Governing the American State Congress and the New Federalism, 1877-1929 / Kimberley S. Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Kimberley S., 1966-

Series:

Princeton studies in American politics.

Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Federal government--United States.

Federal government.

United States--Politics and government.

United States.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (243 p.)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2017

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

The modern, centralized American state was supposedly born in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Kimberley S. Johnson argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Cooperative federalism was not born in a Big Bang, but instead emerged out of power struggles within the nation's major political institutions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Examining the fifty-two years from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Depression, Johnson shows that the "first New Federalism" was created during this era from dozens of policy initiatives enacted by a modernizing Congress. The expansion of national power took the shape of policy instruments that reflected the constraints imposed by the national courts and the Constitution, but that also satisfied emergent policy coalitions of interest groups, local actors, bureaucrats, and members of Congress. Thus, argues Johnson, the New Deal was not a decisive break with the past, but rather a superstructure built on a foundation that emerged during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Her evidence draws on an analysis of 131 national programs enacted between 1877 and 1930, a statistical analysis of these programs, and detailed case studies of three of them: the Federal Highway Act of 1916, the Food and Drug Act of 1906, and the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. As this book shows, federalism has played a vital but often underappreciated role in shaping the modern American state.

Contents:

The first new federalism and the making of the modern American state

Congress and statebuilding in a Federal polity

Intergovernmental policy instruments and the development of the new federalist state

Congressional politics, structure, and the enactment of IPIs

Nationalizing regulation: the pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

Goods roads to fiscal stimulus: highway policy from 1900 to the New Deal

From healthy babies to the welfare state: the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921

The first new federalism and governing of a new American state.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-213) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781400880225

140088022X

OCLC:

966825861