Washington -- "Presidential transitions present several challenges to the American polity," say Leonard Levy and Louis Fisher in their Encyclopedia of the American Presidency. "They must be accomplished with a delicate mix of continuity and change. The incoming administration must shift gears from campaigning to governing and move quickly on its policy agenda and personnel selection."

With the election protest and contest in the United States finally over, the focus is now on the transition to a new administration which will take office on January 20. President-elect George W. Bush, however, is well aware that, as a result of the election challenge, he has 35 fewer days to make key appointments, coordinate new policies, organize his legislative program and priorities, and prepare to become the nation's chief executive.

Unlike the situation in most parliamentary regimes -- where there is a shadow cabinet and the new government takes office immediately -- in the United States there is a transition period between one administration and another. It is a time for the new president not only to select his Cabinet, but also to prepare new policies. Nowadays, transitions are highly organized affairs in which there is strong cooperation between incoming and outgoing administrations. But it was not always so.

Before the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition in 1960-1961, communication and cooperation between outgoing and incoming administrations was usually limited, especially when the president-elect and president were of different political parties. It was generally expected that the president-elect would stay away from Washington until Inauguration Day and the new cabinet not be selected until just before assuming office.

But that changed after the election to the presidency of John F. Kennedy (JFK) in 1960. He set an important precedent by appointing 29 task forces during the transition to report to him on a variety of domestic and especially foreign policy issues. "Domestic policy can only defeat us. Foreign policy can kill us," he used to say. When the White House changed parties in 1968, Richard Nixon went one better than his old rival, JFK, and appointed 30 task forces. By the time Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the process was even more extensive. He appointed 100 transition teams.

JFK also broke precedent by institutionalizing the transition process and providing public funds for it. In 1963, the Presidential Transition Act was introduced to formalize an arrangement that, up to that point, had been ad hoc and casual. For the first time, public funds were provided to facilitate the transition -- $900,000 for each one. The funds included monies for office space and travel.

The Presidential Transition Act was passed in 1964 after JFK's assassination. In 1988, the Presidential Transitions Effectiveness Act was passed and funds provided were increased to $5 million, an amount to be increased in future years, adjusted for inflation. The amount of public funding for the 2000-2001 transition is $6.1 million. Vice President-elect Dick Cheney received the keys to the transition office on December 13.

There also has been an important development during the past year. The 106th Congress passed the Presidential Transition Act of 2000 to authorize a detailed orientation for incoming political appointees and establish a formal coordination process with career federal staffers. The act was passed in recognition of the fact that the president-elect selects not only the new Cabinet, but also thousands of political appointees who assume responsibilities in all federal agencies. Transition veterans advise that if a transition is to be successful, there must be close cooperation between top career civil servants and the representatives of the new administration.

The scope of a new presidents' appointment responsibilities was detailed in a recent Congressional hearing by Paul Light, an expert on presidential transitions with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The next president," Light said, "will make more than 6,000 appointments in his first term, including roughly 600 Senate-confirmed Cabinet and sub-Cabinet members, another 600 non-career members of the Senior Executive Service, and 1,500 personal and confidential assistants." This is a much larger total of appointments than is the case in many other democracies, which rely much more extensively on a permanent civil service.

President-elect Bush will be inaugurated as the nation's 43rd president on January 20, a key date on the U.S. political calendar every four years for many decades now. But historians point out that transitions used to be even longer. From the time of George Washington, the nation's first president, until Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was elected in 1932, the inauguration did not take place until March 4 of the year after the election. But in 1933 the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, mandating that the new president be inaugurated at noon on the January 20 following a presidential election.

The 16-week transition was reduced to about 11 weeks. Some historians say the change was made because such a long transition period became unnecessary in an age of modern technology, communications and transportation. But others place emphasis on the critical role of the president in modern times. When FDR won election in 1932, the nation was in the grip of the worst depression in its history. Many felt that 16 weeks was too long to wait for the enactment of policies for which the people had so overwhelmingly voted.

That may be true but it is also a fact that transitions in recent times take increasingly longer because of new ethics and disclosure requirements for appointees and a more elaborate Senate confirmation process. Many reporters, however, have cited President-elect Bush's selection of Vice President-elect Cheney as a positive element in this regard. Cheney is familiar with the ways of Washington, having served in top positions in three other administrations. In the familiar language of transition speak, Cheney has "hit the ground running."

President Bill Clinton already has pledged his full cooperation to help facilitate the transition to the Bush administration. That will be critical this year because of the shortened time period. All recent presidents have cooperated with their successors, partly as a result of the formalization and institutionalization of the process that began four decades ago after JFK's election.

But transitions in earlier times in the nation's history were often a little tricky. In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge notoriously declined to cooperate in the transition for his successor, President-elect Herbert Hoover, even though they both were Republicans. "That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad," Coolidge reportedly said of Hoover. After Hoover was nominated, Coolidge demanded a bottle of whiskey and disappeared from view throughout the celebration. During the transition, Coolidge ignored the president-elect and left the stickiest problems for the new president to solve. "We'll leave it for the great engineer," he quipped.

But most transitions have been a good deal smoother than that, including the first transition in the nation's history when many were concerned that a transition from one government to another would not be peaceful, as was the custom then in so many areas of the world. But when President George Washington yielded the office to fellow Federalist John Adams, a South Carolinian observer wrote, "The change of the Executive here has been wrought with a facility and a calm which has astonished even those of us who always augured well of the government and the general good sense of our citizens. The machinery has worked without a creak."

More than 200 years later, President-elect Bush is no doubt hoping for the same review -- a transition without a creak. By all accounts, he made a good start December 16, nominating retired General Colin Powell as his first major Cabinet nominee. If, as expected, Powell is confirmed, he will be the first African American secretary of state in U.S. history. Democrats as well as Republicans greeted the selection with broad approval.