The Brownlow Committee, Regulation, and the Presidency: Seventy Years Later

Abstract

Analyzing Robert E. Cushman’s study within the context of the Brownlow Report substantiates the argument that the immediate failure of the committee’s recommendations—and their influence in the longer term—is best explained within the conceptual framework of changing political orders in American political development. Seventy years later, the field has the historical perspective to see that the committee’s work was buffeted by tensions between competing political orders. Today, far from being just an interesting episode in American public administration, we see that the Brownlow Committee’s work on regulation, as much as work on executive organization, heralded and enabled a new era of presidential administration.