The Political Economy of the American West

The Political Economy of the American West PDF Author: Terry Lee Anderson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In the American West, trappers, miners, and farmers often preceded the formal institutions of government and therefore had to invent their own institutional framework. Early historians like Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb found heroes in this romantic frontier. Modern historians, however, are challenging the traditional histories, arguing that the history of the West is one of natural resource waste, minority exploitation, and political manipulation by a powerful elite. This book challenges many conclusions from both schools in a framework that considers Western history as an episode in the evolution of property rights. The authors in this volume provide a new way of thinking about the West that relies neither on heroes nor villains but argues that economics and politics shaped the institutional environment of the American West.

The Political Economy of the American West

The Political Economy of the American West PDF Author: Terry Lee Anderson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the American West, trappers, miners, and farmers often preceded the formal institutions of government and therefore had to invent their own institutional framework. Early historians like Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb found heroes in this romantic frontier. Modern historians, however, are challenging the traditional histories, arguing that the history of the West is one of natural resource waste, minority exploitation, and political manipulation by a powerful elite. This book challenges many conclusions from both schools in a framework that considers Western history as an episode in the evolution of property rights. The authors in this volume provide a new way of thinking about the West that relies neither on heroes nor villains but argues that economics and politics shaped the institutional environment of the American West.

The American Political Economy

The American Political Economy PDF Author: Douglas A. HIBBS
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674038630
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Here is the most comprehensive and authoritative work to date on relationships between the economy and politics in the years from Eisenhower through Reagan. Extending and deepening his earlier work, which had major impact in both political science and economics, Hibbs traces the patterns in and sources of postwar growth, unemployment, and inflation. He identifies which groups win and lose from inflations and recessions. He also shows how voters' perceptions and reactions to economic events affect the electoral fortunes of political parties and presidents. Hibbs's analyses demonstrate that political officials in a democratic society ignore the economic interests and demands of their constituents at their peril, because episodes of prosperity and austerity frequently have critical influence on voters' behavior at the polls. The consequences of Eisenhower's last recession, of Ford's unwillingness to stimulate the economy, of Carter's stalled recovery were electorally fatal, whereas Johnson's, Nixon's, and Reagan's successes in presiding over rising employment and real incomes helped win elections. The book develops a major theory of macroeconomic policy action that explains why priority is given to growth, unemployment, inflation, and income distribution shifts with changes in partisan control of the White House. The analysis shows how such policy priorities conform to the underlying economic interests and preferences of the governing party's core political supporters. Throughout the study Hibbs is careful to take account of domestic institutional arrangements and international economic events that constrain domestic policy effectiveness and influence domestic economic outcomes. Hibbs's interdisciplinary approach yields more rigorous and more persuasive characterizations of the American political economy than either purely economic, apolitical analyses or purely partisan, politicized accounts. His book provides a useful benchmark for the advocacy of new policies for the 1990s--a handy volume for politicians and their staffs, as well as for students and teachers of politics and economics.

The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877–1900

The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877–1900 PDF Author: Richard Franklin Bensel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139936476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

Immigration and the Political Economy of Home

Immigration and the Political Economy of Home PDF Author: Rachel Buff
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520221214
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"In this unusual juxtaposition of Indians in Minneapolis and Caribbean immigrants in Brooklyn, Buff has given us a unique and powerful lens on the nation-form and its discontents. This is a highly inventive, insightful study--as keen in its analysis of U.S. politics and policy as it is alive to the political force of various ‘minority’ cultural forms."—Matthew Frye Jacobson, Yale University, author of Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917

The People's Network

The People's Network PDF Author: Robert MacDougall
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The Bell System dominated telecommunications in the United States and Canada for most of the twentieth century, but its monopoly was not inevitable. In the decades around 1900, ordinary citizens—farmers, doctors, small-town entrepreneurs—established tens of thousands of independent telephone systems, stringing their own wires to bring this new technology to the people. Managed by opportunists and idealists alike, these small businesses were motivated not only by profit but also by the promise of open communication as a weapon against monopoly capital and for protection of regional autonomy. As the Bell empire grew, independents fought fiercely to retain control of their local networks and companies—a struggle with an emerging corporate giant that has been almost entirely forgotten. The People's Network reconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived.

The American Political Economy

The American Political Economy PDF Author: Marc Allen Eisner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113461280X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Policy debates are often grounded within the conceptual confines of a state-market dichotomy, as though the two existed in complete isolation. In this innovative text, Marc Allen Eisner portrays the state and the market as inextricably linked, exploring the variety of institutions subsumed by the market and the role that the state plays in creating the institutional foundations of economic activity. Through a historical approach, Eisner situates the study of American political economy within a larger evolutionary-institutional framework that integrates perspectives in American political development and economic sociology. This volume provides a rich understanding of the complexity of U.S. economic policy, explaining how public policies become embedded in bureaucracy and reinforced by organized beneficiaries and public expectations. This path-dependent layering process helps students better understand the underlying historical dynamics, which provide a clearer sense of the constraints faced by policymakers now and in the future. The revisions to the second edition include: Complete rewrite of the chapter on the recent financial crisis, adding in commentary on the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff, and other recent events. New material added and existing material updated in the chapter discussing the two welfare states. Extensive updates to the coverage of the global economy Expanded and updated discussion of Obama’s economic policies. Updates to figures and data throughout the text.

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy PDF Author: Robert Fredona
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331958247X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end of the Middle Ages. New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy brings together a select group of young and established scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds—history, economics, law, and political science—in an effort to begin a re-conceptualization of the origins and history of political economy through a variety of still largely distinct but complementary historical approaches—legal and intellectual, literary and philosophical, political and economic—and from a variety of related perspectives: debt and state finance, tariffs and tax policy, the encouragement and discouragement of trade, merchant communities and companies, smuggling and illicit trades, mercantile and colonial systems, economic cultures, and the history of economic doctrines more narrowly construed. The first decade of the twenty-first century, bookended by 9/11 and a global financial crisis, witnessed the clamorous and urgent return of both 'the political' and 'the economic' to historiographical debates. It is becoming more important than ever to rethink the historical role of politics (and, indeed, of government) in business, economic production, distribution, and exchange. The artefacts of pre-modern and modern political economy, from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries, remain monuments of perennial importance for understanding how human beings grappled with and overcame material hardship, organized their political and economic communities, won great wealth and lost it, conquered and were conquered. The present volume, assembling some of the brightest lights in the field, eloquently testifies to the rich and powerful lessons to be had from such a historical understanding of political economy and of power in an economic age.

The Political Economy of Third World Intervention

The Political Economy of Third World Intervention PDF Author: David N. Gibbs
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226290713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Interventionism—the manipulation of the internal politics of one country by another—has long been a feature of international relations. The practice shows no signs of abating, despite the recent collapse of Communism and the decline of the Cold War. In The Political Economy of Third World Intervention, David Gibbs explores the factors that motivate intervention, especially the influence of business interests. He challenges conventional views of international relations, eschewing both the popular "realist" view that the state is influenced by diverse national interests and the "dependency" approach that stresses conflicts between industrialized countries and the Third World. Instead, Gibbs proposes a new theoretical model of "business conflict" which stresses divisions between different business interests and shows how such divisions can influence foreign policy and interventionism. Moreover, he focuses on the conflicts among the core countries, highlighting friction among private interests within these countries. Drawing on U.S. government documents—including a wealth of newly declassified materials—he applies his new model to a detailed case study of the Congo Crisis of the 1960s. Gibbs demonstrates that the Crisis is more accurately characterized by competition among Western interests for access to the Congo's mineral wealth, than by Cold War competition, as has been previously argued. Offering a fresh perspective for understanding the roots of any international conflict, this remarkably accessible volume will be of special interest to students of international political economy, comparative politics, and business-government relations. "This book is an extremely important contribution to the study of international relations theory; Gibbs' treatment of the Congo case is superb. He effectively takes the "statists" to task and presents a compelling new way of analyzing external interventions in the Third World."—Michael G. Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin "David Gibbs makes an original and important contribution to our understanding of the influence of business interests in the making of U.S. foreign policy. His business conflict model provides a synthetic theoretical framework for the analysis of business-government relations, one which yields fresh insights, overcomes inconsistencies in other approaches, and opens new ground for important research. . . . [Gibbs] provides a sophisticated analysis of the conflicts within the U.S. business community and identifies the complex ways in which they interacted with agencies within the government to form U.S. foreign policy toward the Congo. . . . This is a well-crafted analysis of a critical case of U.S. postwar intervention which should be of general interest to scholars and others concerned with the domestic bases of foreign policy."—Thomas J. Biersteker, Director, School of International Relations, University of Southern California

Building the Empire State

Building the Empire State PDF Author: Brian Phillips Murphy
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812247167
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Focusing on the state of New York, home to the first American banks, utilities, canals, and transportation infrastructure projects, Building the Empire State examines the origins of American capitalism by tracing how and why business corporations were first introduced into the economy of the early republic.

American Political Economy in Global Perspective

American Political Economy in Global Perspective PDF Author: Harold L. Wilensky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107018099
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This book is a guide to claims about the proper role of government and markets in a global economy. Moving between systematic comparison of 19 rich democracies and debate about what the United States can do to restore a more civilized, egalitarian, and fair society, Harold L. Wilensky tells us how six of these countries got on a low road to economic progress and which components of their labor-crunch strategy are uniquely American. He provides an overview of the impact of major dimensions of globalization, only one of which - the interaction of the internationalization of finance and the rapid increase in the autonomy of central banks - undermines either national sovereignty or job security, labor standards, and the welfare state. Although Wilensky views American policy and politics through the lens of globalization, he concludes that the nation-state remains the center of personal identity, social solidarity, and political action. He concentrates on what national differences mean for the well-being of nations and their people. Drawing on lessons from abroad and from America's own past successes, Wilensky shows how we can reverse our three-decade decline. He argues that, in order to get off the low road, we must overcome the myths of "moderation," the rise of the "independent voter," and a rightward shift of the electorate. He specifies a feasible domestic agenda that matches majority sentiments in all rich democracies.