The Bureaucrat Kings: The Origins and Underpinnings of America's Bureaucratic State.

• Author: Yandle, Bruce
• Position: Book review

* The Bureaucrat Kings: The Origins and Underpinnings of America's Bureaucratic State

By Paul Moreno

Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2017.

Pp. xvii, 205. $46 hardback.

Historian Paul Moreno has written an excellent book for those who seek a better understanding of social forces that led to the development of a fourth branch of die U.S. government--the administrative state, which regulates life in America--and for those who hold out hope for a strengthening of die constitutional order. I call the book excellent because, first of all, it is well written; it is a pleasure to read. Second, it is creatively organized and thereby provides the reader with a discussion of die combination of historical and political economy forces that produced three large waves of regulatory activity. And, finally, it is well researched and heavily documented. It is definitely not a polemic, but the author's normative values do shine through. I note that the footnotes and references provide a network of avenues for further education on the topic.

But in a meaningful way this short book is more than all this, for it provides philosophical interpretations of competing notions that played through the nation's founding, the development of constitutional bedrock, and later modification if not obliteration of important constitutional constraints. While enjoying the story, the reader will encounter Hegel, Napoleon, Tocqueville, as well as Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and then Wilson, Reagan, and a score of other major figures and players whose actions and thoughts influenced the evolving nation-state.

After my first reading, it occurred to me that The Bureaucrat Kings is an excellent companion to Bruce Ackerman's book The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). Ackerman describes major institutional changes that have enabled the concentration of political power in the executive branch and thus have strengthened the hand of executive-branch regulators, and Moreno explains how regulator power and reach have been enhanced. Both works are examples of positive analysis motivated by normative concerns.

Moreno begins with an interpretation of the Founders' constitution, moves to a discussion of the limited state, then focuses on the vastly disruptive effects of the Civil War that by way of Reconstruction partly established the nation's first extensive bureaucracy. He then moves to a discussion and analysis of...