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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.
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for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and
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