Customer Reviews

Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (A Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy Book)

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Robert Higgs is a first-rate economist and economic historian who sets out a provocative thesis -- namely, that governments exploit crises (real and fabricated) as excuses to grow and to strip people of their wealth and liberties. Higgs skillfully and carefully tests this thesis against history. The thesis stands. Governments do indeed exploit crises as opportunities to confiscate ever-greater powers. After each crisis, the amount of power recently added to government's stock might shrink somewhat, but very seldom back to what it was prior to the crisis. This is one of the most important and compelling books published during the 1980s.

Crisis and Leviathan is one of the more original books on Public Choice in since 1980. The idea behind the ratchet effect is simple: the benefits of governmental responses to crises are seen, but the costs are largely hidden. Hence, people tend to see government as more effective than it really is, and want more of it than is justified by the real, but unseen, facts. Some people object to this book, but I have yet to hear solid counterarguments to its logic.

This book contains much empirical/historical support for its hypothesis. This is sound political history, using economic analysis. There are some questions about how we should interpret Crisis and Leviathan. I have heard some argue that the ratchet effect implies that it is impossible to limit the size of any government; any type of government will always grow larger over time. This would seem to imply that we are on an inexorable path to totalitarianism. Some would say that this means that we should abolish government altogether and live in Anarchy (meaning the absence of government, not the absence of social order). Yet the idea that we can privatize all government would seem to imply that we could also privatize part of government, leaving police and courts public rather than private. Why not?

Of course, there have been successful efforts to downsize or limit the size of government. This is what needs further explanation. Why or how did some efforts to restrain or downsize government work. This has happened a few times in history, yet Higgs does not explain why? In any case, Crisis and Leviathan raises important issues and deals with them intelligently. This book should be standard reading for Poli-Sci majors.

Robert Higgs presents an interesting and painfully obvious thesis: that government takes advantage of crises in order to grow larger, but then never shrinks to its previous size once the crisis has ended. As a case study, Higgs analyzes the growth of Big Government in the United States - a horrendous story of the degradation of constitutional values and the seemingly inevitable growth of the Leviathan State.

The book is more significant now than ever, since its publication in the 1980s. Government has grown substantially, especially the various "wars" on drugs and terror that have greatly increased the size of government and US government involvement in several aspects of domestic life and foreign affairs.

The scholarship is particularly good - mountains of empirical evidence, all relevant to his thesis, are well documented and presented concisely in this book. The book is straightforward and easy to understand; it should be accessible to economists and intelligent non-economists alike. If you've wanted to understand how government insidiously (or naturally) becomes larger regardless of constitutional constraints, read this book. It might fill you with rage, but maybe you can put that rage to good use. Are the ideas of limited government destined to be considered a failure in the far future, or can leviathan be chained down? If this is all government is about, in the United States or anywhere, do we really want a government at all?

Read this book. Libertarians will consider it a great read and invaluable intellectual ammunition; everyone else should read it, if for nothing else, to better understand the nature of the beast.

Naomi Klein's very popular "Shock Doctrine" asserts that governments and free marketers (most notably Milton Friedman) use every crisis imaginable to push through free market reforms that the population opposes. The problem is she gets the whole thing exactly wrong. In the vast majority of cases crises lead to bigger government.

Robert Higgs shows how this process has worked in the United States. He terms it the "ratchet effect". Basically government will rapidly expand in a crisis, then after the crisis ends the government will shrink but still be bigger than it was prior to the crisis. As crises cometh and crises goeth the government grows bigger and bigger.

Robert Higgs focuses on four episodes in particular. The first being the depression of 1893 which, unlike crisises in the 20th century the government dealt with it by not getting involved despite massive pressure to do so. Then onto World War 1, the Great Depression and World War 2 as well as a brief discussion of the Cold War.

In each of these instances the government created massive programs and took extensive control of the economy while launching massive propaganda campaigns to promote these programs. For the most part the Supreme Court was complicit no matter how obvious it was that the constitution was being trampled (despite thankfully declaring some cartelization agencies like the NRA unconstitutional).

Yes corporatism and hand outs to politcally connected firms happen by exploiting crises, however this is still big government run amok (who after all is giving these handouts?). And while the likes of Johan Norberg have discredited Naomi Klein's book. The fact that her thesis is not just wrong, but for the most part exactly opposite of the truth needs greater attention. While Crisis and Leviathan is a bit dated, it nevertheless provides a great explanation of how the ratchet effect works and the danger crisises present to liberty. It's especially important now in our current economic crisis.

Crisis and Leviathan is a hard hitting and imaginative book about the growth of government in the United States throughout the 20th Century. It is this book which has made Higgs into a modern intellectual giant of classical liberalism/libertarianism amongst the likes of Richard Epstein, Murray Rothbard, James Buchanan, Douglas North, Paul Craig Roberts, Walter Block and Hans Hermann-Hoppe.

Robert Higgs' Crisis and Leviathan is a lucid and scholarly tract with painstakingly researched references, footnoted and jam packed with nuggets of analysis which may modern historians pass by without a second thought. The reason for this can be easily pointed out. During the 20th century the dominance of functionalist in sociology has swayed many historians to embrace the growth of government as an outcome of civilized society. Therefore they tend to think of the growth of government as an exogenous factor; as if it magically appears out of thin air.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I don't think that Higgs' book is just another rehashing of libertarian theory or ideology (If it were we may ask - is this a rewriting of the Libertarian Manifesto by Rothbard or Capitalism and Freedom by Friedman; my answer would be hardly). Higgs is hardly unimaginative; in fact he is a creative thinker with a penchant for understanding history while incorporating economic theory. Anyone who would question this would profit by actually spending some time reading the theoretical section of this book instead of skimming it. Here Higgs demonstrates within a few pages a technically sound method of understanding and interpreting facts of historical value. No one is questioning the originality (Weber or Spencer thought it up before him, for example - do we need to mention Schumpeter, who is mentioned extensively) of his argument, only its application to the growth of government in the United States during the 20th century. (1st - that is the thesis of this book. 2nd - If you don't believe that government did grow - then you need a few more history lessons.)

Higgs, unlike the many of his modern conservative contemporaries, thankfully disdains war and like Robert Nisbet carefully shows why the `will-to-power' is so attractive to conservatives who are in a position to abuse it. From this vantage point it is easy to envision Higgs scorn for the dominant ideology, one which has lead to the rise of what he calls participatory fascism. He points out decisively and consistently that each successive crisis during the 20th century has begat questions by the `public' of how the government can and ought to fix the problem and ultimately "do something" to fix it.

Under the wave of new legislation, property rights by regulation are eroded concurrently so that its ownership is no longer de facto, yet still de jure. Higgs employs Schumpeter's analysis contained in `Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy' to formulate a similar conclusion to what C. Wright Mills' called (who was not a libertarian; neither was Schumpeter for that matter - it is truly amazing that someone can be a Marxist and a scholar or a Neo-Con and a scholar, but when it comes to being a libertarian and a scholar, then your intentions are no longer pure) totalitarian democracy in his famous `Sociological Imagination.' Although Higgs focus tends to gravitate towards the welfare/warfare state, rather than the gradual socialism of Schumpeter.

Higgs does tend to gloss over some historical details or the periods without crisis. While some may claim that this is inconsistent or incoherent, his reasoning doesn't seem off base to me. Its difficulty lies in the functionalist progressivism, which is more reactionary than revolutionary.

Although many assertions appear to be sweeping to some, his references are well documented and scholarly. Again, this frees him from being bogged down by anything other than the question which is pertinent to his thesis. Higgs, although selective, tastefully intertwines his historical accounts while showing how his theoretical model works. Interestingly enough, the answer that he comes up with is that ideology drives history. Again, this may be nothing new to an astute scholar; but is certainly path breaking for those who are stuck in the never-never land of pure materialism, like so many in the economics profession.

In fact, this is not an escape hatch, but a demonstration of how history used to be understood. What ultimately drives the plans of man is an ideological vision of the world, not merely the interplay of things. This was the error of many neo-classical economists, who desperately wanted to show that men were mere profit maximizers or the economic man; which has little or no way to explain the appearance of Marxism, for instance.

If his book is a polemic, then there is no question his ideological pedigree. Fortunately, unlike so many other recent scholars, he is not hiding it. After all, it is truly unfortunate that most modern scholars feel it necessary to conceal their political and philosophical origins in order to give them a false air of objectivity. (In fact, Higgs quotes Mises, as a hardcore libertarian, within the first page of the book.) This may be a reason to attack his core ideas, but I found that Higgs was no pure ideologue.

If anything, his more recent books, like `Depression, War and Cold War' are considerably more radical.

This book is a well researched classic on the horrors of the state. Tediously footnoted and well organized, the book offers the concept of the "ratchet effect"- government taking advantage of (sometimes creating) "crisis" as an excuse to dramatically increase government power, and fails to reverse this after the so called emergency passes. Higgs succeeds at proving his hypothesis beyond any doubt with history backed by many, many sources and does this in a way that is both readable and academic. In today's world, few books could be a more relevant warning about government

As of this writing the president of the United States is prosecuting a war* with admirable objectives. But at what cost to American society?

Within weeks of the initiation of the U.S. effort the administration has announced steps that will curtail the civil liberties of citizens and visitors alike, even circumventing the right to proper trial. There appears to be a good chance that U.S. citizens will be required to carry so-called national ID cards.

Higgs explains why this should come as no suprise since war is the grand historical excuse offered by politicians to increase their powers and diminish those of their subjects, whatever the merits of their original objectives. This is one of the essential books in the literature of liberty, and it could not be more pertinent as a siren and antidote to the threat to freedom posed by ever-larger government.

*The war I referred to was against the Taliban, not the subsequent Iraq debacle.

Robert Higgs did not intend to write a tragedy, but since the publication of Crisis and Leviathan 26 years ago, reading this is like reading a tragedy--the tragedy is the loss of the Republic and its liberties.

First, consider when Robert Higgs wrote this book as it was published in 1984. This is original, critical thinking at its best.

The thesis is a ratchet theory of Big Government, and consequent loss of individual freedom and liberty.

I highly recommend anyone interested in the truth of the evolution of our Republic read this book to find out how we got here--and the bibliography is a treasure chest of references for further reading and areas to explore.

This book is somewhat intriguing. It is indeed an authoritative scholarly account of the growth of government in the United States, and for that reason only well worth reading. However, there is a pervading subtext of libertarian conspiracy theory about governmental power in the book that leaves the reader wondering if the author might not be masquerading a scholarly endeavour (that in itself is very rewarding) in order to suggest that government is the incarnation of evil. The fundamental truth which is developed here, that there is a permanent and necessary contradiction between the development of governmental power and individual liberty is unsophisticated, not to say outright crude. In addition, the author's thesis that after each crisis resulting in the growth of governmental capacities and power the government (always conceptualized as a large undifferentiated whole in the book) tends to rationalize its subsequent business in order not to loose what it just gained is not a discovery of the highest order. This is the rule in every institutional setting, whether corporate or bureaucratic, we know that since Max Weber's work on bureaucracy, without the libertarian hogwash.