America's Three Regimes: A New Political History

As we embark upon another presidential election year, it is worth pausing to ask the questions: how did we get to where we are today? what were the forces and events that influenced the evolution our modern political system and governmental institutions? Professor Keller answers these questions thoroughly and engagingly, in a nonpartisan manner, and he does it all in about 300 pages of text. He divides U.S. political history into three eras or regimes: (1) the post-colonial deferential regime, (2) the party-democratic regime that began with the Jackson Administration and continued until the Great Depression, and (3) the populist-bureaucratic regime. The book, in my opinion, really shines when it discusses the third of these three regimes. Professor Keller begins his discussion of that era by noting that prior to 1930, our political institutions focussed primarily on constraining the power of government; during the 1930s, however, there was a paradigm shift, and people began to say: "How can we use the power of government to serve us (or, to be precise, how can I use the power of government to serve me and my friends)"? The courts similarly went from telling the government what it can't do to telling it what it should do. You may not like the the size, power and pervasive presence of our government (I sure don't), but if you want to understand how it grew into the beast we have today, read this book.