Product Description: Alexis de Tocqueville once warned that "insufferable despotism" would prevail if America ever acquired a national administrative state. Today's Tea Partiers evidently believe that Tocqueville's nightmare came true during the New Deal when radicals created vast bureaucracies that continue to trample on individual freedom...read more

In his academic work, Robert Higgs has dissected the government’s shrewd secret excesses that lead to the Welfare State, the Warfare State, and the Administrative State. For several decades he has unstintingly chronicled the federal, state, and local governments’ malfeasance in these many areas of life that all levels of government have intruded upon without Constitutional mandate. In this book, however, are essays that show a whimsical, introspective, and personal side of this world renowned scholar. From the myth that the government has derived its powers from the consent of the governed to the role of independent experts in formulating monetary and fiscal policy; from the government’s duplicity in announcing the unemployment rate in a given month to how the state entraps us, if you want to see a true polymath at work, these lofty, serious, sad, and illuminating essays will educate you beyond what you had thought possible about life, liberty, and the economy.

This work gives readers an understanding of how the societal context of public administration is crucial to the success of the practitioner. It covers the key issues of past and present for public service professionals in a democratic society.

Product Description: Update and expanded, and featuring three new readings, this book provides a unique approach for instructors who want to expose their students to the social, political, and historical context of the practice of public administration...read more

Product Description: This book explores a forgotten chapter in modern U.S. history: the false dawn of the communications age in American politics. The Office of Government Reports (OGR) was created in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but after World War II Congress refused President Truman's request to continue funding it...read more

Stillman finds that the basis for our current administrative state lies in the lives of the seven individuals who, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, invented its various elements. Furthermore, he finds that although they lived at different times, these seven founders had much in common: all were products of intensely Protestant, small-town America, and all were motivated by strong moral idealism. All were rooted in the cultural and moral values peculiar to the United States in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Stillman finds that state making in the United States has been a continuation of the Protestant goal to "protest and purify." George William Curtis led the fight for civil service reform. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., created the "sunshine commission" whereby previously hidden public issues would now be aired for all citizens to discuss. Emory Upton, known primarily in military circles, constructed the key elements of professionalism now adopted by both military and civilian worlds. Jane Addams pioneered the current methods for delivering human services. Frederick W. Taylor's innovative scientific management doctrines for the private sector form the nexus of civil service and personnel administration today. Richard Childs, through his invention of the council-manager form of government, fundamentally changed the landscape of municipal governance. Louis Brownlow refashioned the American presidency from a weak office to one of the most powerful chief executive positions in the world. By looking at the lives of these seven individuals, Stillman argues, we can understand and appreciate more fully the foundation from which we all operate today.

Discussing how government has continually grown in size and scope during the past century, this account demonstrates that the main reason lies in government’s responses to national “crises” (real or imagined), including economic upheavals and, especially, war. The result, this book argues, is the ever-increasing government power, which endures long after each crisis has passed, impinging on both civil and economic liberties and fostering extensive corporate welfare. Offering ideological explanations for the ascension of the role of government out of a capitalist, free-market economy, it will appeal to those with interests in political economy, American history, and libertarian politics.