan and his statements were less symbolic (i.e., more policy-oriented) than his predecessor's (p.70). For Shull this
means that, despite initial hopes that Bush would be more moderate than Reagan on civil rights, it turns out that he was more
aggressive about promoting a conservative civil rights agenda than was Reagan.
This review of presidential statements is followed by two chapters that review presidential behavior relating to budget requests,
support for legislation, administrative actions (including executive orders and nominations), and attempts to influence the
judiciary (e.g., nominations, filings of lawsuits, amicus briefs). Among other things we learn that Reagan was quite active about
promoting his agenda but "his activity was manifested primarily in budgetary and judicial action rather than through direct
legislation" (p.127). Bush, on the other hand, was more assertive on legislation than administrative or judicial actions. It is also
during these chapters that Shull supplements his measurements and his comprehensive lists of statements and actions with four
case studies, two relating to battles over legislation (the 1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act and the 1991 Civil Rights Act) and
two relating to administrative actions (Reagan's nomination of Pendleton to the Civil Rights Commission and Bush's nomination
of Lucas to head the Civil Rights Division). These short narratives are rather conventional but they provide a welcome break
from the sort of information processing that is triggered by our encounter with most of Shull's data.
In the next two chapters Shull moves from "stimuli" to "responses," first by looking at congressional and agency reaction and
then by examining judicial and nongovernmental responses. Shull's measurements indicate that, at least until recently, "Congress
lets presidents get away with much of what they want," but that Congress has frequently blocked liberal presidential initiatives
and has frequently disregarded presidential budgetary requests (p.153). Interestingly he finds that "enforcement efforts were
greater during Republican than Democratic administrations," but unfortunately it is unclear what we should make of this
statement since agency actions were merely counted rather than evaluated and thus "no judgment is made whether such agency
actions are pro- or anti-civil rights" (p.149). It is also unfortunate that much of the discussion on judicial responses to
presidential actions is limited to the Supreme Court and even then draws on an interesting but dated (fourteen-year-old)
unpublished manuscript by Larry Baum and Herbert Weisberg; beyond that Shull mostly provides one sentence summaries of
Reagan-Bush era Supreme Court cases arranged according to his target groups and issue areas, and then observes that in
general both presidents appointed justices who shared their views on civil rights (p.166). The review of responses from
nongovernmental actors does not produce any particularly interesting conclusions since "actors outside government varied in
their responses to Reagan's and Bush's civil rights policies" (p.179).
In the final two chapters Shull attempts to evaluate the impact of Reagan-Bush civil rights policies and draw some conclusions
about the nature of presidential power. Shull notes that it is difficult to establish connections between particular policy decisions
and their societal impact, but nevertheless he does point out that many members of his target groups were worse off after the
Reagan-Bush years in terms of income, employment, and segregation in housing and education. One senses that Shull wants to
make more of this, but his emphasis, evidence, and (alas) social science sensibilities prevent him from doing so. These same
limitations also prevent him from making more of the claim that the Reagan-Bush civil rights record had as much to do with the
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perceived political benefits to be gained from exploiting racial conflict as with an interest in promoting actual policy change. One
can tell that his heart is in this conclusion as well, since at one point he writes that "the Reagan and Bush administrations were
successful in exploiting and intensifying partisan differences over quotas," and more generally that they "clearly benefited
politically from their conservative civil rights statements, actions, and results" (p.205). More tellingly he ends the book with an
indictment, namely that "By playing on the fear and frustration of lower-class whites, particularly, both Presidents Reagan and
Bush left a substantial civil rights legacy, but it was not a kinder, gentler one" (p.229). But unfortunately these remarks, like the
title, seem to belong to an entirely different book. The style of argumentation that would service these conclusions is not to be
found in this volume. Instead, Shull's measurements and case studies are designed to support less provocative findings, such as
the claim that while Bush was in many ways more assertive than his predecessor in the promotion of his conservative civil rights
agenda he "was not able to get the kind of responses from other government institutions that other assertive presidents had
obtained" (p.225).
Shull is confident when he is reporting the facts, and he does a good job linking the material in this book with general lessons
about the political system; for example, he argues that "Congress's preference for general and symbolic policies explains its
outrage over President Reagan's efforts to politicize the Civil Rights Commission" and its more muted responses to other
administration assaults on established policies (p.192). At the same time Shull sometimes falters when he reaches for
generalizations or conclusions that lie beyond the dynamics of the policymaking process. His opening chapter includes an
obligatory review of various ways other scholars have conceptualized "presidential leadership" and "policy change," but as is
typical for many undergraduate texts these reviews are fairly shallow, and they are unconnected to his assertion that "the major
bases of presidential leadership are ideological commitment and assertiveness" (p.8). In explaining why the issue of civil rights is
particularly useful for public policy research he makes some puzzling claims, such as that "foreign, economic, and domestic
policy may be too general to identify patterns of change" and "are often interrelated," unlike civil rights policy which he thinks "is
not likely to be tied to economic issues, the business cycle, or the election cycle" (p.5). This statement seems to fly in the face of
Shull's own convictions about how Reagan and Bush exploited the racial tensions produced by hard economic times and
deteriorating urban conditions in order to achieve electoral benefits. It is also unclear why he thinks that "Civil rights policies are
not as critical to life as most foreign policies, particularly national security, but they are more changeable" (p.6), since at first
glance it would seem that most civil rights issues have a more direct impact on the quality of life of average people than most
diplomatic and military adventures. Shull also veers too close to melodrama when he claims that partisan conflicts over
contemporary civil rights issues "prevents either leadership or policy change and could ultimately threaten the ability of
government to govern" (p.6).
Still, despite these minor shortcomings, and despite the misleading title, there is much to be admired in the way that Shull goes
about his task of describing and cataloguing modern struggles over civil rights policymaking. One will not find many innovative
lessons about the political system or any provocative arguments about racism and American politics, but one will find a rigorous
and comprehensive overview of how the policymaking process has addressed recent controversies over civil rights, and of the
steps taken by Reagan and Bush to usher in a retrenchment of federal protection for civil rights.
