Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities 1877-1920

by Stephen Skowronek

This book is about governmental change in America. It examines the reconstruction of institutional power relationships that had to be negotiated among the courts, the parties, the president, the Congress and the states in order to accommodate the expansion of national administrative capacities around the turn of the twentieth century. Stephen Skowronek argues that new institutional forms and procedures do not arise reflexively or automatically in response to environmental demands on government, but must be extorted through political and institutional struggles that are rooted in and mediated by pre-established governing arrangements. As the first full-scale historical treatment of the development of American national administration, this book will provide a useful textbook for public administration courses.

Genres: History, Political Science, Politics, American History, The United States Of America, Academic

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explains, in great detail, the growth of the American state. Its main thesis - that America had a limited government characterized by parties and courts of law in the 19th century, then grew into an administrative state around 1900 - sparked a lot of other historians' thought and interest. So the book is incredibly useful, a historiographical classic even, but very densely written. Bring your notepad for the interesting details and your coffee to keep you awake, and take lots of breaks.

[Cecilia Pang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important book for understanding the development of administrative capacities of the American state. I will be honest I only read this to prepare for comps and at multiple times I nodded off. This however is not an indication of the work itself. This work I recognize as truly ground breaking at the time It was written and still remains a seminal work of continuing and past institutional work. TLDR: my mind cannot appreciate the depth of such a book at this current moment of so many readings but I think it’s a really great tracing of how the US government is what it is and how it came to be.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many of the institutions we take for granted today -- from the Reserves and National Guard, to the federal civil service, to credentialed professions like doctors and lawyers -- came into being in the decades around 1900. We treat these things as facts of life, as inevitable solutions to straightforward problems, but they have a history. And as Skowronek shows, that history was in large part one of political conflict.

Take the military. After the crash demilitarization following the Civil War -- from over a million men in the Union Army at the end of the war to 25,000 less than a decade later, an amazing story in itself -- there followed a multi-cornered struggle between the state governments that saw state militias as a valuable source of patronage and prestige; the line officers, mainly engaged in the violent suppression of the Indians; and the reformist staff officers in DC, who dreamed of a professional military on European lines. The by-no-means-predetermined outcome was the hybrid system of a professional federal military with significant state-based components (the National Guard) that persisted through two world wars and shapes the way the burden of fighting in Iraq is distributed today.

Skowronek tells similar stories, in great detail, about the creation of the federal bureaucracy and modern system of business regulation. We need more of this. There's the old history of great men, the new history from below, but not enough histories of institutions. (A nice companion piece is David Noble's America by Design, which, while more overtly political and with more of a focus on business as well as the state, carries essentially the same story through WWI and the '20s. What others?)

And it's not unreadable. Of course you *do* have to be interested in the history of the Interstate Commerce Commission, but you also get to learn about people like Roscoe Conkling, who was simultaneously a master of patronage & corruption -- dominating New York state politics through his control of hiring at the New York customhouse -- and a leading supporter of Reconstruction, and fought both against merit hiring and professional standards for the civil service, and for the rights of African-Americans long after most of the Republican Party had abandoned them to solidify its business base. "History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors / And issues..."

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite opening with 50 pages of impenetrable poli-sci nonsense, the vast majority of this book is taken up with an insightful and detailed look at early 20th century statecraft. It focuses on three representative areas of the federal government that underwent massive reform in this era: the Civil Service Commission, the Army Bureaucracy, and the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The sections on the ICC are the most interesting. This book shows that the law creating the nation's first regulatory commission (passed in 1887) was actually an intentionally obfuscating hodgepodge (most of it hammered out in a conference committee) that almost ensured the courts would keep the commission powerless. In 1910, though, the Mann-Elkins Act created a second, special "Commerce Court" to review ICC cases and President Taft appointed Martin Knapp, an ex-ICC commissioner, to chair it. Instead of expanding the power of the commission, however, the Commerce Court became another roadblock just as the Supreme Court was warming up to the ICC's increased powers, and it was finally eliminated in 1913. Yet its effects lingered. The idea for specialized courts was one of the defining movements of the Taft presidency, and the debate over "judicial recall" that arose during the Commerce Court discussion led Roosevelt to split with Taft in the 1912 election. This therefore led to the eventual election of Woodrow Wilson (who temporarily nationalized the railroads during World War I and put his son-in-law, William McAdoo, in charge).

Overall this a great look at some of the bureaucratic turf wars that surprisingly defined an entire generation of American politics.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good. A lot of it was over my head.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best read, and many of the details are off, but an interesting way to conceive of American political development. His thoughts on the Reagan Revolution strike me as naive.

[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this book. extremely important work of historical institutionalism.