Richard Elliott Neustadt (June 26, 1919 – October 31, 2003) was an American political scientist specializing in the United States presidency. He also served as adviser to several presidents.

Neustadt was born in Philadelphia, but his family is of Swiss origin.[1] Neustadt received a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1939, followed by an M.A. degree from Harvard University in 1941. After a short stint as an economist in the Office of Price Administration, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1942, where he was a supply officer in the Aleutian Islands, and stayed until 1946. He then went into the Bureau of Budget (now known as the Office of Management and Budget) while working on his Harvard Ph.D., which he received in 1951.

He was the Special Assistant of the White House Office from 1950-53 under President Harry S. Truman. During the following year, he was a professor of public administration at Cornell, then from 1954–64, taught government at Columbia University, where he received a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in 1961.

It was at Columbia that Neustadt wrote the book Presidential Power[2] (1960; a revised edition titled Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership appeared in 1990),[3] in which he examined the decision-making process at the highest levels of government. He argued that the President is actually rather weak in the U.S. government, being unable to effect significant change without the approval of the Congress, and that in practice the President must rely on a combination of personal persuasion, professional reputation "inside the Beltway", and public prestige to get things done.

With his book appearing just before the election of John F. Kennedy, Neustadt soon found himself in demand by the President-elect, and began his advisory role with a 20-page memo suggesting things the President should and should not try to do at the beginning of his term. During the 1960s, Neustadt continued to advise Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson.[