Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877-1929

by Kimberley S. Johnson

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 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.

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2006

Reviews

[DW Rowlands · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an academic book, and probably quite a good one — I suspect it was someone's thesis — but I didn't find it very interesting, likely because it was largely on a topic I didn't find interesting enough to read a whole academic monograph on. That said, I think it made an interesting point: that the expansion of Federal authority over more parts of American life started during the Gilded Age, well before the New Deal.

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the early years of the FDA, the Bureau of Public Roads, and the Children's Bureau, focusing on the federal to state "grants-in-aid" that allowed these bureaucracies to carry out much of their work. Johnson shows that while we often think of the Progressive era as centralizing power and command in the federal government, much of the bureaucratic changes in this period were actually based on enticing states to carry out Progressive plans through subsidies and matching (fifty-fifty) grants. This was done partially to placate powerful state legislators (where most of Congress originated) and partially to avoid federal courts' attacks against direct federal government control. Overall a great work, but her thesis about the institutionalization of Congress (increased tenures and larger staffs) being essential to this transformation is contradicted by her own regressions.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author effectively argues that the period from 1877 through the Progressive period, rather than the New Deal, changed the relationship between the national government and the states. She uses Pure Food and Drug Act, the Highway Act of 1916, and the Shephard-Towner Act to support her argument.