Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy

Daniel P. Carpenter is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He has also taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. This book is based upon his dissertation, which won the 1998 Harold Lasswell Award of the American Political Science Association, and includes a chapter that won the 1995 Herbert Kaufman Award of the AP5A.

• List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 One: Entrepreneurship, Networked Legitimacy, and Autonomy 14 Two: The Clerical State: Obstacles to Bureaucratic Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century America 37 Three: The Railway Mail, Comstockery, and the Waning of the Old Postal Regime, 1862-94 65 Four: Organizational Renewal and Policy Innovation in the National Postal System, 1890-1910 94 Five: The Triumph of the Moral Economy: Finance, Parcels, and the Labor Dilemma in the Post Office, 1908-24 144 Six: Science in the Service of Seeds: The USDA, 1862-1900 179 Seven: From Seeds to Science: The USDA as University, 1897-1917 212 Eight: Multiple Networks and the Autonomy of Bureaus: Departures in Food, Pharmaceutical, and Forestry Policy, 1897-1913 255 Nine: Brokerage and Bureaucratic Policymaking: The Cementing of Autonomy at the USDA, 1914-28 290 Ten: Structure, Reputation, and the Bureaucratic Failure of Reclamation Policy, 1902-14 326 Conclusion: The Politics of Bureaucratic Autonomy 353 Notes 369 Archival Sources 459 Index 465

Winner of the Levine Memorial Book Prize Winner of the Gladys M. Kammerer Award "Carpenter's book is intellectually arresting--weaving quantitative and qualitative empiricism through an impressive array of theoretical propositions toward an attractive theory of bureaucratic autonomy in the administrative state ... [A]dmirably successful in adding to our narrative of the development of the American administrative state."--Anthony Bertelli, Public Administration Review