Papers presented by Jesse Tarbert since 2019

2022 Mexico City

"Running Government Like a Business: The History of an Analogy"

Abstract:

Nowadays, it is commonplace for politicians and pundits to say that government should be run like a business. Usually, proponents of this idea mean that government should cut costs. However, the business-government analogy has not always been an antigovernment cliché. In the 1910s and 1920s, some prominent policymakers and policy advocates—people like William Howard Taft, Charles Dawes, and Henry Stimson—used the business-government analogy as an argument for strengthening the national government. When they argued for businesslike government, they were clear that they did not mean mere cost-cutting. They were interested in emulating corporate managerial practices in order to make government more effective and to build the capacity to implement national policies to solve national problems. This paper briefly examines that earlier epoch where businesslike government meant increased administrative capacity, and it asks how and why the meaning and purpose of the business-government analogy changed. The paper argues that this change was driven by the interplay of three key factors over the past century: first, the rise of antigovernment politics in the United States; second, the increasing power of “small business” as a symbol in American politics; and, third, the rise of cost-cutting as a business strategy. After analyzing these factors, the paper will conclude with brief suggestions for how the business-government analogy might be usefully salvaged and repurposed for our current political era. For all its faults, the business-government analogy is preferable to common alternatives, such as the family-government analogy. For instance, the business-government analogy at least allows for the possibility of capital investment and for strategic adjustment in response to changing conditions.

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2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform

"American Capitalism, American Government: The Business Roots of the Modern Administrative State"

Abstract:

In the 1910s and 1920s, prominent corporate lawyers and financiers led a movement to increase the administrative capacity of the national government. Inspired by a Hamiltonian appreciation of the mutually constitutive relationship between business and government, leaders such as Elihu Root, Henry Stimson, John T. Pratt, and Paul Warburg saw that modern capitalism required a modern state to support it. They drew their ideas from their experience on Wall Street, and they believed that the nation would benefit if lessons from big business could be applied to the national government. They focused on two basic ideas drawn from corporate governance: (1) establishment of a modern budget system with central executive responsibility subject to shareholder oversight; and (2) creation of a functionally efficient administrative structure with a staff agency to enable the corporation to implement policy set by the executive. In their quest to remake the federal government, they hoped to emulate the first practice by promoting a “national budget system”; they sought to bring about the second by enacting “executive reorganization.” This agenda met with political resistance in the 1910s and 1920s, but it provided a framework for reforms that were eventually implemented in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Relying on extensive research in manuscript sources, this paper shows that the modern American administrative state was built, not only by progressive crusaders and academic experts, but also by elite reformers influenced by American business practice. This is an underappreciated aspect of the business-government relationship in U.S. history. Also, by focusing on resistance to elite reformers’ efforts in the 1910s and 1920s, this paper helps to illuminate the political forces—white supremacy, in particular—that continue to constrain the capacity of the American administrative state.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"Ideology, Strategy, and 'Self-Regulation' in the 1920s Construction Industry: Reassessing Herbert Hoover’s 'Associative State'"

Abstract:

In May 1922, at the urging of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, a group of building-trades stakeholders formed the American Construction Council (ACC). The Council’s goal—shared by Hoover as well as by the ACC’s president, Franklin D. Roosevelt—was to modulate fluctuations in the business cycle using “self-regulation” to encourage building in lean times and discourage building in boom times. Each month, after deliberating over statistics gathered from the Council’s members, the ACC would issue an opinion about state of the industry and the national economy. The ACC was a key component of Hoover’s broader effort to pursue public goals through cooperative arrangements. These arrangements ranged from information-sharing to standard-setting, sometimes relying exclusively on business associations, sometimes on the authority of the federal government. Together, these initiatives amounted to what historian Ellis Hawley called the “Associative State.” Thanks to the novelty of FDR’s involvement, many scholars of 1920s associationalism have mentioned the ACC in passing. This paper examines the Council’s origins and activities in more detail. Aspects of this story are at odds with some persistent generalizations about Hoover’s associational activities during the New Era. Contrary to what readers of the “Associative State” literature might expect, the ACC was in fact largely ineffective—even before the Crash of 1929. Its activities provoked significant controversy and opposition. And, it represented only one part of Hoover’s strategy for manipulating the business cycle through the construction industry. Finally, the history of the ACC suggests that associationalism was not a complex expression of antistatist ideology, as Hawley and others have argued. Rather, the case of the ACC suggests something closer to Robert D. Cuff’s characterization of associationalism as a rhetorical strategy employed to evade political resistance.

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