From the Outside In: World War II and the American State.

• Author: Bean, Jonathan J.

The major theme of From the Outside In is that "states make war; wars make states" (p. 3). The book describes how World War 11 affected the growth of the federal government in four different areas: social security, public finance, labor-management relations, and naval procurement. The external ("outside") threat forced the federal government to develop its resources. Thus, the American leviathan was built "from the outside in." The author concludes, however, that the growth was uneven and in some cases might have been greater had the war not intervened. In general, Sparrow's work lends support to Robert Higgs's "crisis" theory of government growth, but it raises additional questions about the nature of wartime politics.

Why does government grow? Scholars have attributed the growth to rising affluence, the pressure of interest groups, the empire-building of bureaucrats, and the extension of the vote to previously disenfranchised classes. Robert Higgs, in Crisis and Leviatban: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), made a convincing case for the importance of crisis in explaining the timing of government growth in the United States. During a depression or war, the public demands government action. Programs created to deal with the emergency survive after the crisis has passed. In the postcrisis phase, government. is reduced but remains larger and more powerful than it would have been in the absence of the emergency (the "ratchet effect").

Sparrow accepts the crisis theory of government growth but adds a "resource dependence" perspective drawn from the organizational theory of Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik (The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Although we can expect government to grow during a crisis, the growth will vary depending on the resources that government can extract from the private sector. Resource dependence theory emphasizes the external constraints on government: the state must secure its resources (tax revenues, goods, and services) from the private sector through either cooperation or coercion. Democratic governments are further constrained by their need to please voters. During World War II, American voters wanted "the war conducted as quickly and painlessly as possible, without labor unrest, without untoward inflation, and with the fewest possible casualties" (p. 20). Consequently, the...