The National Planning Idea in U.S. Public Policy: Five Alternative Approaches by David E Wilson

Author:David E Wilson [Wilson, David E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000267815
Goodreads: 49788461
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

New Structural Reassessments of American Society

The national planning debates were accompanied by an outpouring of analyses of the need for and possibilities of fundamental rethinking and reform of the structure of the American economy, American society, and American government. In a pattern reminiscent of the early New Deal, but quite probably exceeding even its most vigorous years, the questioning of the efficacy and vitality of the American system, glossed over during the 1950s and only slowly rediscovered as the 1960s progressed, became a flood of literature in the mid-1970s. From this new literature, six major trend areas can be identified.

A first key topic was a searching reexamination of American government itself. The traumatic events of the early 1970s—Vietnam collapse, Great Society program frustrations, severe stagflation, the Watergate scandals, political and campaign corruption, urban fiscal crises, the problems of the CÍA, FBI, IRS, and Department of Justice—combined to decrease sharply public confidence in governmental institutions and performance. The Nixonian excesses and subsequent policy-making drift vividly illustrated the dangers of the strong presidency that had built up gradually throughout the twentieth century and led to reevaluation of national leadership structures and a renewed search for collaborative and countervailing forces. The Congress enjoyed a strong policy-making resurgence and attempted to achieve procedural reforms, more centralized decision mechanisms, a new budgetary process and new policy analysis skills to overcome its fragmented, pluralistic inability to address broad national issues on anything by a crisis management basis.

The federal bureaucracy came under widespread critical scrutiny, because of fears that federal spending, deficits, and tax burdens had spun out of control; that federal agencies and programs did not work well either singly or in concert and could not address major problems; and that big government had become a colossus of proliferating programs, overregulation, and burdensome reporting requirements. The national stagflation pressures threw the crisis of major urban areas into vivid fiscal relief and led to further reassessment of the entire jumbled web of intergovernmental, subsidy, grant, and national growth programs. Although governmental reform movements tend to be transitory, these concerns, proposals, and accompanying waves of corrective actions suggested that governmental reform had acquired a new seriousness and staying power not experienced since the Progressive era prior to World War I.

Public mistrust and critical reform reevaluations and actions were also directed toward the second major colossus of American society—the corporate business structure. The 1973-1976 economic crises raised doubts about the future of capitalism, corporate manipulation of markets, and control through administered prices rather than competition. Watergate and associated political scandals highlighted the power of massive corporations in the political realm, a concern furthered when major regulated industries showed their reluctance to support Republican drives for deregulation.

Some major corporate failures raised doubts about the stability and managerial capabilities of the corporate sector, and the social responsibilities of business became a topic of much greater concern. Basic questions were raised about business-government relationships in a society that had increasingly shifted from market to legislative decision making, the manipulative and abrasive relationships

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