===================== HES POSTING ===================== 
 
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [log in to unmask] (February, 1998) 
 
Kenneth Finegold and Theda Skocpol.  _State and Party in America's New 
Deal_. Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.  xiv + 342 pp.  
Tables, figures, notes, and index.  $54.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-299-14760-6;  
$19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-299-14764-9. 
 
Reviewed for H-Pol by Garry Young <[log in to unmask]>, University 
of Missouri-Columbia 
 
_State and Party in America's New Deal_, an engrossing book by Kenneth 
Finegold and Theda Skocpol, asks and answers a deceptively difficult 
question: Why was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) a 
relative success while the National Recovery Administration (NRA) failed 
miserably?  In the process of answering this question the authors produce 
a classic comparative policy study that should be of interest to scholars 
of the New Deal, industrial policy, and agricultural policy, as well as 
scholars of U.S. political development, political institutions, and 
political parties. 
 
The basic details are familiar to most.  The National Industrial Recovery 
Act (NIRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) passed during the 
"Hundred Days" of Roosevelt's first year in office.  These acts created the 
National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Agriculture Adjustment 
Administration (AAA), respectively.  Both agencies were given the general 
task of reducing output and, thus, increasing prices.  Declared 
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, only remnants of the NIRA 
survived (as components of other legislation).  At best, the authors argue, 
the NIRA did little to improve economic conditions.  Declared 
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936, the AAA was reconfigured and 
the policies and politics created by the AAA continue to influence U.S. 
agricultural policy and politics today.  With caveats, the authors argue 
that the AAA improved conditions for farmers. 
 
Finegold and Skocpol contend that the two programs were created out of 
very different political, coalitional, and institutional circumstances; 
these different circumstances explain the ultimate failure and success of 
the respective programs.  More specifically, Roosevelt supported the NRA 
because it provided him with a preferable alternative to other 
proposals--e.g., Sen. Hugo Black's thirty-hour work week--and because it, 
seemingly, could help Roosevelt maintain the support of both business and 
labor.  Unfortunately for the NRA, the national government lacked the 
institutional capacity necessary to achieve its mandate. There was no 
existing body of experts, data, and administrative infrastructure from 
which the NRA could draw.  In this vacuum, the NRA delegated authority to 
individual business executives who used it to advantage their own firms. 
In turn this helped spur support for a growing labor movement that was 
already aided by NIRA provisions and an increasing number of pro-labor, 
urban-ethnic Democrats in Congress.  By his re-election in 1936, the NRA 
was dead and Roosevelt's support from business had withered. 
 
As with NIRA, the Agriculture Adjustment Act had key policy competition. In 
this case, the price supports of hardy perennial McNary-Haugen enjoyed 
favor within much of the agriculture community. Though the AAA would 
contain components of McNary-Haugen, at its core was the experiment of 
production controls supported by Roosevelt. Unlike NIRA, Roosevelt did not 
have to balance the political interests of production with those of labor.  
Then, as now, hired agricultural labor was unorganized and politically 
hapless.  Thus, according to the authors, where the NRA wrecked Roosevelt's 
production/labor coalition and ultimately benefited labor, the AAA began 
and continued as a benefit to production. 
 
Where the NRA lacked the state capacity for success the AAA enjoyed key 
advantages.  First, the nation's land grant college system harbored a 
collective of agriculture policy experts who could and did provide the new 
agency with the knowledge base necessary to implement a complicated 
program. Second, unlike the independent NRA, the AAA was embedded into an 
existing bureaucracy--the U.S.D.A.--that provided administrative 
infrastructure as well as crucial data on commodity production, etc. 
Finally, the existing web of extension agents provided the means to both 
carry production control to the farms and monitor progress. 
 
_State and Party in America's New Deal_ is divided into two parts.  The 
first includes discussions of the authors' state and party theoretical 
approach followed by the programs' origins, implementation, and 
consequences.  In many ways the most interesting part, at least for this 
political scientist, is part two.  Here Finegold and Skocpol compare their 
party and state explanation with the competing explanations provided by 
pluralism, elite theory, Marxism, and rational-choice-based 
institutionalism.  This is the type of careful theoretical evaluation 
missing in much, if not most, case studies. Indeed, this section is now 
high on my recommended list when I am trying to convince students to 
consider alternative explanations to their own findings and explanations. 
 
Defenders of these alternative theoretical approaches will, no doubt, argue 
with the authors' depictions and conclusions.  Indeed, an easy retort for 
many would be simply that Finegold and Skocpol are--to borrow from Robert 
Frost--"playing tennis with the net down" by using a broad, descriptive 
framework to defeat more precise cause and effect approaches. This 
criticism might most aptly be applied by rational choice theorists. 
 
In particular, the body of rational choice theory the authors confront 
seeks--virtually without exception--to understand the choices made within 
and about particular types of institutions, most notably legislatures 
(e.g., Congress) and administrative agencies. Inter-institutional rational 
choice theories are scarce and those that do exist, as the authors readily 
note, tend to be badly Congress-centric.  Progress is being made on this 
front, and I suspect the most progress will be made with rational choice 
approaches that use party as an integrative mechanism across institutions. 
 
The weakest aspect of this book, in my view, is the strangely muted role 
played by the president, Congress, and the courts.  Each played crucial 
roles in both the NRA and the AAA, all appear in the author's descriptive 
explanations of the two agencies, yet none appear central to the 
_institutional_ component of the authors' theoretical explanation. 
Roosevelt, for example, played a central role in both the NRA and AAA from 
start to finish and his differential actions toward the NRA and AAA almost 
certainly derived from institutional factors as well as the party/electoral 
basis stressed in the book.  In addition, whatever initial misgivings 
agriculture producer interests had about production controls disappeared 
rather quickly; these production controls--and the AAA--certainly benefited 
from a congressional structure where agriculture policy was centered in 
single committees with coherent jurisdictions.  The NRA did not enjoy 
similar advantages.  Finally, the courts played a major role for both the 
NRA and the AAA. The possible differential impact of the courts on the two 
agencies goes largely unexamined. 
 
That said, this is a terrific book. It deserves a careful reading and--even 
more--the application and testing of its ideas across other policies and 
eras. 
 
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] edu. 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]