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

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Description

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 twent

Reviews

"Kimberly S. Johnson offers a welcome reminder to historians of the modern United States: New Deal policy making was not a seamless transition to more centralized policy making in Washington. Rather, it was based on a federalist heritage of power sharing among the states and the national government that stretched back to the nineteenth century. In an era when many Americans view government as the problem, this book reminds us that the current state of affairs emerged from a complex, nuanced mixture of constitutional forces, interest group pressures, and congressional developments."--William R. Childs, Journal of American History "Not only is Johnson's thesis and argument intriguing and fresh in its approach, so too are her methods of analysis... Johnson has provided a valuable analysis and corrective to the American political development accounts of national-state intergovernmental relations. She has also added a convincing case for the role of Congress in structuring the first New Federalism."--Cindy Simon Rosenthal, APSA Booknotes

Author Bio

Kimberley S. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.