This is a difficult question. Heads of State and Heads of Government are always difficult to keep separate. Additionally, the answers included an actual example of a Head of Government (i.e. the Prime Minister). Regardless, a Head of Government is a non-ceremonial, powerful position in which the holder of it is generally the chief executive and responsible for implementing laws along with supervising the bureaucracy (if there is one).

This is an interesting question. One would assume that a Head of State could not also be the Head of Government, but one would assume incorrectly! Since these are simply descriptive titles, and not actually people, it is possible to be both a head of state and a head of government at the same time. In other words, it is possible to not only represent your country as the face of the country and the receiver of foreign diplomats etc (head of state) but to also hold a position of power as the chief executive, etc (head of government). In the US, for example, the president is BOTH a head of state AND government. In the UK, however, the roles are split: the Queen is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. 

Agency loss is a problem inherent in any kind of delegation of power. Agency loss is the possibility that your agent—that is, the person to whom you have delegated power—will do something different than what you would have preferred. Any amount of variation is agency loss—not just substantial amounts. When Congress delegates power to the president, for example, Congress must worry about agency loss.

Created in 1947 by the National Security Act, the NSC advises the president on issues related to national security and coordinates information between the different branches of the military and the CIA.

Contrary to popular belief, the President is not, in fact, authorized to declare war. Under the Constitution, ONLY Congress has the power to declare war; the President is instructed to go before Congress and present their case for military involvement, with the final decision left up to both the House and Senate. However, the issue of war powers – and specifically the extent of the President’s permitted exercise of them – is perhaps one of the most contentious modern political controversies. In the last several decades, a new trend has begun to emerge, in which Presidents increasingly insert temporary deployments of troops and other forms of military assistance into foreign conflicts, all without obtaining prior Congressional approval. Informed of the nation’s military actions only once these commitments had been made, Congress has usually chosen to sanction the President’s decisions after the fact – notable examples include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and several sectors of the ongoing War on Terror. Congress did attempt to take back some of its control with the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which would have held the President to much stricter rules on activating the army and making military commitments. But every President who has held office since the law’s passage has chosen to simply ignore it – a fact which Congress has yet to effectively challenge.

The rule governing Presidential term limits – a maximum of two four-year terms – was actually set in place with the passage of the Twenty-second Amendment. Ratified in 1951, the Twenty second Amendment owes its existence to the twelve-year Oval Office occupancy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first (and only) president to put aside the two term precedent established by George Washington. The Twenty fifth Amendment also owes its existence to prior presidential action – ratified in 1967, it was inspired by the chaos left in the wake of President Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke, in which his wife covertly assumed many of his duties while Congress dithered and bickered helplessly.

The Constitution does make mention of the Vice President, although s/he is not officially entrusted with much power. According to the Constitution, the Vice President’s sole responsibilities are to preside over the Senate and to cast the deciding vote in the event of a Senate-wide tie (both tasks are seldom ever carried out). Curiously, the Constitution contains no provisions concerning the White House staffers, the members of the President’s Cabinet, or the First Lady. George Washington is credited with inventing the Cabinet, a team of confidential advisors chosen by the President, the legality of whose appointments are traditionally determined by the Senate. The White House staffers operate under similar conditions – while not mentioned in the Constitution, an office as prestigious as the Executive Branch could hardly be expected to function effectively without a staff. Many of these aides are personally selected by the President and assist him in a wide variety of necessary tasks, from conducting legislative research to serving as liaisons to various Congressional and military departments. As for the First Lady, while the Constitution neglects to mention her, historically Presidents’ wives have occupied a special role within the government hierarchy. Often, the First Lady serves as her husband’s more accessible representative, making numerous public appearances and championing a wide range of causes to promote the common good.

The Constitution’s list of criterion for presidential eligibility is relatively simple and sparse: any potential president must be at least thirty-five years of age, must have lived in the US for at least fourteen years, and must be a natural-born citizen. No prior governmental service is required – theoretically, anyone is eligible to hold the nation’s highest office without having first obtained any political experience at all. Recently, there has been some debate as to the exact meaning of the “natural-born citizen” clause. The Constitution does not elaborate as to what circumstances constitute “natural-born” citizenship and so a key question remains: Can a naturalized citizen, who meets all the other requirements, become President? As of yet, this issue is unresolved, mainly because the Supreme Court has yet to show much interest, but it is not inconceivable to think that this may be the next of the Constitution’s clauses to soon face judicial clarification.

The Framers were greatly concerned about future Presidents becoming monarchial, snatching up greater extensions of their powers or otherwise trying to dictate commands to the other two branches of government. The Framers imagined that Congress, with its bicameral structure and lengthy membership roster, would act as the main deterrent to any scheming president’s pretensions. This viewpoint might perhaps have been influenced by the outsize personalities that many of the early Congressmen possessed but regardless, the Framers predicted that, in the future, Congress would tend to dominate the President. According to their way of thinking, the Chief Executive would defer to Congress’s desires, allowing Congress to set the administrative agenda and confining himself to responding to legislation that Congress issued, instead of sponsoring, inspiring, or pushing for bills himself (as is the real historic norm).

Surprisingly, party allegiance is not generally considered to be one of the most intrinsically important ingredients of each Presidential administration. This is because the party orientation of individual Presidents tends to play a less vital role when compared to the other factors that comprise administrations – namely, each President’s personality, the powers and roles granted to the President by the Constitution, and the makeup of the underlying governmental bureaucracy. Taken together, these four ingredients overwhelmingly put together the institution of the Presidency, regardless of party allegiance, political era, or historical time period.