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

by Robert Higgs (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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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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  1. ISBN-10
    019505900X
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0195059007
  3. Edition
    First Edition
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 1987
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    9.22 x 1.01 x 6.17 inches
  8. Print length
    350 pages
  9. See all details
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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; First Edition (January 1, 1987)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 350 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 019505900X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195059007
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.22 x 1.01 x 6.17 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

About the author

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Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs

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Dr. Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economic historian and an economist of the Austrian school. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government growth. Dr. Higgs has written extensively about the ratchet effect, the economic causes of the Great Depression, regime uncertainty, and the myth that World War II caused economic recovery in the late 1940s.

Currently Dr. Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute's quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Higgs is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gary Schlarbaum Award for Lifetime Defense of Liberty, Thomas Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty, Friedrich von Wieser Memorial Prize for Excellence in Economic Education, and Templeton Honor Rolls Award on Education in a Free Society.

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4.5 out of 5 stars
18 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Eric
5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book on understanding the threat of just ...
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2016
Verified Purchase
The most important book on understanding the threat of just what "big govt " turns into
4 people found this helpful
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D. W. MacKenzie
4.0 out of 5 stars 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.
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Hans Haneberg
5.0 out of 5 stars First rate
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2007
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.
15 people found this helpful
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Rios9000
5.0 out of 5 stars Every Naomi Klein Fan Needs to Read This Book
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2009
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.
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