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The European Commission is evolving into a normal executive. In the 1950s, it started out as a technocratic international organization, but it has acquired many of the organizational features and behavioural patterns that are highly typical of the ‘normal’ executives in national settings. This ‘normalization’ of the EU executive is due to a series of treaty reforms and internal administrative transformations that were effectuated after the demise of the Santer Commission. Based on a large number of in-depth interviews with commissioners, heads of cabinet, and senior civil servants in the Commission, and on extensive documentary evidence, this study shows how a reinforced regime of political and administrative accountability has profoundly changed the executive relationships between politicians and bureaucrats in the Commission. The book presents a grounded empirical portrait of life at the top in the EU, exposing the Commission’s struggle to revive its legitimacy and to turn it into a more transparent, accountable, and efficient organization during the Prodi and Barroso’s tenures. Officials and officeholders describe in their own words the imperatives they face and the relationships they maintain, allowing readers to have a rare look at the day-to-day practices in one of the world’s most powerful executives.

American democracy is in a period of striking tumult. The clash of a rapidly changing socio-technological environment and the traditional presidency has led to an upheaval in the scope and standards of executive leadership. Research on the presidency, although abundant, has been slow to adjust to changing realities associated with digital technologies, diverse audiences, and new political practices. Meanwhile, journalists and the public continue to encounter and shape emerging presidential efforts in deeply consequential ways. This book offers a comprehensive framework for understanding contemporary presidential communication: the ubiquitous presidency. Presidents harness new opportunities in the media environment to create a nearly constant and highly visible presence in political and nonpolitical arenas. They do this by trying to achieve longstanding presidential goals, namely visibility, adaptation, and control. However, in an environment where accessibility, personalization, and pluralism are omnipresent considerations, the strategies presidents use to achieve their goals are very different from what we once knew. Using this novel framework, the book undertakes one of the most expansive analyses of presidential communication to date. A wide variety of approaches—ranging from surveys and survey-experiments, to large-scale automated content and network analyses, to qualitative textual analysis—uncover new aspects of the intricate relationship between the president, news media, and the public. Focusing on the presidency since Ronald Reagan, and devoting particular attention to the cases of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the book uncovers remarkable shifts in communication that test the institution of the presidency and, consequently, democratic governance itself.