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[This is the second of the two reviews of this book that I am  
posting.--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 Don Debats, Flinders University 
 
One of the reasons to hope that the effort to re-invigorate American 
political history succeeds is the flow-on effect such a revival might have 
for the development of studies of the American state.  The changing role of 
government, especially the central government, and the relationship of the 
citizenry to that state should be major themes in the study of American 
history, but this is not the case.  Yet the role of the state is at the 
heart of an essential difference between today's, no less than yesterday's, 
political parties.  Many scholars suspect that the growth of bureaucracy 
has had important consequences for the downturn in voter participation, 
just as the lateness of the growth of the state in the United States helps 
explain some of the most important and enduring differences between the 
United States and other Western nations. Certainly the comparative theme in 
American history would be stronger than it presently is if there were a 
broader history of the American state. And finally, at a time when 
everywhere in the West the state appears to be shrinking (though hardly 
withering away), it is interesting to ask about the earlier circumstances 
which led to the growth of state activity.  One of the interesting claims 
to emerge from Canadian studies of the state is the notion that 
governmental roles grew in response to increasing levels of international 
trade in order to provide a new level of protection for the citizenry 
against the vagaries of the international economic order. If we understood 
the growth of the state in those terms, we might be even more alarmed by 
the sudden decline of state activity at the very time that global economic 
interdependency reaches new heights.  The state and the growth of the state 
are rich historical themes with broad integrative powers.  Moreover, a long 
run historical perspective on the rise and relative decline of state 
activity is the best means by which we can evaluate the changes of the 
moment. 
 
Ballard Campbell's book is a helpful step in each of these respects.  The 
focus here is on the growth of U.S. government, and he means essentially 
the government in Washington, from the late 1880s to more or less the 
present.  Campbell argues that a fundamental shift in the scope of state 
activity occurred in the late 1880s with the Cleveland Administration 
effectively separating a past in which the central government performed few 
functions from the modern era of a vast and activist state.  But of course 
the actual process of change has been more gradual, both in the development 
of state activity and in the seeming retreat of government in the modern 
era.  Campbell sees the shift as involving four stages of civic expansion. 
 
The first, the longest period, stretched from federation to the 1870s. The 
"Republican Polity" reflected the traditional view--the Revolutionary 
fear--of governmental power.  Government performed few functions, had 
limited revenue which it derived largely from indirect rather than direct 
taxes.  Government, certainly at the federal level, was small because a 
wider range of functions was deemed dangerous to notions of republican 
virtue.  The fact that the national government had access only to indirect 
taxes constituted a powerful limitation on any wish to expand the 
governmental role.  Locally based property taxes were important, but 
closely watched and always contested.  Citizen involvement was high in the 
absence of a direct governmental bureaucratic role simply because reliance 
on temporarily commissioned citizens was the only means by which important 
public functions, particularly road building and school construction, could 
happen. 
 
The "Transitional Polity," from the 1880s to the 1920s, saw an increasing 
level of governmental regulation and higher indirect taxes.  The Interstate 
Commerce Commission serves as the quiescent transitional agency.  Campbell 
sees Cleveland's 1886 "State of the Union" address as a clear departure 
from so much of the "small government" thought which had preceded it, 
especially in Cleveland's call for relief for those financially destroyed 
by the collapse of the Freedman's Bank and in his call for a pension bill 
for all Civil War veterans in preference to the previous policy of 
individual claimants.  And of course there was the ISCC.  Campbell provides 
telling reminders of this smallness of government against which one must 
set these innovations--the governor's office in Wisconsin which consisted 
of five people, including the janitor, and of Cleveland answering the White 
House telephone and on occasion the front door.  But the changes came 
gradually, reflecting a "great debate," a rehearsal for that conclusively 
conducted in the New Deal era, about the proper role of government. 
 
The incrementalism of the transition period is captured in the growth of 
the "on the ground" functions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  In 
due course, the Department began radio broadcasting as well as purchasing 
of farm surplus.  County Agents became features of virtually every county 
of the United States, and in many counties there was a female agent to 
address the problems rural women encountered.  Government was indeed 
proving to be a solution to many problems. 
 
No doubt the most controversial part of the book is the treatment of the 
"Claimant Polity," stretching from the 1930s to the 1970s.  It is not 
difficult to demonstrate that this short period involved a categorical 
shift in the responsibilities of government, building on the Cleveland 
departure but involving new levels of activism at all levels of government 
and demonstrating as well a new capacity to marshal power.  In part, this 
was made easier by Hoover who, in a re-statement of traditional views, 
Campbell sees as holding firmly to the older understanding of a limited 
governmental role, regardless of the circumstances.  War was of course a 
more powerful impetus to expansion than even Depression.  In the midst of 
WWII, federal government expenditure was ten times the highest level of the 
Depression era.  This was possible only because direct taxation by the 
federal government became part of virtually all citizens' lives.  Social 
welfare became a central responsibility of the federal government and 
direct taxes rose accordingly. 
 
Why did government grow so fast?  Campbell advances four 
explanations--genuine responses to industrialism and its consequent 
dislocations, pressure from interest groups seeking favors, voters who want 
and come to expect new levels of governmental programs, and finally 
government itself in seeking its own growth.  Campbell's argument is that 
all of these are both interrelated and important.  This is not the most 
compelling argument, though one cannot but agree that there is no "magic 
bullet," as Campbell says, to explain the growth of government.  If the 
enormous expansion of the state for war and welfare are familiar themes, 
Campbell is very useful in denoting the price which underlay this 
expansion.  Taxes were one issue, excessive levels of regulation was 
another; adding power to both objections was the perception, increasing 
since the Kennedy administration, that big government was slowing down 
positive change. 
 
Enter the "Restrained Polity" perfectly represented by the Reagan and 
Bush, and Clinton, administrations.  Government, Reagan said, was the 
problem, not the solution.  Tax cuts and privitization became central 
issues of national political debate.  Increasingly critics perceived that 
the state was behaving as some of the republicans of so long ago said it 
would--for the few at the expense of the many.  But Campbell makes clear 
that while the language of the "Restrained Polity" may resemble that of the 
old republicans, in fact there has been a sea change.  The old fear of 
central government which animated the republican ideology is gone or at 
least largely displaced.  The state under Reagan, after all, expanded; it 
did not contract.  Taxes were reduced and capped, which meant that 
government income slowed.  But spending rose and debt grew enormously. 
Perhaps more importantly in terms of Campbell's developmental trajectory, 
there is no evidence that Reagan or his administration were as afraid or 
distrustful of government power as the true republicans were.  The modern 
Republicans pushed harder to reduce taxes than they did to reduce spending. 
 Military spending expanded enormously.  The republican era is not upon us 
and will not return.  Americans have come to accept large government. 
 
In delivering this message, there are some inevitable problems. The most 
serious goes to the core of the book's purpose and market.  Is this a 
textbook or a monograph?  In one sense, the sheer vastness of the subject 
constantly pushes the book to high levels of generalization and treatment. 
Campbell accentuates this sense of a generalized account by providing too 
many formal definitions and thinly developed models from other areas. There 
are, for example, echoes of systems theory's feedback loops in the 
discussion of the explanation for the growth of government in the "Claimant 
Era."  Some parts of the general story are familiar; a closer focus would 
provide the different perspective necessary to the re-telling. This is 
always a difficult matter to gauge but a lesser treatment of the familiar 
would leave more space for the specific.  Even the most general sections 
would be improved with a clearer statement of how this book intersects with 
the standard works in the field.  Campbell does not see his state as 
particularly "maternalist" in the fashion of Theda Skocpol. Nor does he 
emphasize the development of administrative capacity to the degree that 
this dominated the earlier work of Stephen Skowronek, though the ability to 
marshal power and act directly upon the citizenry are central points in 
Campbell's argument.  This book places greater emphasis on tax and revenue 
flow than either of the above, and it would be useful to draw out more 
fully the differences and convergences in at least these three quite 
different approaches to the history of state development in the United 
States. 
 
Second, the aspect of the book which most effectively served as a 
counterpoint to the excessively generalized account of the ebb and flow of 
federal power is the use of two case studies--Arlington, Massachusetts, and 
Birmingham, Alabama--introduced here as exemplars of the impact these 
developments had on ordinary lives.  This side by side treatment of the 
macro and micro levels of state development is a highly imaginative and 
potentially very successful aspect of the book's methodology.  Unhappily, 
the process is not sustained, and the two case studies become less and less 
visible as the book proceeds.  Now perhaps there is a message to be read 
into that trajectory, but if so it is not stated and one suspects that 
there in the end was just not room for the effort to trace national changes 
in any detail back to the local level.  A dramatic alternative would have 
been alternating national and local chapters with the latter exploring the 
consequences of changes in the former.  The gradual and unexplained 
weakening of the Arlington and Birmingham case studies reduces the book's 
effectiveness. 
 
Third, in line with the above, the book would be stronger with a more 
sustained and systematic focus on governmental activity at the state and 
local levels.  Campbell notes that state and local governments were "the 
workhorses of the republican polity" (p. 16).  These governments were never 
"small," and certainly they always impacted on the citizenry; indeed state 
and local governments were for all intents and purposes the most important 
levels of government activity until the modern period.  This in itself, of 
course, undermines a notion of all government as being "small" before the 
late nineteenth century.  Local government, in the republican era, involved 
tremendous numbers of citizens, often in the form of independent boards and 
commissions, both with large and rapidly changing memberships.  A 
philosophy of low taxation ensured that most of the activity of local 
government was in lieu of a bureaucracy. Functions--especially road 
building in rural areas--could only happen if it depended on citizen labor. 
 Road districts were created and road taxes levied, but the expectation was 
that the tax would be acquitted by labor on the roads of each district.  
Reality and ideology were mutually reinforcing.  All of this deserves a 
greater emphasis, even if only to help sustain the argument of the book 
positing a clear conceptual break between the traditional and modern 
worlds.  Likewise, the older "commonwealth literature" on the 
state--largely ignored here--might have been usefully deployed.  Our 
understanding of the earlier periods of state activity would be further 
enhanced if alongside the notions of republicanism there were also some 
attention to the legal philosophy prevailing which saw the purpose of 
government being the release of private energy.  The book could have done 
more with the fact of the growth of bureaucracy and the implications of 
this growth for traditional republican notions of political engagement. 
 
Fourth, there is little reflection here on the consequences and costs 
likely to be associated with the disappearance and/or privitization of 
state services.  At one point Campbell notes that government grew "as a 
mechanism to reduce the risks of an unpredictable and sometimes harsh 
world" (p. 53).  That point could be drawn out more carefully and used as a 
evaluative ground against which to consider the modernizing trends which 
seem to leave more and more citizens at the mercy of a newly deregulated 
world. 
 
Against these complaints should be set the great virtues of this book. 
First it is a valuable step in the right direction.  The state is a 
tremendously useful focus for political inquiry and one which, while common 
overseas, seems remarkably muted in the United States.  The long term 
development tables in the book are marvelous; the effort in putting them 
together must have been enormous.  They chart and summarize whole eras of 
state development, especially of the growth in federal government activity 
and costs.  _The Growth of Government_ certainly fills an important gap in 
charting exactly that.  If the republican polity remains less fully 
discussed than might be the case, the discussion of the growth of 
government during the transition and New Deal eras is excellent. Campbell 
shows convincingly that government responsibilities at all levels, state 
and local as well as national, expanded enormously.  In the aftermath of 
WWII, management of the economy became a federal government responsibility. 
 Federal outlays were suddenly twice those of the most expansive year of 
Hoover's administration; federal debt went from 16 percent of GDP in 1929 
to 46 percent in 1939.  The "great debate" changed from a fixation over the 
degree of government power to a debate over the uses of governmental power. 
 
Second, the book puts the complaint about government spending in a useful 
context.  The U.S. remains, by European standards, a low tax nation, but 
taxes have gone up enormously in the period.  Campbell notes that in 
Cleveland's era, most Americans were not paying any direct governmental tax 
at all; the Civil War experiment with income tax had collapsed under 
adverse court rulings and the 16th Amendment was yet thirty years in the 
distance.  Only a minority of people directly paid property taxes because 
only a minority of people owned property. 
 
When the income tax did come in 1913, only one percent of the workforce was 
eligible and the maximum rate was seven percent.  By the end of WWII, 
however, two thirds of workers were paying income tax.  Congress provided 
for these increasingly large taxes to be withheld, reducing the visibility 
of the tax bite, if not the pain.  The surge in the flow of revenue to 
Washington was under way and would not slow for forty years; the federal 
government came to capture three quarters of all tax dollars.  And, 
Campbell insists, revenue flow drove expenditure programs.  Chapter Six on 
income security is outstanding in its own right and as an example of that 
process.  Campbell reminds us that the federal government spends three 
times the amount on non-means tested insurance programs such as social 
security than it does on means tested programs.  The former are virtually 
sacrosanct; the later are the red meat of political debate.  The elderly 
universally receive social security;  only a third of the poor receive 
welfare. 
 
Third, the book traces the rise of executive government, beginning with the 
New Deal's focus on the presidency.  Campbell emphasizes, however, that the 
same trend toward reliance and focus upon executive government is evident 
at all levels.  In the "republican polity," the emphasis was on short 
political careers and short terms in office while the "Claimant Polity" 
helped keep bureaucrats and politicians in power for long periods. Congress 
responded in a telling way by creating its own retirement scheme in 1946.  
The republican era rested upon a largely passive executive--a "low-key 
stewardship"--whereas in the modern polity the executive has become the 
core of government and the presidency, "the dominant institution in the 
nation's civic life" (p. 209). 
 
Finally Campbell shows how the worm turned, how government increasingly 
came to be seen as a problem rather than a solution to a problem.  The 
first signs emerged in the Kennedy Administration with the argument that 
greater growth would be possible through curtailing taxes.  A second shot 
was fired in the early 1970s in the increasingly vocal resistance to the 
vast regulatory system then in place.  Campbell sees a rather Machiavellian 
aspect to this process.  Money, he argues, became the lifeblood of the 
"Claimant Polity" and the most lucrative taxes were tied to the most 
popular spending programs.  This explains why Reagan's presidency was 
decisive, but not in the ways we often think it was.  No new ideology was 
put in place; the old republicanism did not re-emerge. Programs (some)  
grew and debt rose.  But the flow of revenue changed dramatically.  Reagan 
reduced taxes by 25 percent, reduced the tax brackets to three and, perhaps 
even more importantly, indexed the brackets for inflation while 
simultaneously launching a decisive war on inflation itself.  The slowing 
of inflation and the indexing of bracket thresholds ended "bracket creep" 
with its painless flow of ever increasing levels of revenue to the central 
government.  The expansionary state stopped expanding.  Policy changed 
because the revenue flow, the lifeline of the "Claimant Polity," slowed.  
Campbell, it should be clear, is no fan of unrestrained government growth, 
which, as he notes, confuses responsibility and concentrates power while 
all the time building the claims for yet more revenue.  The "Claimant 
Society" said that government should respond to needs and perceived needs; 
the problem was that it became increasingly difficult to obfuscate, to use 
Campbell's word, the true costs of special benefits. 
 
This is a valuable book, broad in its scope and thus capable of charting 
over two centuries the expansion and contraction of governmental, 
especially federal government, activity in the United States.  The costs 
and benefits of that expansion and contraction are judiciously stated. 
Campbell helps provide a sense of our own time in this large scale pattern. 
 The Reagan presidency was important for the seriousness of its attack on 
at least some programs; while welfare was the easy target, even Social 
Security--hitherto sacrosanct--was curtailed in the most substantial 
changes in the life of the program.  Yet the state was not cut back 
dramatically by Reagan, Bush or Clinton.  Only the rate of increase has 
been slowed.  The goals were limited--lower taxes and less welfare. 
 
Far more important is the continuity in the ideas which Campbell sees as 
rising to ascendancy in the "Claimant Polity" and continuing into the 
"Restrained Polity."  Today government is less feared and more trusted than 
it was in the past.  There is a broad social consensus in favor of 
governmental programs to support education, to protect the environment, to 
conduct drug education programs and to protect the health of individual 
citizens.  The powerful state, Campbell argues, is here to stay. Our time 
is a moment in the continuing great debate over the role of the state; the 
underlying consensus in favor of governmental action and the faith in the 
capacity of government to act positively will no doubt loom larger to 
future historians than the modest restraints on the growth of the state 
which recent years have seen.  Campbell concludes that the present is best 
understood as continuing the long-standing debate between one set of values 
emphasizing the necessity of individuals to be free to flourish and another 
set which emphasizes the need for government to provide the security 
necessary for the flourishing of freedom.  Campbell helps us understand why 
it is that the consensus of the moment revolves more around the latter 
proposition. 
 
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