Crisis and Leviathan

Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government is a 1987 monograph by economist and historian Robert Higgs that analyzes the expansion of the United States government across the twentieth century. First published in New York by Oxford University Press as part of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy series, the study advances a historical interpretation of state growth that centers on recurring wars and economic emergencies. Higgs contends that such crises produce abrupt increases in governmental power that recede only partially once the emergency ends, creating a persistent ratchet in state authority alongside ideological shifts that normalize the new interventions.^[1][2]

Crisis and Leviathan

First edition
Author	Robert Higgs
Language	English
Series	Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy book
Subject	Political economy, Economic history, United States government
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publication date	1987
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
Pages	350
ISBN	0-19-504967-5
OCLC	14719424

Contemporary reviewers in The Journal of Economic History, Business History Review, Political Science Quarterly, and the Journal of American Studies described the volume as a sweeping account of government growth, with commentators including Gary M. Anderson and Hugh Rockoff praising the ambition and clarity of its crisis-driven thesis.^{[3][4][5][6][2][7]} Anniversary editions from the Independent Institute and a 2025 symposium on extensions of the ratchet effect reflect ongoing relevance of Higgs's argument.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Contents

Higgs structures the book in two parts. Part I develops a conceptual framework for explaining how states grow, surveying competing theories of modernization, public goods provision, redistribution, and ideology, then specifying how crisis interacts with these forces to produce a ratchet effect. Part II reviews events from the late nineteenth century through the early 1980s, including the 1890s depression, the Progressive Era, wartime mobilization in 1916–1918, the Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II, and the policy environment after 1945. Across these chapters he traces institutional legacies such as emergency agencies, taxation, regulation, and jurisprudence, as well as associated ideological changes that render crisis-era policies more durable in peacetime.^[1][8]

Ratchet effect

Higgs defines the ratchet effect as a cyclical process in which national emergencies expand the operational scope of federal agencies, revenue systems, and regulatory powers, yet post-crisis retrenchment leaves institutional residues that raise the long-run baseline of state authority.^[1] He argues that political coalitions and administrative managers capitalize on exceptional wartime or depression-era powers to entrench new programs, staffing, and fiscal claims that become difficult to roll back afterward.^[2] Crises also shift public ideology, with emergency mobilization normalizing higher taxation, planning, and surveillance so that voters accept extraordinary interventions as standard governance.^[11] Higgs maintains that successive shocks compound these legacies, creating path-dependent growth in federal power across military, economic, and welfare domains even after emergencies conclude.^[1]

Reception

Reviewers in economic history, business history, political science, and American studies journals treated the book as a significant contribution to understanding how government power expands during crises and persists afterward. James M. Buchanan wrote in The Journal of Economic History that the volume framed contemporary debates on government growth and justified its scope and price.^[3] Robert D. Cuff's essay in Business History Review emphasized the narrative of market institutions under stress and praised the breadth of documentation.^[4] R. J. Saulnier reported in Political Science Quarterly that the analysis would interest political scientists as well as economists, and John A. Thompson highlighted the book's "crucial importance of ideology", praised its "clear, incisive analyses" of crisis episodes, and called it a "ray of hope" for limited government in the Journal of American Studies.^[5][6]

In the Cato Journal, Gary M. Anderson endorsed the crisis-driven thesis but suggested that the chosen starting date of 1900 limited longer comparisons, and he still described the volume as "an excellent book."^[2] Hugh Rockoff's review for The Economic History Review echoed the favorable response, concluding that "my admiration for this book is immense. It is elegantly written."^[11][7]

Legacy

Crisis and Leviathan helped popularize the ratchet effect as an organizing concept in the study of state growth. Subsequent research has used or extended Higgs's framework in several literatures, including fiscal sociology, regulatory studies, public health, and security studies. The Independent Institute devoted a 2025 symposium in The Independent Review to extensions of the ratchet model, with applications ranging from nuclear weapons policy to [[[Operation Warp Speed]], which indicates continuing scholarly engagement with the book's core claims.^[10][11]

An expanded 25th anniversary edition was issued by the Independent Institute in 2012, including a new preface by the author and a foreword by the historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.^[8] A further updated edition was released by the Independent Institute on October 7, 2025, reflecting continued relevance of the thesis and its contemporary applications.^{[9][1][12][13]} The 2025 symposium characterized Higgs's framework as a "straightforward but elegant" guide to "expansions of the U.S. government" and emphasized the "compounded crises" that sustain the ratchet effect.^[10] It noted that from 1950 to 2024 federal employment grew from 1.9 million to 3 million while state and local payrolls climbed from about 4.6 million to nearly 20 million, government outlays rose from 13.4 to more than 36 percent of GDP, and the Federal Register expanded from 9,500 to 90,402 pages, illustrating the framework's continued resonance.^[10]