What's In and What's Out

Abstract

What’s In and What’s Out Donald Critchlow (bio) Bartholomew H. Sparrow. From the Outside In: World War II and the American State. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. xv + 354 pp. Figures, tables, notes, selected bibliography, and index. $45.00. Historians beware: political history is being taken over by political scientists and sociologists, while many historians seem impervious to the important role the state has played in shaping the economy, welfare, labor relations, fiscal policy, and the military-industrial complex. What is perhaps most disturbing (and refreshing) is that political scientists have undertaken this task with astute analysis based on comprehensive archival research—once the domain of the traditional historian. Bartholomew H. Sparrow’s sophisticated study of the development of the American state during World War II is a case in point. This book surpasses previous studies of the state during World War II and arguably stands as the best study of the transformative role government played at this critical period in American history. This is a book rich in information, exciting intellectually, and pioneering in its approach to American state development. Sparrow, a political scientist at the University of Texas, argues that the emergence of the contemporary state during World War II marked a systematic break with previous governmental policies by redirecting political development in the United States. In doing so, he challenges interpretations that find developments in American politics and society during the war as incremental, even preordained. Using fifty-five archival collections, Sparrow examines in precise detail the consequences of the Second World War on the social security system, labor-management relations, tax policy, and military procurement policy by creating new institutional relationships and arrangements. Consistent with Max Weber’s perspective, Sparrow defines the state as consisting of three parts—bureaucracy, established relations between the government and individuals and organizations, and instruments of policy administration. While many historical discussions of the state leave the processes or mechanisms either unspecified or unclear, Sparrow frames his argument around the concept of “resource-dependency,” drawn from the work of [End Page 475] organizational theorists Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik and Richard Cyert and James G. March. 1 The resource dependence perspective, Sparrow writes, posits that organizations exist in external, uncertain environments. As a consequence organizational survival depends on “the continued securance of resources within a larger context of interdependent individuals and organizations. Seeking to stabilize their existence, organizations attempt to influence, negotiate with, and manage their external relations in ways that protect their budgets and staff” (pp. 17–18). By maintaining that organizations respond and adjust to their environments depending on the type of uncertainty and resource environment facing the organization, Sparrow avoids a mechanistic and deterministic explanation as to how the state developed during World War II. Thus, he examines the development of state-building during the war as a process of organizational change: change in the bureaucracies of government, change in the relation between government organizations and societal actors, and change in the means of administration. This model allows him to explore the agents of change, the form of change, and the persistence of change during this critical period in which the American state was transformed. This abstract model, however, does not distract from his lively historical account of the effects of World War II on American government. He begins by looking first at the social security program during the war. He notes that despite New Deal legislation establishing and then amending the social security system, and despite the wartime government’s desperate need for revenue, there were no significant social security programs set up during the war. Furthermore, social security rates, benefit levels, and employee coverage remained virtually unchanged because Congress refused to cooperate with both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations’ attempts on several occasions to expand the system. Given the slow expansion of social security coverage and the small increases (and real decreases) in old age security benefit levels, employees looked elsewhere for financial and medical security. As a consequence, the number of subscriptions to private pension plans increased by 239 percent between 1940 and 1950 (from 4.1 to 9.8 million subscribers). Nonetheless, employer and employee contributions soared, increasing the pension...