Dissertation Information for Thomas Michael Laichas NAME: - Thomas Michael Laichas
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1999)
ADVISORS: - Mary Yeager
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Eric H. Monkkonen - Werner Hirsch
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: "Robbing Peter to pay Paul": Public finance and political change in California, 1850--1930
Abstract: This dissertation examines the interplay among California public finance, public administration, and political culture between 1850 and 1930.
Growth, diversification, and integration into national markets characterized California's economy in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Interest groups demanded that state government shelter some members from market forces, help others increase their market share, and reduce taxes for all. Public officials felt compelled to promise "economical and efficient" systems of tax collection, budgetary planning and administrative oversight.
I trace California's systems of public finance and public administration to three political traditions. The first, a Jacksonian hostility to a powerful central state informed California politics in the last half of the 19 th century. The second tradition emerged in the 1890s as the Southern Pacific Railroad's effort to limit its tax liability and regulation. Through its political allies in Sacramento, the railroad concentrated spending and taxation decisions in a few legislative committees, providing the Espee with considerable clout in the Assembly and Senate.
The third tradition, Progressivism, began as a reaction against the Railroad's ham-handed bid to play kingmaker in California. Led by Governor Hiram Johnson, Progressive Republicans promised in the 1910 election to "kick the S.P. out of politics." By reforming public finance and administration, Progressives believed, they would turn state government into an instrument of social reform.
Yet Johnson and his legislative allies did not replace the old budgetary, revenue, and administrative systems with new ones. Instead, they adapted to their own purposes structures pioneered by the Southern Pacific's legislative friends. Nor did they successfully challenge the state's Jacksonian legacy, which informed the state constitution and divided power both among elected state officials and between the state and its myriad local governments.
By 1930, the state's hybrid systems of administration and finance had given the state the administrative capacity essential to its unprecedented program of road and school building. However, it demanded wily political management to navigate the process, ensuring that political power would remain the province of the well organized and the well-funded interests, many of which had helped construct the system in the first place.
| |
MPACT Scores for Thomas Michael Laichas A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-09-23 11:46:05
Advisors and Advisees Graph
generating graph, please reload |