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Toward a Theory of State Intervention

The Nationalization of the British Telegraphs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ira J. Cohen
Ira J. Cohen*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin —Madison
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Extract

State intervention into the ownership, financing, and regulation of various industries and sectors of the capitalist economy is a phenomenon as old as capitalism itself. In the last 15 years this topic has become a focal point of vigorous interest among social scientists. Given the manifest problems to be found within current political-economic relationships, it is not surprising that a great deal of this attention has been focused on the contemporary scene. Nevertheless, a small number of works have undertaken the explanation of the historical development of state intervention. Unfortunately, the historian in search of explanatory guidance is confronted here with a series of less than comprehensive analyses which move at descriptive and explanatory cross-purposes. The first tasks of the social scientist or historian who wishes to address the development of state intervention therefore must be to classify and clarify the accounts which have been proposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Spring 1980 , pp. 155 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1980 

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Footnotes

fn00

Author's Note: Research for this article was facilitated by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health Manpower Training Program —Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin —Madison. I am indebted to J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Joseph W. Elder, Reggie Feiner Cohen, and an anonymous referee for assistance they extended in the production of this work. An earlier version of this work was presented at the session sponsored by the Network on Social Theory and Social Policy at the meetings of the Social Science History Association in October 1977, and another version was presented at a seminar sponsored jointly by the Department of History and Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin —Madison. The comments in both cases have been most useful to the further development of this work.

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