Activist government did not arrive in the United States until after the Second World War. Sharp increases occurred in public spending, regulation, social rights guaranteed by government and tax subsidies, constituting what Pierson characterizes as “the Great Transformation.” By the 1970s popular and elite support for activism had waned. A Conservative Movement emerged, finding greater receptivity to its anti-statist message than in the recent past. It went on to electoral successes and effected policy reform. Its impact has been enduring, as this collection impressively shows, for institutional changes helped to embed conservatism.
Skocpol reprises her argument that interest-group politics has shifted from away from nationwide mass membership organizations to Washington-based advocacy groups. Such groups can dispense with members but they need money, skewing representation towards the interests of the wealthy, unsympathetic to government intervention to counter inequality. Changes in election campaigning have had similar effects. The growth of sophisticated technologies has enabled campaigns to concentrate on likely voters. The result, as Andrea Louise Campbell shows, is that parties' efforts to mobilize voters are now dedicated to the affluent where the highest rates of turnout are located. In appealing to voters, Mark Smith argues that Republicans were persuasive in promising tax cuts which, when translated into policy, had visible benefits for which the party could claim credit. Conservatism in government has not gone unchallenged but even resistance has been advantageous. For, as Nolan McCarthy argues, activism is stymied by legislative deadlock, which also shifts policy initiative to the executive and judicial branches where the conservative presence has been stronger.
The embedding of conservatism has also been effected by long-term tax cuts. The impact, Pierson and Hacker maintain, is the undermining of the fiscal capacity of the state. Unless cuts are reversed there is no scope for renewed activism. Conservatives have thus provided their achievements with some immunity from a counterattack in the event of future electoral setbacks. In the most interesting chapter in the collection, Suzanne Mettler considers the relationship between benefits from government and participation in politics. As welfare eligibility and benefits diminished, so beneficiaries dropped out of the electorate. In contrast, no such cuts were made in social security, from which wealthier Americans benefit, helping to sustain their levels of turnout.
As is common with edited collections, some relevant themes are omitted. The use of nonlegislative strategies by Presidents to pursue policy was worth inclusion. A specific example of this, the ideological reshaping of the judiciary, is an obvious example of embedded conservatism absent from the book. But overall this is an important contribution to our understanding of where American government has come from and the limited options for where it might go in the future.
