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
1 - The new state and American political development
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
… first and chiefly, I have to convey what seems to me to be the most significant and pregnant thing of all... … I think it is best indicated by saying that the typical American has no “sense of the state.”
H. G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search After Realities, 1906A “sense of the state” pervades contemporary American politics. It is the sense of an organization of coercive power operating beyond our immediate control and intruding into all aspects of our lives. We have labeled this organization an administrative state, a bureaucratic state, a capitalist state, a corporate state, a postindustrial state, a regulatory state, a welfare state, but we have yet to consider the grand historical irony that lingers behind these labels. After all, it is the absence of a sense of the state that has been the great hallmark of American political culture.
Our sense of the state mocks all that seemed to set the American system of government apart as something different. If we are finally to come to terms with the state in America, we will need more than a list of its generic characteristics; we will need a reassessment of the significance of our distinctive past. By defining the American state in terms of the traits it now shares with others, we have merely replaced the old image of “America, the exception” with an image of “America, the symptom.” The American state itself remains a historical enigma.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building a New American StateThe Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920, pp. 3 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982
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