Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I The state-building problem in American political development
- 1 The new state and American political development
- 2 The early American state
- Part II State building as patchwork, 1877–1900
- Part III State building as reconstitution, 1900–1920
- Epilogue: Beyond the state of courts and parties – American government in the twentieth century
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
2 - The early American state
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I The state-building problem in American political development
- 1 The new state and American political development
- 2 The early American state
- Part II State building as patchwork, 1877–1900
- Part III State building as reconstitution, 1900–1920
- Epilogue: Beyond the state of courts and parties – American government in the twentieth century
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
Summary
No greater disservice has ever been rendered political science than the statement that the liberal state was a “weak” state. It was precisely as strong as it needed to be in the circumstances.
Franz Neumann, Democratic and Authoritarian States, 1957An analysis of American state building around the turn of the century requires a closer look at the early American state. This state was not a directive force in social affairs, nor was it an ideal reified in American culture. To Tocqueville, Hegel, and Marx, it appeared as pure instrumentality, an innocuous reflection of the society it served. Yet, this organization of coercive power was no less indispensable for its unobtrusive character. The early American state maintained an integrated legal order on a continental scale; it fought wars, expropriated Indians, secured new territories, carried on relations with other states, and aided economic development. Despite the absence of a sense of the state, the state was essential to social order and social development in nineteenth-century America.
The early American state can be described much as one would describe any other state. Readily comparable determinants of a state's mode of operations will be used here to assess this great anomaly as a working complex of institutions and personnel. These determinants are: the organizational orientations of government, the procedural routines that tie institutions together within a given organizational scheme, and the intellectual talents employed in government. Identifying the early American state along these operational dimensions will capture the distinctive way it performed the basic tasks of government. The reconstruction of state power between 1877 and 1920 will be observed in qualitative changes along each of these dimensions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building a New American StateThe Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920, pp. 19 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982
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