The Growth of American Government, Revised and Updated Edition

Ballard C. Campbell

Description

American government evolved over the generations since the mid-nineteenth century. The changing character of these institutions is a critical part of the history of the United States. This engaging survey focuses on the evolution of public policy and its relationship to the constitutional and political structure of government at the federal, state, and local levels. A new chapter in this revised and updated edition examines the debate about "big government" over the last 20 years.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Governing the Cleveland Era
2. The Course and Causes of Growth
3. The Transition Era
4. The Great Depression and Economic Policy
5. The Managed Economy since the New Deal
6. The New Income Security
7. The New Equality
8. Paying for Modern Government
9. The New Faces of Power
10. The Reagan Era and the Restrained Polity
11. The Debate over 'Big' Government
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• American Government
• 20th Century
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Central government
• Federal government of the United States
• History of the Americas
• Central
• United States
• National

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253014276
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN HISTORY
Harvey J. Graff, editor
THE
GROWTH OF
AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT
Governance from the Cleveland Era to the Present

BALLARD C. CAMPBELL
Revised and Updated Edition
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone] Fax [phone]
2015 by Ballard C. Campbell Previous edition 1995 by Ballard C. Campbell All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Ballard C.
The growth of American government : governance from the Cleveland era to the present / Ballard C Campbell. - Revised and Updated Edition
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-253-01418-4 (paperback) - ISBN 978-0-253-01427-6 (ebook) 1. United States-Politics and government-1885-1889. 2. United States-Politics and government-1889-1893. 3. United States-Politics and government-1893-1897. 4. United States-Politics and government-1897-1901. 5. United States-Politics and government-20th century. I. Title.
JK421.C23 2014 320.973-dc23
2014011873
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15
TO Allan G. Bogue and John D. Post TEACHERS, COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Governing the Cleveland Era
2. The Course and Causes of Growth
3. The Transition Era
4. The Great Depression and Economic Policy
5. The Managed Economy since the New Deal
6. The New Income Security
7. The New Equality
8. Paying for Modern Government
9. The New Faces of Power
10. The Reagan Era and the Restrained Polity
11. The Debate over Big Government
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FIGURES
2.1. The Process of Growth in American Government
11.1. Party Balance in the U.S. House, 1970-2013
11.2. Federal Government Receipts and Outlays, 1977-2012
11.3. Federal Budget, 1977-2012
11.4. Federal, State, and Local Governmental Employees, 1970-2009
TABLES
0.1. Stages of American Civic Expansion
1.1. Government Expenditures, 1902
2.1. Evolution of Federal Functions since 1887
2.2. Public Spending, 1890-1990
2.3. Socioeconomic Changes, 1870-1990
4.1. New Deal Economic Policy
5.1. U.S. Government Expenditures, 1929-1990
5.2. The New Federal Regulations
6.1. Social Security, 1950-1990
6.2. Welfare, 1950-1990
8.1. Revenue Amount, Governmental Source, and Federal Grants, 1902-1990
8.2. Revenue Types, 1902-1990
11.1. Federal Outlays and Receipts: Per Capita, Constant (2005) Dollars, 1970-2010
11.2. Federal Outlays as Percent of GDP, 1990-2010
11.3. Social Security, Medicare, and Disability (OASDHI), 1990-2010
PREFACE
This updated edition of The Growth of American Government has two principal objectives. The first is to review the course of governance over recent decades, picking up the story from where the initial version of the book ended. My orienting question during this survey was: has the scope and power of government grown? Answering this query requires the inspection of evidence on several dimensions of governance, particularly legislative actions concerning public functions, public finance, administrative capacity, and legal rulings. This objective continues the primary mission of the first edition, which has undergone some rewriting and updating. The new chapter on The Debate Over Big Government examines key elements of governance over recent decades, but especially since 1992, covering the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
The second objective is to address an omission in the first edition. With some exceptions, principally the Great Debate during the transition era (1880s-1920s) and my review of the Reagan years, I had said little about the argument over expansion of government. My original purpose of the book was to trace the course of the governing process over a hundred years, focusing on the accumulation of functions, the evolution of administrative capacity, the restructuring of public finance, and shifts in civic ideology. Although the expansion of government elicited ongoing criticism, I had not emphasized the point. The updated edition gives more attention to this side of the story. Chapter 11 identifies critics of big government, reviews their complaints, and suggests reasons for the remarkable resurgence of the Republican Party. As with the first edition, my goal is describe and explain these developments, without taking sides in political disputes. The Growth of American Government is a history book, not an editorial polemic.
Although not an objective per se, a third consideration has influenced my approach to the updated edition. I have kept the concept of state building more firmly in mind than I did for the first edition. The term originated with political scientists. Few historians explicitly used state building as a theoretic construct when I began outlining this book twenty-five years ago. Now the concept has penetrated historical studies. A more explicit concern with the state as a semiautonomous entity facilitates my synthesis of the debate over government during the past quarter century, for the power and the reach of government (some would say intrusiveness ) is a central irritant to conservatives, and certainly a concern to many liberals. While I do not explicitly address the literature of state building in this book, works in this genre have influenced my thinking about contemporary governance, as well as my research on the American state during the long nineteenth century.
On the other hand, I have not changed my position concerning historical explanations of the growth of government. Some reviewers of the first edition called for a more explicit theoretical model that accounts for state expansion. All I can say is that I see things differently. My study of state building suggests that a historically contingent path works best as an explanatory orientation. From this perspective determinants of outcomes varied with time, subject, and circumstance. I have tried to demonstrate these historically contingent interactions in chapters 3 through 8 on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the transitional polity), New Deal, economic controls, income security, rights and nondiscrimination policy, and taxation. Chapter 2 offers a longer essay on the generic features of these processes. If there is a single magic bullet that accounts for the evolution of American governance I have not found it. But there were several reoccurring motifs.
When I considered writing an updated chapter I thought I had a pretty good idea about what had happened in recent American politics based on years of observing and teaching about it. But once I began the new edition I realized my need to dig deeper into the literature. I can t say that I have fully mastered this large body of writing, but I have sampled much of it. Fortunately, my determination to keep this book short allowed me to skip most extraneous details and focus on the larger contours of recent governance. Here, as before, my goal is to sketch patterns and synthesize trends, not to compile a compendium of political details. The works in the bibliography recommend references for further study. Besides making suggestions for exploration of governmental history, the footnotes and the bibliography acknowledge my debt to other scholars. The first order of business for the historian, indeed for all social scientists, is to get the facts straight. This is no easy task. I am grateful for the work of many able scholars whose concepts of analysis and synthesis of evidence has made my job easier. The bibliography in the original edition and its short supplement, and that for chapter 11 , represents my cherry-picking from this rich field of scholarship. Largely because of indexing and definitional changes in data sources, I have placed recent financial information in chapter 11 rather than revise the tables in the original edition.
Observers have lamented in recent decades that political history has fallen out of favor with historians. This is unfortunate and unwarranted. In my opinion the history of public life gets to the heart of the United States of America.
Many thanks to Charles W. Calhoun, Eugenie B. Campbell, Richard J. Jensen, Anthony N. Penna, Michael C. Tolley, Philip R. VanderMeer, and John Wilson for their helpful suggestions on chapter 11 .
Ballard C. Campbell
Portland, Maine September 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I take great pleasure in thanking my family, friends, and associates for their help with this book. Clay McShane, Marge Murphy, John Post, and Michael Tolley read portions of the manuscript and offered me sound advice about it. My parents, Ruth B. Mathias and Ballard C. Campbell Sr., put their understanding of contemporary government at my disposal. Like a good son, I took the suggestions I liked and ignored the rest. Samuel McSeveney applied his va