Description
Book SynopsisPoliticians have traditionally devoted little attention to the origins of American bureaucracy and its relationship between bureaucratic and interest group activities. This work presents a study of bureaucratic autonomy in democratic regimes.
Trade ReviewWinner of the Levine Memorial Book Prize Winner of the Gladys M. Kammerer Award "Carpenter's book is intellectually arresting--weaving quantitative and qualitative empiricism through an impressive array of theoretical propositions toward an attractive theory of bureaucratic autonomy in the administrative state ... [A]dmirably successful in adding to our narrative of the development of the American administrative state."--Anthony Bertelli, Public Administration Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 One: Entrepreneurship, Networked Legitimacy, and Autonomy 14 Two: The Clerical State: Obstacles to Bureaucratic Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century America 37 Three: The Railway Mail, Comstockery, and the Waning of the Old Postal Regime, 1862-94 65 Four: Organizational Renewal and Policy Innovation in the National Postal System, 1890-1910 94 Five: The Triumph of the Moral Economy: Finance, Parcels, and the Labor Dilemma in the Post Office, 1908-24 144 Six: Science in the Service of Seeds: The USDA, 1862-1900 179 Seven: From Seeds to Science: The USDA as University, 1897-1917 212 Eight: Multiple Networks and the Autonomy of Bureaus: Departures in Food, Pharmaceutical, and Forestry Policy, 1897-1913 255 Nine: Brokerage and Bureaucratic Policymaking: The Cementing of Autonomy at the USDA, 1914-28 290 Ten: Structure, Reputation, and the Bureaucratic Failure of Reclamation Policy, 1902-14 326 Conclusion: The Politics of Bureaucratic Autonomy 353 Notes 369 Archival Sources 459 Index 465
