In recent decades, historians have persuasively debunked the myth that American governments were generally weak and ineffective before the twentieth century. Not until now, however, has there been a comprehensive account of state-building that includes all of its most important developments and places them in a rich explanatory context. Ballard C. Campbell’s The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920 does exactly that. Campbell himself has been a major contributor to the literature on the growth of American governance, beginning with Representative Democracy: Public Policy and Midwestern Legislatures in the Late Nineteenth Century (1980), which became a model for historical studies of state government, and continuing with a plethora of influential articles and books. Now he has produced what may be his capstone scholarly achievement, and a masterful achievement it is.
Campbell poses the paradox that although the United States was born with “the most pronounced antistatist ideology in the modern world” and successive generations were “schooled in the principles of limited government,” public authorities at every level repeatedly deployed and enhanced their powers (2, 122). His core explanation for the paradox is that practical politicians, with the support of their constituents, responded to both unforeseen crises and long-term socioeconomic changes by devising governmental solutions for problems. “Time and again,” Campbell writes, “pragmatic responses to problems trumped America’s cautionary ideology” (3). Much of the power of Campbell’s account lies in his careful, systematic explanation of the “contextual influences” that created the conditions for state-building (7). He identifies five of them: geography, war and military power, economic development, identity (by which Campbell means a mix of nationalism, cultural identification, and citizenship), and political capacity (the ability to make and administer policy). The author draws upon these five factors to explain the transformation of governance at every level and in every era he covers. Unsurprisingly, economic changes loom largest in Campbell’s telling, but all five influences receive their due. While this mode of analysis may sound overly schematic, in Campbell’s deft hands it is not. His narrative is smooth, rich, and highly readable.
Among the strengths of The Paradox of Power is its consistent attention to local and state as well as national governments. Americans of the colonial era were accustomed to having local institutions address their most pressing everyday problems, and that tradition persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Campbell provides a compelling illustration of the growth of local government in a table (one of fifteen throughout his book) displaying the numerous and varied policies enacted by the town of Boston (93). The U.S. Constitution reserved many powers to the states, and Campbell narrates and enumerates in detail how the states continually exercised and expanded their authority in response to unexpected crises and burgeoning problems. The national government did the same, as it addressed the challenges of continental expansion, the sectional crisis, industrial development, and population growth. Throughout the nineteenth century, Campbell observes, “local governments, the states, and the federal government performed relatively distinct tasks” (91).
Campbell treats governance in every era from the Revolution through World War I with scholarly rigor and analytical care. Take the Gilded Age as an example. The author acknowledges the traditional “indictment of Gilded Age politics as tone deaf to societal problems” and the image of the era’s governments as “sinkholes of bribery and extortion, under the thumb of party bosses” (190, 189). In reply, however, Campbell shows convincingly that late nineteenth-century governments made efforts to tackle problems such as urban filth, unsafe working conditions, and the restraint of commerce by the trusts, although, to be sure, those efforts often fell short of success. The author shows, as well, that many Progressive Era policies and administrative practices were first undertaken during the Gilded Age. Campbell does not dispute the corruption of the period, but he does not emphasize it either.
A book such as this inevitably draws upon the work of other scholars, and Campbell is generous in acknowledging his reliance upon the robust literature on American governance created by countless historians and social scientists. He recognizes many of them in his text and many more of them in his voluminous endnotes that, read in their entirety, constitute a veritable bibliography of American politics and government for almost two centuries. Campbell occasionally expresses his disagreement with other scholars, but his criticisms are confined to the notes. In one, for example, he observes that Stephen Skowronek’s notion that “courts and parties” characterized the nineteenth-century polity, and that this reviewer’s own long-ago contention about the prominence of “distributive” policies during the “party period” both “distort the reality” of the era (n19p315). Based on Campbell’s convincing evidence throughout his book, that is a fair criticism of both of us. The endnotes, stretching for over seventy pages, also contain countless valuable nuggets of observation and analysis. They should not be ignored.
But The Paradox of Power is far more than a synthesis of other people’s scholarship. It offers a comprehensive interpretation of the growth of American government that rests heavily upon Campbell’s own research. His extraordinary appendix presents a data set of state and city policy actions from 1783 to 1929, comprising approximately 1850 entries, that is the product of Campbell’s own work, undertaken over many decades. He has thought very deeply about the development of American government, how to explain the causes of its growth, and how to document them. Throughout the book, the author’s categories and analyses reflect the mature thinking of a historian who has spent a lifetime studying their subject. This book can be profitably read by anyone who has not paid close attention to the history of American government and who wants to learn how historians currently understand and interpret it. Readers who are already familiar with this literature will regard The Paradox of Power as a remarkably able account of the field, as well as a valuable and original contribution to it.
