Race, Institutions, and the Administration of Social Policy

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The New Deal

The New Deal marked a critical conjuncture of civil rights and welfare policy in American political development. During the Progressive Era, civil rights policy and social policy developed independently and often antithetically. While the American state expanded its reach in economic regulation and social welfare, laying the institutional and intellectual groundwork for the New Deal, policies aimed at protecting the rights of minorities progressed barely at all (McDonagh 1993). But with the Great Depression, the welfare and civil rights agendas came together powerfully. For African Americans, who had already been relegated to the bottom of the political economy, the Depression created even more desperate conditions, and issues of economic opportunity and relief became paramount. The African American political community pursued an agenda that linked advances in civil rights to expansions of the state's role in social welfare (Hamilton and Hamilton 1992).

Elites, Ideology, and the Rise of the Modern Court

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-102
Author(s):  
Neal Devins ◽  
Lawrence Baum
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter tracks the period up to 1985, a time when ideology was less relevant to judicial appointments and there was not a well-established conservative legal network. Limited polarization meant that there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. It also meant that presidents paid less attention to ideology when nominating Justices and that Justices responded to elite groups that were not divided along ideological lines. During the New Deal, for example, Democrat and Republican elites backed economic regulation but were sharply split on civil rights and liberties. During the 1950s to 1980s, elite Democrats and Republicans leaned to the left; for this very reason, moderately conservative Justices became increasingly liberal during their tenure on the Court.

From Normalcy to New Deal: industrial structure, party competition, and American public policy in the Great Depression

1984 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Industrial Structure ◽  
National Income ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Labor Militancy ◽  
The New Deal

Industrial partisan preference may be formally modeled as the joint consequence of pressures from labor and the differential impact of the world economy on particular businesses. This “basic” and static model, when extended to cover the money market, can be used to examine questions of political development, including the effects of fluctuations in national income on political coalitions. American institutions and public policy during the New Deal are used to test the theory against empirical evidence, much of it from new primary sources. The rise of the New Deal coalition is traced to changes in the American industrial structure deriving from the boom of the 1920s and the reversal of the U.S. financial position that resulted from World War I, in addition to the well-known labor militancy of the 1930s. The effect of these changes was the rise of a (Democratic) political coalition dominated by capital-intensive, multinationally dominant firms and industries with a strong interest in free trade and a historically unprecedented ability to cope with major industrial upheavals without resort to force. The major public policy initiatives of the New Deal are reexamined from this standpoint.

The American Tradition of Empirical Collectivism

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Currin V. Shields
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
American Thought ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Fair Deal ◽  
Populist Movements

About the American tradition of individualism much has been said and written—so much, indeed, that this country has come to be regarded as the stronghold of individualism. That the ideal of the free individual has long pervaded American thought cannot, of course, be denied. Yet while it is true that this tradition is clearly discernible throughout American political development, its role has been grossly exaggerated. Along with individualism there has existed in America, from the earliest days of colonization, an equally strong and an equally significant collectivist tradition. The New Deal and its presumptive successor, the Fair Deal, regarded by so many as new and dangerous departures, actually are like their predecessors, the Square Deal and the New Freedom, the Granger and the Populist movements, merely episodes in the development of a venerable American tradition of collectivism.

Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive and New Deal Years. By Julie Novkov. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. 336p. $44.50.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 830-831
Author(s):  
Carol Nackenoff
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Labor History ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
The New Deal

Trained in both law and political science, Julie Novkov has made a major contribution to an understanding of the transitions from the Progressive Era to the New Deal that will be especially important for new institutionalist scholars of the Supreme Court, for students of American political development, and for scholars of gender and politics, women's history, and labor history. It also instructs those activists both inside and outside the legal community who turn to the courts.

The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Landon R. Y. Storrs
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
Loyalty Program ◽  
Federal Employee ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Consumer Movements ◽  
The Right ◽  
The New Deal

The loyalty investigations triggered by the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s marginalized many talented women and men who had entered government service during the Great Depression seeking to promote social democracy as a means to economic reform. Their influence over New Deal policymaking and their alliances with progressive labor and consumer movements elicited a powerful reaction from conservatives, who accused them of being subversives. This book draws on newly declassified records of the federal employee loyalty program—created in response to fears that Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government—to reveal how disloyalty charges were used to silence these New Dealers and discredit their policies. Because loyalty investigators rarely distinguished between Communists and other leftists, many noncommunist leftists were forced to leave government or deny their political views. This book finds that loyalty defendants were more numerous at higher ranks of the civil service than previously thought, and that many were women, or men with accomplished leftist wives. Uncovering a forceful left-feminist presence in the New Deal, the book shows how opponents on the Right exploited popular hostility to powerful women and their “effeminate” spouses. The loyalty program not only destroyed many promising careers, it prohibited discussion of social democratic policy ideas in government circles, narrowing the scope of political discourse to this day. This book demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal and crippled the American welfare state.

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