Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (A Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy Book) 1st Edition

by Robert Higgs (Author)

16 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0195059007

ISBN-10: 019505900X

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Few topics are as timely as the growth of government. To understand why government has grown, Robert Higgs asserts, one must understand how it has grown. This book offers a coherent, multi-causal explanation, guided by a novel analytical framework firmly grounded in historical evidence.
More than a study of trends in governmental spending, taxation, and employment, Crisis and Leviathan is a thorough analysis of the actual occasions when and the specific means by which Big Government developed in the United States. Naming names and highlighting the actions of significant individuals, Higgs examines how twentieth-century national emergencies--mainly wars, depressions, and labor disturbances--have prompted federal officials to take over previously private rights and activities. When the crises passed, a residue of new governmental powers remained. Even more significantly, each great crisis and the subsequent governmental measures have gone hand in hand with reinforcing shifts in public beliefs and attitudes toward the government's proper role in American life.
Integrating the contributions of scholars in diverse disciplines, including history, law, political philosophy, and the social sciences, Crisis and Leviathan makes compelling reading for all those who seek to understand the transformation of America's political economy over the past century.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A very useful book for modern American history courses."--Frank Annunziata, Rochester Institute of Technology

"Insightful, compelling, and clear. Higgs breaks new ground in explicating the most important socio-political trend of our time--the growth of American government."--Brian Summers, Senior Editor, The Freeman.

"A superb history....Two hundred years after the establishment of the American Constitution, I can think of no more important reading that Mr. Higgs' book, aside from the Constitution itself."--R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, The American Spectator

"A thoughtful and challenging work."--Martin Morse Wooster, Washington Editor, Harper's Magazine

"A book of major importance, thoroughly researched, closely argued, and meticulously documented. It should be high on the reading list of every serious student of the American political system."--Political Science Quarterly

About the Author

Robert Higgs is at Seattle University.

Product details

Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1987)
Language : English
Paperback : 350 pages
ISBN-10 : 019505900X
ISBN-13 : 978-0195059007
Item Weight : 1.21 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #1,644,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,327 in Economic History (Books)
- #7,443 in Economics (Books)
- #17,029 in Political Science (Books)

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Eric

The most important book on understanding the threat of just ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2016

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The most important book on understanding the threat of just what "big govt " turns into

2 people found this helpful

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D. W. MacKenzie

Misperception of the State and its Growth

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2008

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.

22 people found this helpful

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C. James T

A dialectical view of the growth of big Government

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2017

I just got around to finishing Dr Higg's seminal work (it sat on my book shelf for over a decade where I'd pick it up off and on, read a chapter or two and then put it down) and all I can say is its incredible. A real tour de force that is a must read regardless of your ideological position, right or left. But what was exceptional was his basing his research of the growth of Big Government as a dialectical process wherein ideology played a major roll. Chapters 3, 4, 10 and 11 are the main ones sketching out ideologies influence on society and political change and chapters that I think are a must read for everyone.

One person found this helpful

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Zachary Gochenour

More significant now than ever

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2003

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.

29 people found this helpful

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N. Martin

The hogs of war

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2001

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.

10 people found this helpful

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