Enjoy Building A New American State: The Expansion Of National Administrative Capacities 1877-1920 Interpreted By Stephen Skowronek Visible In Textbook

opening withpages of impenetrable polisci nonsense, the vast majority of this book is taken up with an insightful and detailed look at earlyth century statecraft.
It focuses on three representative areas of the federal government that underwent massive reform in this era: the Civil Service Commission, the Army Bureaucracy, and the Interstate Commerce Commission.


The sections on the ICC are the most interesting, This book shows that the law creating the nation's first regulatory commission passed inwas actually an intentionally obfuscating hodgepodge most of it hammered out in a conference committee that almost ensured the courts would keep the commission powerless.
In, though, the MannElkins Act created a second, special "Commerce Court" to review ICC cases and President Taft appointed Martin Knapp, an exICC commissioner, to chair it.
Instead of expanding the power of the commission, however, the Commerce Court became another roadblock just as the Supreme Court was warming up to the ICC's increased powers, and it was finally eliminated in.
Yet its effects lingered. The idea for specialized courts was one of the defining movements of the Taft presidency, and the debate over "judicial recall" that arose during the Commerce Court discussion led Roosevelt to split with Taft in theelection.
This therefore led to the eventual election of Woodrow Wilson who temporarily nationalized the railroads during World War I and put his soninlaw, William McAdoo, in charge.


Overall this a great look at some of the bureaucratic turf wars that surprisingly defined an entire generation of American politics.
This book explains, in great detail, the growth of the American state, Its main thesis that America had a limited government characterized by parties and courts of law in theth century, then grew into an administrative state aroundsparked a lot of other historians' thought and interest.
So the book is incredibly useful, a historiographical classic even, but very densely written, Bring your notepad for the interesting details and your coffee to keep you awake, and take lots of breaks, Not the best read, and many of the details are off, but an interesting way to conceive of American political development, His thoughts on the Reagan Revolution strike me as naive, Good. A lot of it was over my head, loved this book. extremely important work of historical institutionalism, This book is about governmental change in America, It examines the reconstruction of institutional power relationships that had to be negotiated among the courts, the parties, the president, the Congress and the states in order to accommodate the

expansion of national administrative capacities around the turn of the twentieth century.
Stephen Skowronek argues that new institutional forms and procedures do not arise reflexively or automatically in response to environmental demands on government, but must be extorted through political and institutional struggles that are rooted in and mediated by preestablished governing arrangements.
As the first fullscale historical treatment of the development of American national administration, this book will provide a useful textbook for public administration courses.
Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University, .