Liberal Administration Research Articles

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration: Climate Crisis and Federal–Provincial Relations during the Great Depression

The federal government established the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (pfra) during the greatest environmental and economic crisis in twentieth-century Canada. While the pfra was a logical policy response to the disaster, it was also a calculated political response by successive Conservative and Liberal administrations in Ottawa. As a result of intergovernmental and constitutional conflicts between the federal government and the respective Prairie provincial governments, the pfra program was introduced at different times in the Prairie provinces while the community pasture program was never allowed to be established in Alberta. The pfra was headquartered in Saskatchewan, the province most supportive of the federal initiative.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration: Climate Crisis and Federal–Provincial Relations during the Great Depression

Abstract The federal government established the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (pfra) during the greatest environmental and economic crisis in twentieth-century Canada. While the pfra was a logical policy response to the disaster, it was also a calculated political response by successive Conservative and Liberal administrations in Ottawa. As a result of intergovernmental and constitutional conflicts between the federal government and the respective Prairie provincial governments, the pfra program was introduced at different times in the Prairie provinces while the community pasture program was never allowed to be established in Alberta. The pfra was headquartered in Saskatchewan, the province most supportive of the federal initiative.

Celebration of the centenary of Asquith’s Liberal Administration

Celebration of the centenary of Asquith’s Liberal Administration

The unwary purchaser: Consumer psychology and the regulation of commerce in America

Starting in the 1870s, American jurists deciding cases of trademark infringement began advancing arguments that the ordinary purchaser was an unwary one, easily deceived by imitations. Embedded within their legal decisions was a vision of the typical consumers' habitual behavior and cognitive ability. In response to legal critics who argued that the presumed psychology of the consumer was unevenly deployed, applied psychologists developed laboratory-based experiments and scales for determining the likelihood that the "average" purchaser would be confused. Although these psychologists failed in their goal of securing regular legal patronage, this commercial context and the resulting experiments were constitutive of the delineation of "recognition" as a distinct mental process. Furthermore, this case study complicates the scholarly consensus about the role of standardization and personal responsibility in the liberal administration of mass society.

The walrus, carpenter and oysters: Liberal reform, hypocrisy and expertocracy in Maori land loss in New Zealand 1885–1911

Abstract This paper considers the Liberal Governments’ reformist agenda and resultant hypocrisy surrounding wealth confiscation from Maori in New Zealand from 1885 to 1911. Through an analysis of official records, ledger accounts and other historical documents, it shows how the government compulsorily acquired land from Maori and resold it at considerable profit, thus supplying a means of increasing state revenues. Supplementing these revenues were exorbitant survey fees, government commissions from Native Reserves and local government rates in which accounting expertise made it possible to enclose, price and levy charges. The calculative process enabled parliamentarians to argue that given the poor returns to Maori, their assets should be put into the hands of land-selling councils. Maintaining a figurative distance from the mechanism of exploitation, all the while responsible for its enactment, successive Liberal administrations throughout the period made much of past injustices and expressed considerable sympathy for Maori. Maori were largely dispossessed of their land by the end of this period—a period of relative calm where public appeasement and niceties presented a more benign facade to the disproportionately heavy taxation burden on, and ultimate pillage of Maori.

Balancing acts: John Kennedy, The Cold War and the African National Congress

The prevailing conception of John Kennedy's presidency has been that of a liberal administration unable to take a stronger stand on apartheid, not out of its own doubts about the desirability of black self-rule, but because of South Africa's Cold War geopolitical value. This paper, however, argues that Kennedy's presidency, while representing an important break with previous administrations over the sort of contact the United States should maintain with African nationalist movements, failed to engage with the African National Congress, seeing it instead as little more than a communist proxy. Through a careful examination of debates occurring within the Departments of State and Defense, as well as those in Pretoria, this article demonstrates that Kennedy's administration, while far from monolithic, ultimately chose to align itself with the Nationalist Party's depiction of apartheid as a policy ‘in the interest of both sides’.

Is there regionalism after municipal amalgamation in Toronto?

This article reflects on the results of metropolitan governance restructuring in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, during the ‘long 1990s’, the time period roughly between the collapse of international property markets in the late 1980s and the events of 9/11/01. We alsodiscuss more recent developments including the establishment of more moderately liberal and social democratic administrations in Ontario and Toronto. Based on this context, we develop our arguments about globalization and unequal re‐scalings, and the re‐territorialization of political action and social movements. Through a discussion of the search for new ‘fixes’ at the city‐regional scale in Toronto, particularly in the sectors of competitiveness, transportation and the environment, we highlight how social movement demands have been rearticulated in the period following revisions of municipal governance mechanisms such as the debates about the municipal charter in Toronto.

The Politics of Injustice: The Kennedys, the Freedom Rides, and the Electoral Consequences of a Moral Compromise

When the Freedom Riders sought an end to segregation in 1961, they had little support from a supposedly liberal administration in Washington. In his efforts to hold a centrist position and with an eye toward re-election, President John F. Kennedy largely ignored and even tried to hamper the efforts of these civil rights activists. While most historians accept JFK s moderation on civil rights as politically prudent, David Niven now argues that Kennedy failed to recognize the political perils of his indifference to civil rights that a stronger stance would have been not only morally right but also politically expedient. Niven contends that the Kennedy administration s position on civil rights marked a failure to recognize the depth of the connection voters made between Kennedy, the Democratic party, and the civil rights movement, as well as a failure to recognize the importance of the African American voting bloc in the long run. Niven explores how the Freedom Rides set a pattern for JFK s reaction to the civil rights movement, and how the president tried to make a half-hearted stand for civil rights while shoring up his support among segregationist white southern Democrats. Drawing on voting data, public opinion polls, and a shrewd analysis of the existing literature, he shows that Kennedy and his advisors including Attorney General Robert Kennedy had ample evidence to recognize that the old Democratic Solid South would soon be lost and that they should court the African American vote and the white liberal vote outside the South. The Politics of Injustice clearly shows that, despite his liberal reputation, President Kennedy stood in the way of civil rights progress due to a political miscalculation. It is a critical book for understanding the early 1960s and the Kennedy administration, and for contemplating what might have been in those turbulent times. The Author: David Niven is associate professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University and co-author, with Jeremy Zilber, of Racialized Coverage of Congress: The News in Black and White.

THE GREAT WAR AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM IN SPAIN, 1916–1917

Based largely on primary sources, this article concentrates on the Liberal administration led by Count Romanones between December 1915 and April 1917. This is regarded as a crucial moment in the country's transition from elite to mass politics. The social and economic impact of the First World war brought about massive economic dislocation and social distress that in turn generated unprecedented levels of popular mobilization against the regime. Intertwined with domestic uproar, the country was polarized by the question of neutrality. Alienated from the ruling classes by his pro-Allied stance, Romanones was not only the target of a fierce campaign to oust him but also presided over the acceleration of existing movements of social and political protest. At his fall in April 1917, he left behind a storm of discontent and turmoil that threatened to bring down the entire political order.

COMAROFF COUNTRY

This article highlights several key propositions from Volume II of Of Revelation and Revolution (RRII), relating to the way LMS mission discourses facilitated the phased transition to capitalism. It then tests the applicability of these hypotheses to the study of landscape aesthetics, labour management, and conceptions of ethnic sovereignty in another domain of Liberal administration in South Africa: the early Kruger National Park. In the process, the article charts a rather different history of the colonial body to that advanced by the Comaroffs, emphasizing the way in which LMS mission station and game reserve alike produce bounded, spatial conditions for the management of contradictory conceptions of rights and ethnic subjectivity. Some points of similarity are found between the Comaroff conception of moralized Tswana bodies, commoditization, and the crisis of value, on the one hand, and on the other, management of 'Shangaan' labor and identity in the early Kruger National Park. Moreover, this similarity also underscores the explanatory power of the historical method in Volume II: present crises of value apparent in late twentieth-century South African witchcraft discourses, for instance, are seen to have a long history dating back to destructive contradictions around rights and currency already apparent on LMS mission stations. The article concludes with a case study that draws attention to the slightly problematic theory of capillary state power operating in Volume II. Instead, it calls for a more concrete history of articulating state agencies, showing how in the example of the Makuleke land claim in the northern Kruger National Park, distinct government departments competed to establish different allegories of paternalistic racial management. Ironically, this history can only be written with a return to the understanding of agency and statehood that characterized earlier Comaroff work on African elites.

H.J. Spijker (1802-1870). Een Kennismaking

AbstractH. J. Spijker (1801-1870) was one of the most important liberal administrators of the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (Netherlands Reformed Church) of the second half of the nineteenth century. He was first heard of in a discussion about a revision of the 'Algemeen Reglement van de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk' (The constitution of the church). In this discussion he proved to be an ardent supporter of a more democratic church structure. In 1852, Spijker became a member of the 'Algemene Synodale Commissie', the Synod's executive committee. Being in favour of the separation of Church and State he played an important role in 1853 by urging for moderation when relations between Protestants and Catholics were severely tried, owing to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy (1853). This did not make him beloved by all. As a result he lost his position in the organisation; he returned in 1860 in the national church council, however, first as chairman of the Synod and a year later as chairman of the 'Algemene Synodale Commissie'. His most important contribution again had to do with a more democratic church structure. In 1852 this liberal attitude brought him into contact with J.R. Thorbecke, who found a position for him in the 'Departement van Eredienst'. When he died in 1870 the separation of Church and State, as laid down in the constitution of 1848, was almost completely realised. Spijker's contribution had been considerable.

The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1938

When President William Clinton elevated deficit reduction to the top of his domestic agenda in 1993, he tapped into a long-standing Democratic tradition that was rooted in the 1930s. Liberalism and fiscal conservatism have been interwoven since the construction of the New Deal state. Liberal Democratic presidents never felt that they could or should exclude fiscal conservatism from their agenda. Harry Truman, for example, fought with the military establishment to balance the budget, while John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson adhered to modest levels of spending and only hesitantly accepted temporary deficits. Jimmy Carter emphasized deficit reduction more than a decade before Clinton championed the issue. In fact, liberal administrations have usually encountered great pressure to demonstrate a commitment to fiscal responsibility to refute conservative warnings that their policies would result in economic instability and limitless government expansion. Indeed, the histories of liberalism and fiscal conservatism have been intimately related. The key to some of the most durable state-building efforts in United States history has been a pragmatic alliance between liberals and moderate fiscal conservatives, who accepted an active role for government subject to budgetary constraints. This alliance produced bold federal initiatives in a nation historically resistant to centralized government. Most accounts of the New Deal coalition downplay the influence of orthodox conservative ideas within the Roosevelt administration. The importance of fiscal conservatism to the New Deal has been acknowledged but rarely analyzed. Serious treatment of this tradition, like the rest of modern conservatism, has been relegated to the periphery of contemporary historical scholarship (Brinkley 1994). Instead, historians have written Whiggish accounts of Keynes- ianism (Brinkley 1995; Collins 1987; May 1981; Barber 1985; Snowiss 1971; Stein 1969). They have paid little attention to the influence of fiscal conservatism--defined as an agenda of balanced budgets, private capital investment, minimal government debt, stable currency, low inflation, and high savings which remained normative for most of the New Deal period. When New Deal historians mention fiscal conservatism in these years, moreover, they treat it as monolithic, static, and irrational. Liberal historians understood that Roosevelt was a fiscal conservative (Leuchtenburg 1963; Schlesinger 1959; Friedel 1990). Yet, since they were interested in the expansion of liberalism, they never knew what to make of that fact. The ideology thus remains at the periphery of their analysis, a curious relic from earlier political times. More recently, social scientists have treated fiscal conservatism as a barrier to state building. Mark Left's landmark book on New Deal taxation lacks a detailed examination of the fiscal conservative ideology, and variations of that ideology, even though he admits that it influenced national politics during this period (Leff 1984). At most points in his book, fiscal conservatives appear simply as sinister advisers who want to pay for the New Deal on the backs of the poor. But the ideology of fiscal conservatism was much richer and more nuanced than he suggests. Brown, another scholar to deal with this issue, also presents a limited understanding of Roosevelt's acceptance of fiscal conservatism (Brown 1999). For Brown, fiscal conservatism was the key obstacle to state building since low revenue constrained the growth of the federal government. He downplays the fact that Roosevelt succeeded in state building, in part because he took fiscal concerns seriously. While Brown defines fiscal conservatism as the agenda of investors, Roosevelt felt that voters of all classes disliked taxes and wanted balanced budgets. Indeed, this was the principal reason the United States did not create a mass income tax until World War II. Given the broad cross-class averison to taxes and deficits, portions of Brown's argument become less persuasive. …

Where the Liberals Lost It: A Case Study

Where the Liberals Lost It: A Case Study Otis L. Graham Jr. (bio) Judith Stein. Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998. xiii + 410 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). History had a human face for Judith Stein. She travelled to Birmingham, Alabama to conduct research on a crippled steel industry (she doesn’t tell us when; sometime in the 1990s, evidently). The Birmingham USX facility had employed 27,000 workers during World War II to, and had shriveled to 2,400 when she arrived. Her cab driver was a 19- to 20-year-old black man whose father held a good job at the plant. But the son could not get on at the mill and did piece work at low wages while he hoped for an opening. Her cab ride told her that her young driver was “intelligent and hard-working” and a young man who “possessed the values of his family,” and he “deserves a better future.” A job in steel, presumably. Why does he not have that high-paying job? Who or what fumbled away that young man’s future? Stein sensed, plausibly, that pursuing that question required the fusion of two fields of historical study that had been artificially and regrettably separated—civil rights and economic policy and history. Joining them might produce a “new narrative,” and an answer to the question about her driver. It certainly did produce an impressively researched book which indicts public policy for the sad fate of both steel and blacks like the taxi driver, policy conceived for the most part under Democratic presidents. Running Steel, Running America is built around the belief that governments have great capacity to do good, especially economic good. Since decent job opportunities as ladders of opportunity are within the national government’s power to deliver or maintain in place, lesser outcomes were the government’s fault. The book documents the default on that social responsibility, anchored in the author’s intimate familiarity with the evolution of the steel industry since World War II. Reading such a book in the late 1990s involves not just a trip to Birmingham and Sparrow’s Point and other places that make steel; it also has the feel of a trip back to the sixties. The New Left lives! The Liberals are responsible. [End Page 497] On closer examination, the author’s viewpoint is decidedly nineties. She sees good outcomes snatched from history by governmental policy, crushing the hopes of individuals and communities. And she has an explanation for it. To the New Left, the liberals bungled things because they were not staunch socialists. Here, liberal administrations, dutifully followed by the Republicans when they took a turn, sacrificed both steel and black (and white) workers on the alter of foreign economic policy—the religion of free trade, in the form of head-in-the-sand, foreigner-favoring, import-enhancing foreign economic policy. Pat Buchanan lives! Her topic is post-World War II U.S. industrial policy toward the nation’s crown jewel heavy industry, steel. To this she attaches a sort of parallel story of race relations and civil rights. The book begins in the 1950s, when two adverse developments turned big steel into a beleaguered, declining industry—hostile government policy arising from Eisenhower and then Kennedy and Johnson’s suspicion that oligopolistic steel (the industry) was a main cause of inflation, and import competition deriving from the expansion of steel capacity abroad. (I would have reversed these two causes of steel’s troubles and added managerial mistakes and inflexible labor costs due to the behavior of the unions, but Stein’s causation is external, nine parts federal government and one part foreign competition.) Quickly moving to the sixties, Stein traces the civil rights movement in Alabama with occasional references to the Fairfield plant, the two topics—steel and race—more side by side than intertwined. An intricate discussion of the evolution of civil rights policy affecting black employment, and the emergence of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a prelude to a narrative of job discrimination complaints and politics...

Visceral Cultures and Criminal Practices

This paper will claim that capital's historical process produces durable forms of violent criminality because intense phases of this process constitute specific cultures at the emotional level as `visceral being'. As the productivist era recedes, the globalizing neo-capitalist market-place, based on circulation, consumption and social administration, is currently establishing itself as the principal form of economic life. Because these activities demand ever more eviscerated and domesticated forms of life, visceral cultures, once functional in the productivist era, are now finding themselves redundant. Some individuals and micro-communities heavily committed to this obsolete way of life are finding little alternative but to invest what have become very durable emotional dispositions as cultural capital in the field of criminal practice. Because the ontological foundation of these forms of life is viscerality, the liberal administration's politico-legal regulation of symbolic interchange, provision of equalized opportunity or encouragement of active citizenry can have only limited ameliorative effects on escalating levels of violent crime. Mutating forms of violent criminality are the products of historical material processes; they are susceptible to human intervention only if politics moves beyond its current role of managing market forces to one of direct engagement with the central systems of capitalist value and logic that drive these processes forward.

Imperial Uncertainties: Architectural Syncretism and Improvisation in Fascist Colonial Libya

colonies. Italy's colonial cities, he declared, should be regulated by clearly defined, grid-like master plans with broad, parallel arteries, centrally situated public buildings, zoned residential areas, and strategically placed parks, squares and fountains. These measures would prevent what Pellegrini, with the disdain of the modernist, termed 'architectural irrationality and anarchy', and would allow Italians to influence what he saw as 'the undisciplined mental laziness of the [native] inhabitants who still now are out of place' [tutt'ora disambientati] in their own land. Applied to Italy's newly reconquered territories in Libya, such plans, he argued, would establish a solid precedent for the creation of Italy's new imperial African cities.' Such calls to aesthetic and social order were echoed widely in the architectural press of the day. Writing at the height of Italy's colonial expansion in the 1920s and 1930s, leaders of Italy's official fascist syndicate of architects appealed to members of the profession to adopt a unitary, programmatic approach to empirebuilding. Earlier Liberal administrations, they claimed, had spawned hasty, unregulated construction in Italy's overseas colonies. Engineers had colluded with speculators and bureaucrats to promote a variety of styles, ranging from neo-classicism to picturesque adaptations of local motifs. In an era of fascist expansion, however, such diversity was increasingly seen as a sign of vacillation and weakness. The fascist regime, architects and officials argued, required a novel and clear aesthetic. A leader among Italy's colonial architects, Ottavio Cabiati, thus urged his colleagues to abandon their penchant for building in borrowed, derivative styles that failed to reflect a clear national character. 'All construction by a colonizing people', he wrote, 'must speak a very clear language. There should be no doubt

Nutrition and the dialysis prescription.

Malnutrition is common among patients with acute and chronic renal failure. The efficiency of modern dialytic techniques has allowed for more liberal administration of nutrients to patients with renal failure, particularly with regard to protein and amino acids. Protein restriction is not indicated for patients on dialysis, and should be employed cautiously, if at all, in patients with renal insufficiency. The 'nutrition prescription' should be considered a vital part of the comprehensive medical, surgical, and dialytic care provided to patients with renal disease.

BLOOD LOSS DURING REPAIR OF CRANIOSYNOSTOSIS

Surgical repair of craniosynostosis carries a high risk with large blood losses. Over a 2-yr period, we have managed 115 patients undergoing craniosynostosis repair with peroperative haemodilution to achieve a final PCV of 0.28-0.35. Measurements of PCV allowed calculation of estimated blood losses and transfused volumes in terms of red blood cell mass. Total estimated red cell volume lost was 91 +/- 66% of patient's estimated red blood cell volume during the peroperative period. The type of skull deformation and surgical procedure determined the extent of peroperative bleeding. Peroperative transfusion was satisfactory in 48% of patients and slight overtransfusion was noted in 32%. During the postoperative period, liberal administration of blood led to overtransfusion and possibly unnecessary transfusion in 74% of patients. Because of the well known risks of transmission of infectious disease, strict volume compensation with development of haemodilution and autotransfusion procedures should be used to limit these risks.

The New Deal and American Youth: Ideas and Ideals in a Depression Decade.

When President Franklin Roosevelt formed National Administration (NYA) in June 1935, he declared that it would address the most pressing and immediate of American young people. In this book, Richard A. Reiman explores various and sometimes conflicting ways in which NYA planners and administrators defined those needs and attempted to answer them. As Reiman notes, NYA was set up to assist millions of youth who, during Depression years, were out of school, out of work, and ineligible for New Deal's own Civilian Conservation Corps. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, New Dealers did not envision NYA primarily as a junior WPA, a trigger for civil rights reform, or a springboard for careers of liberal administrators. Rather, its designers saw it as a reform agency that would advance and protect democracy by countering totalitarian appeals to young people and by equalizing educational opportunities for rich and poor. Woven into successive drafts establishing NYA, these twin purposes united programs of planners as disparate as Aubrey W. Williams, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Studebaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Taussig, and FDR himself. Like their separate agendas, Reiman shows, planners' shared concerns for democratic values were products of thinking that had arisen during Progressive Era - a time when an awareness of social effects of child development first occurred. During 1930s, fears of fascism and totalitarianism added fuel to these concerns and shaped much of nature of NYA's prewar appeal. Based on a wide range of sources, including NYA-related documents at National Archives and Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, The New Deal and American Youth is a study of this important agency. By showing how NYA served as an instrument for realizing so many New Deal ambitions, it offers rich insights into not only NYA but New Deal as well.

Parents, Gender, and Education

This article discusses social justice in education, specifically issues of social equity and equal opportunities on the grounds of gender. The article explores the ways in which the Right in government in advanced industrial societies, but particularly in Britain and the United States, has tried to implement a new right-wing agenda of parental choice and standards. This is in contrast to earlier liberal administrations that sought to provide equality of educational opportunity by reducing the differences between families through parental privilege or poverty or involving mothers in their children's education. The conclusion is drawn that right-wing strategies will increase social diversity and sexual inequalities around the role of parents, especially mothers.

Rank Imitation and the Sincerest Flattery:' The Dominion Marine Association and the Revision of the Canadian Coasting Regulations, 1922-1936

The 1920s were years of unparalleled growth and frustration for the Canadian Great Lakes' shipping industry. Between 1920 and 1930 the Canadian fleet on the Lakes more than doubled in size. At the same time Canadian Great Lakes' steamship companies, as represented by the Dominion Marine Association ( D M A ) , felt themselves victimized by the western Canadian farm lobby. The D M A also perceived its members to be vulnerable to unfair competition from the much larger and better protected United States Great Lakes' shipping industry. This apparent weakness vis-a-vis their American competitors was caused, so the members of the D M A believed, by the inadequate coasting regulations embodied in the Canada Shipping Act of 1906. Yet the D M A ' s complaints to the Dominion government were bound to fall on deaf ears while the industry was enjoying prosperity and when the western farmers' votes were so important to Mackenzie King. The Prime Minister's liberal ideology and his dislike of protection sealed the fate of the D M A ' s lobbying efforts in the 1920s. In this decade King's beliefs and his much touted political pragmatism went hand in hand when Canadian Great Lakes' shipowners came asking for more rigorous coasting regulations. It was only with the coming of the Great Depression and the collapse of the grain trade that the D M A was able to get any action on its demands, yet even at this stage the movement of the Conservative government under R . B . Bennett was slow and halting. In the end the shipowners' wishes were only granted by the returning Liberal administration in 1936.