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When Good Government Meant Big Government: Nationalism, Racism, and the Quest To Strengthen The American State, 1918–1933

Tarbert, Jesse
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1463664766

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, History.
This dissertation follows the efforts of nationalist Republicans, business leaders, and philanthropists to build central power in the federal government against resistance from Southern Democrats and others who feared central power. This forgotten quest to strengthen the American state brought together a loose-knit group of bankers, corporation lawyers, corporate executives, genteel reformers, and liberal educators who worked with the Republican presidential administrations of the 1920s to form an administrative reform coalition that sought to apply the logic of business organization to national policy problems that emerged after the war. They viewed the triumph of large-scale private corporations as the product of two basic managerial innovations developed in the late 19th Century: central executive responsibility subject to shareholder oversight; and a functionally efficient administrative structure that enabled the corporation to implement policy set by the executive. Although these reformers opposed an expansive regulatory or welfare state in these years, they naturally sought to apply business ideals to the institution commonly viewed as “the largest corporation in the world”: the federal government. The administrative reformers’ commitment to business-derived ideals of economy and efficiency—the principles of good government—led them to support solutions that amounted to big government. The administrative reformers did not always get their way, however, even in this business-friendly era. Proposals to strengthen the national government faced opposition from Southern Democrats and others who feared central power because it threatened Jim Crow and other local institutions of power. The evolution of central power in the national government in this period, then, was driven by the conflict between these two agendas: a nationalist movement to increase central power, and an effort to restrain national power in order to preserve local arrangements. The impact of this conflict was not limited to these years, however. The efforts of elite administrative reformers in the 1920s helped launch a reform agenda that would eventually—during the New Deal and after World War Two—help give shape to the modern American state. At the same time, the opposition to these efforts formed a seedbed from which grew the antistatist coalition of the late 20th Century.
David Hammack (Advisor)
276 p.
American History
American history; federal government; nationalism; racism; conservatism; politics; policy; public administration

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Tarbert, J. (2016). When Good Government Meant Big Government: Nationalism, Racism, and the Quest To Strengthen The American State, 1918–1933 [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1463664766

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Tarbert, Jesse. When Good Government Meant Big Government: Nationalism, Racism, and the Quest To Strengthen The American State, 1918–1933. 2016. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1463664766.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Tarbert, Jesse. "When Good Government Meant Big Government: Nationalism, Racism, and the Quest To Strengthen The American State, 1918–1933." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1463664766

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1463664766
339
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.