Why Can't Americans See the State?
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Adam Sheingate
This essay examines public-sector employment in order to grasp the distinctive character of the American state. Looked at comparatively, the American state is anything but small or weak. Rather, befitting a federal system, public authority in the United States is exercised largely through state and local government. What is distinctive about the American state is the concentration of public-sector employment in three areas: education, defense, and public safety. This pattern reflects a historical legacy of American state-building whereby the federal government frequently employed less visible, indirect forms of policy intervention while state and local government developed robust authority, particularly in matters that pertained to public and private morals. The result has been a set of institutions that hides or conceals public authority in various ways. Ultimately, the inability of Americans to see this state reinforces the very skepticism toward governmental authority that such a state-building strategy was meant to avoid.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Why Can't Americans See the State?
- The Winds of Congressional Change
- `Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare:' A Prescription that Progressives Should Fill
- The Case of the Missing Spymaster
- Bankruptcies, Bailouts and the Banking Bureaucracy: The Bush Agenda and the Capacity for Crisis
- Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System
- The Politics Measurement Makes: Performance Management in the Obama Era
- Overhead Agencies and Permanent Government: The Office of Management and Budget in the Obama Administration
- The Evolving American State: The Trust Challenge
- Politicians Do Pander: Mass Opinion, Polarization, and Law Making
- Review
- Review of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
- Review of No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Why Can't Americans See the State?
- The Winds of Congressional Change
- `Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare:' A Prescription that Progressives Should Fill
- The Case of the Missing Spymaster
- Bankruptcies, Bailouts and the Banking Bureaucracy: The Bush Agenda and the Capacity for Crisis
- Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System
- The Politics Measurement Makes: Performance Management in the Obama Era
- Overhead Agencies and Permanent Government: The Office of Management and Budget in the Obama Administration
- The Evolving American State: The Trust Challenge
- Politicians Do Pander: Mass Opinion, Polarization, and Law Making
- Review
- Review of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
- Review of No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures
