The War on Government.

• In Event: Against the American State? Legitimacy and Reconfigurations.

Abstract

An anti-government ideology has dominated domestic US politics since the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. It drives deregulation, opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights, relentless tax cuts and a revived ideology of individualism. This paper does two things. First, it explains how this forceful opposition to state activism gained traction in the 1980s as a reaction to the expansion of the federal government between 1940 and 1975 and the economic malaise of the 1970s. I explain how American politics was ‘nationalized’ during this earlier period, stimulating a political counter movement leading forward to and in many ways presaging the Trump populist turn. Second, the paper explains how the political project to dismantle and weaken this strong federal government has unfolded, from the 1980s to the present, by reducing tax revenues, de-regulating public policy, stopping the race desegregation agenda, privatizing criminal justice, and largely eviscerating controls on how much unidentified donors can spend on election campaigns. America’s war on government pushed against a political system designed to advantage and protect racial inequality, through such institutions as the electoral college, the US Senate’s malapportionment, the constitutional strength of states’ residual powers, and judicial support for weak government. Anti-statism has transformed American democracy. It redefines the role of government, reversing civil rights gains; and facilitates the dominance of wealth-based interests in national policy to challenge the resilience of democratization in the United States, by permitting the opulent to influence elections unhindered by campaign contributions laws and by jeopardizing the equal rule of law for all citizens. Historically the rise of anti-government ideology rests in a struggle between two competing visions of American democracy, an egalitarian vision which insists on federal activism to enforce rights versus an individualist order which demands a limited state irrespective of resulting inequalities.

Author

• Desmond King, University of Oxford