Progressivism, Corporate Capitalism, and the Social Sciences

Abstract

Although various emphases have been taken over the years, the dominant preference of administrative reformers in the United States beginning with the early Progressive Era reform movement has been to build a strong, executive-centered, and social science-informed state. Proponents’ “search for order” has consistently been predicated on the idea that the Madisonian system cannot deal with the national domestic and international challenges facing America. This essay argues that reformers’ persistent search for “public” order through federal administrative reform has bequeathed a more private-than public-sector-dominated administrative order because of its focus on bureaucratic rather than democratic administration. This has occurred because of an emergent nexus between progressives, corporate interests, and the social sciences and their professional associations. Moreover, and quite paradoxically, the amplifying and constitutive effects of this business–social science–progressive nexus has made it more difficult to mobilize the citizen support that is critical for building the federal agency expertise that the early progressives and their heirs have deemed essential for effective governance.