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Published by EH.NET (February 2001) 
 
Robert M. Collins, _More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar  
America_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xi + 299 pp. 5.00  
(cloth), ISBN 0-19-504646-3. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by William Keech, Department of Social and  
Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University. <[log in to unmask]> 
 
 
Robert Collins' book is a history of economic policymaking from the  
New Deal through the middle of the Clinton administration. The phrase  
"politics of economic growth" is in the title, and such is indeed the  
theme of the book, though if this theme were not featured in the  
title the book could be mistaken for a good, general, conventional  
history of economic policy. 
 
The prologue and the first two chapters remind us that growth was not  
always a widely assumed and shared goal in American politics. The  
prologue shows that the New Deal was ambivalent about growth, and  
moved from an early period in which it was oriented mainly to  
scarcity and stability to a later period in which it was more  
oriented to growth and abundance. World War II shifted the balance  
decisively in the direction of production and expansion, culminating  
in the Employment Act of 1946, which made explicit the goal of  
promoting "maximum employment, production and purchasing power." 
 
"Economic growthmanship" appeared in the Truman administration's  
Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). Chapter 1, which details this  
emergence, is to me the most interesting in the book. Collins is  
literate about economic theory, and refers to Samuelson, Harrod,  
Domar, Kuznets and Rostow, among others in this chapter. He makes it  
clear that the emergence of "growthmanship" was not a result of the  
influence of economic theory on policy. 
 
The emergence of "growthmanship" had much to do with Leon Keyserling,  
a CEA member who was trained as a lawyer rather than an economist,  
who was not enthusiastic about economic theory, and who had noted the  
"poverty of growth theory." Keyserling was a tireless advocate of  
economic growth, and a force behind the 1949 CEA report, which was a  
manifesto for this new direction in national policy. Growth would  
take priority over redistribution, and reduce "to manageable  
proportions the ancient conflict between social equity and economic  
incentives." Collins reflects on the roles of theory and policy in  
this altering of the national agenda. It was policy, he says, that  
caused the first step to be taken, but policy and theory worked in  
tandem, "moving farther and faster than either could have alone." 
 
The book never actually demonstrates this, and it never quite returns  
to this analytical perspective. Remaining chapters show a partisan  
difference in perspective during the Eisenhower years, with  
Republicans being more concerned with price stability, and Democrats  
being more expansionist. Growth returned to prominence in the Kennedy  
and Johnson years, and made possible the ambitious policy agenda of  
the Johnson administration. The treatment of the Great Society  
includes a reflective section on the somewhat discordant impulses to  
focus on the quality of life, and on adverse consequences of economic  
growth for the environment, with mentions, for example, the work and  
public impact of John Kenneth Galbraith and Rachel Carson. 
 
There is a whole chapter on the multiple crises of 1968, which  
stalled growth liberalism, and a chapter on Richard Nixon's "Whig  
growthmanship," which brought growth into the "bipartisan mainstream"  
as a more cautious stance with more recognition of limits and  
choices. This stance also foundered in Nixon's second term over  
well-known crises and events. Collins notes that 1973 is recognized  
as the end of the postwar golden age of unprecedented economic  
growth. "Retreat from Growth in the 1970s" chronicles the critical  
literature of E. F. Schumacher, Ronald Inglehart, Barry Commoner,  
Kenneth Boulding and the Club of Rome, at the same time that it  
describes the stagflation of the 1970s and how it was dealt with by  
the Ford and Carter administrations. 
 
A chapter on the Reagan presidency shows how the former governor of  
California did with "flair and fanfare" what Richard Nixon had  
"sought to do by stealth and indirection." Reagan "stole the growth  
issue that had for a generation been a Democratic staple, repackaged  
it, and made it his own." After a fair-minded and balanced assessment  
of the intellectual and political sources of supply-side economics,  
Collins shows how this doctrine was used to revitalize and implement  
a conservative and anti-statist vision of government. Economic growth  
became "both vehicle and camouflage for a larger ideological agenda." 
 
Collins observes that Bill Clinton was elected with the help of the  
economy in 1992, and then faced a choice of increasing public  
investment as was desired by many of his Democratic supporters, or  
reducing the deficit that was one of the legacies of the Reagan  
presidency. The deficit hawks won out, as we know, and the long  
string of deficits since 1969 have turned into surpluses that have  
begun to reduce federal debt. This was not at the expense of what  
became the longest sustained economic expansion in American history.  
Projected surpluses raise again the issue of choosing between paying  
down the debt, cutting taxes, and public investment (or other kinds  
of public spending). 
 
_More_ comes to four main conclusions: that "the pursuit of exuberant  
economic growth was central to the history of the postwar period,"  
"that growthmanship was protean," serving not just as an end in  
itself, but a variety of other purposes, that policymaking for growth  
was very complex.and that the pursuit of economic growth was more  
"tricky and dangerous" than policymakers expected. These conclusions  
do not grow systematically out of a sustained analysis in the book.  
It might have been better if these themes had been stated up front,  
and developed throughout the narrative, rather than being tacked on  
at the end. 
 
Collins misses an opportunity to be as literate about modern growth  
theory as he was about growth theory as it stood in the 1940s. Growth  
theory is one of the most active areas of research in economics  
today, and an economic history of this period in US history that was  
sensitive to these theoretical issues would have been very  
instructive. 
 
 
William Keech is Professor of Political Economy and Head of the  
Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon  
University. His most recent book is _Economic Politics: The Costs of  
Democracy_ (Cambridge University Press, 1995). His main research  
interests center on the intersection of political science and  
economics. He is especially interested in the relationship between  
political institutions and economic performance, and is engaged in a  
study of these issues in Latin America. 
 
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