==================== HES POSTING ====================
[NOTE: This is the first of two reviews of this book that I will post.
Some historians of American economics will be interested in the
reviews..--RBE]
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (June, 1998)
Ballard C. Campbell. _The Growth of American Government: Governance from
the Cleveland Era to the Present_. Interdisciplinary Studies in History.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. x + 289 pp. Bibliographic
references and index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-253-32871-3.
Reviewed for H-Pol by Larry G. Gerber <[log in to unmask]>,
Auburn University
Over the last century, the growth of government has been one of the most
dramatic developments in American history. In 1890, the size and scope of
the state in America was strictly limited. Spending by all levels of
government represented only 7 percent of GNP; only one out of every thirty
workers in the country was a public employee; and few individuals other
than Union army Civil War veterans received any direct financial assistance
from the government. By 1990, the state had become a dominant factor in
the nation's economy and in the daily lives of most Americans. Government
spending had risen to 40 percent of GNP; one out of every six workers in
the nation was a public employee; and nearly half of all Americans received
some form of direct financial benefit from the government.
Ballard Campbell's _The Growth of American Government_ offers a
comprehensive account of the expansion of the American state since 1887. A
contribution to Indiana University Press's highly regarded
Interdisciplinary Studies in History series, the book draws effectively
from recent literature in political science and sociology to develop a
general explanatory framework for the growth that Campbell chronicles so
well. While the book is obviously intended for classroom use in survey
courses in American history and government and will contain little that is
truly new or surprising for experts in the field, scholars will be
impressed by Campbell's ability to cover so much ground in only 241 pages
of text. While the growth of government is a familiar theme, perhaps no
other historian has so successfully interwoven developments at the
national, state, and local level over such a long period of time.
Campbell divides the history of American governance into four periods, each
with its own distinctive polity: "republican" (1780s-1870s),
"transitional" (1880s-1920s), "claimant" (1930s-1970s), and "restrained"
(mid-1970s-). Each period, he argues, has been characterized by a
distinctive set of policy innovations, fiscal pattern, federal-state
relations, and economic conditions. Thus, in the "republican polity" that
existed during the nation's first century as a primarily agricultural
society, government functions and expenditures were strictly limited, with
a consequent absence of direct taxation on the American people, and with
the local, state and federal governments carrying out clearly
distinguishable tasks (though local governments bore the primary
responsibility for public administration and policy formulation).
The "transitional polity" coincided with the onset of full
industrialization and involved the development of government regulation of
business, increased public expenditures, the creation of new forms of
taxation (including the income tax), and a more complex, though still
largely cooperative, relationship between state and federal governments.
The "claimant polity" that had its origins in the Great Depression but came
to maturity in the period of affluence after World War II witnessed a
tremendous growth in government responsibility for global stabilization,
the economy, income security, civil rights, and work and environmental
standards, and it involved the application of federally determined
standards to many state activities. In the period of slow economic growth
in postindustrial America, a "restrained polity" has emerged. Although the
overall cost of government has continued to be high, expenditures have
greatly exceeded revenues, and a movement toward deregulation and
privatization has developed at the same time that the federal government
has engaged in increasingly coercive efforts to mandate certain state and
local actions.
Several major themes emerge from Campbell's study. First, Campbell
believes that government expansion cannot be attributed to a single causal
explanation. The impact of industrialization, interest group pressures,
partisan politics, and the self-interested activity of state actors all
contributed to the growth of government, especially at the national level,
but Campbell concludes that no "one individual, group, or event dominated
policy making during this transformation. Rather, the Federal role expanded
in response to numerous pressures, unfolded incrementally, and grew
cumulatively" (p. 73). Nevertheless, Campbell does place the greatest
emphasis on the socio-economic environment, in particular the demands
generated by industrialization, as the single most important factor
bringing about changes in government policy and functions. He downplays
the significance of party competition as an underlying cause of the growth
of government, arguing that differences between the two major parties
regarding the expansion of government have been minimal, especially when
one considers expansion of government functions at the state and local, as
well as at the national level. Nor does Campbell see elections as being
critical to the process, since voters have appeared "to act more as
consumers of public goods than as initiators of new policies" (p. 45).
Interest groups play a larger role in his story than parties or the
electorate at large, but here, too, Campbell denies the assertion made by
some scholars that interest groups have been the driving force in the
development of the American state. Instead, he contends that they have
been far more successful in defending benefits and shaping the
implementation of programs than they have been in causing the enactment of
new programs and expanding government authority into new realms.
State actors--legislators, executives, and bureaucrats--all contributed to
the expansion of government. Elected officials may not have been forced by
grass-roots pressures from the electorate to expand the size and functions
of government, but Campbell describes a process whereby politicians found
that they could gain electoral support by extending benefits and services
to particular groups of voters. Non-elected officials also had
self-interested reasons for expanding the functions of government, and
hence the size and prestige of the bureaucracy. In the end, however,
Campbell argues that "it is futile to look for a magic bullet that explains
a phenomenon as complex as the transformation of government ... [T]he
incremental process of policy making followed the course of least political
resistance" and "built on existent policy" (p. 52).
Another major theme of _The Growth of American Government_ is the
continuing impact of America's republican origins. As expressed in both
Americans' ideological predisposition to be suspicious of government power
as a threat to individual liberty and in an enduring constitutional
structure characterized by federalism and a system of checks and balances,
the nation's republican tradition has played a critical role in shaping the
growth of the American state. Although the United States long ago departed
from many of the principles and practices that characterized the early
republic, Campbell persuasively argues that the ideological legacy of the
American Revolution and the structure of government established by the
Constitution in 1789 have continued to impede the development of a cohesive
state capable of long-range planning and coordinated policy formulation and
implementation. Even as they have come to support a tremendous expansion
of the functions and size of government, Americans have maintained an
essentially ambivalent attitude about the power of the state, and
especially about the increasingly centralized authority of the federal
government. Campbell recognizes that it is impossible either to describe
or explain the growth of government in the United States by focusing
strictly on Washington. One of the great strengths of this book is that it
presents a unified narrative that underscores the importance of the
changing relationships that developed between local, state, and federal
governments over the last century. In the late nineteenth century, not
only did local governments play a far greater role in the daily lives of
the American people, spending considerably more than half of all money
allotted for public purposes, but each level of government performed
relatively distinct tasks and interacted very little with the other levels
of government. The story of the growth of government in the United States
is not simply a story of centralization of all power and authority in
Washington, but rather of the growing interdependency of local, state, and
federal governments and a consequent blurring of the distinct lines of
responsibility that once existed. Campbell's recurring references to
developments in Arlington, Massachusetts serve as a highly useful case
study of such change over time. Moreover, as Campbell shows, the last half
century has actually seen state revenues increasing more rapidly than
federal revenues. Local government has clearly lost its position as the
most significant level of government in the United States, but state
responsibilities have increased almost as dramatically as federal
responsibilities since the end of World War II.
While Campbell offers an impressive overview of the growth of American
government over the last one hundred years, he acknowledges that a major
issue relating to that growth "is not the primary consideration of this
book": the question of whether the expansion of government functions was
"constructive, inevitable, or counterproductive" to the public good and
whether such expansion tended to favor certain groups or classes of
Americans over others (p. 54).
Campbell may not tackle this issue head on, but he certainly conveys the
impression that he is generally in sympathy with "liberal" efforts over
the past century to use the power of government to reduce the risks of
living in the modern interdependent world. At the same time, however, a
recurring, though not strongly emphasized, theme in Campbell's account is
the ability of privileged groups in society to reap disproportionate
benefits from government programs once those programs become established.
Thus, in agriculture, one of the first important areas of government
intervention in the economy, in the long run "the real beneficiaries of
agricultural policy were a comparatively few successful farmers and many
businesses that processed and sold their commodities" (p. 127). Similarly,
in what has become the most costly area of government spending, income
security, members of "the middle class, not the poor, were the principal
beneficiaries" (p. 152). Campbell concludes that "regardless of the
intentions of lawmakers, the effect of many economic policies was to convey
valuable benefits to particular classes of individuals," and that, in most
instances, those classes consisted of interest groups that already enjoyed
a privileged position in society.
Only in the final stages of the claimant polity, when issues of civil
rights and environmental protection became central to the liberal agenda,
did the expansion of government functions promise to advance the interests
of the underprivileged or the polity as a whole. This expansion of the
liberal agenda, however, coincided with intensifying global competition and
a slowdown in the rate of economic growth, so that a backlash set in
resulting in the rise of what Campbell tentatively calls the "restrained
polity" of the last twenty-five years.
Campbell remains uncertain whether the restraint of recent years
represents the emergence of a truly distinctive fourth era in the history
of American governance, or whether it constitutes only a "subera" (or
temporary interlude) in what will later be viewed as the continuing
domination of the "claimant polity." One can hardly blame Campbell for
leaving open the question of whether future historians will look back at
the late twentieth century as the culmination of the polity introduced by
the New Deal or as the beginning of a new post-New Deal order. _The Growth
of American Government_ is an important and impressive work of synthesis.
While refraining from obvious partisanship, Campbell does not avoid making
interpretive judgments that make this work far more than a simple
narrative. Instructors looking for a single and easily accessible work to
help students understand the expansion of the American state would do well
to consider this book.
Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work
may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
is given to the author and the list. For other permission,
please contact [log in to unmask]
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]
|