The complexity of the American economy and polity has grown at an explosive rate in our era of globalization. Yet as the 2008 financial crisis revealed, the evolution of the American state has not proceeded apace. The crisis exposed the system's manifold political and economic dysfunctionalities. Featuring a cast of leading scholars working at the intersection of political science and American history, The Unsustainable American State is a historically informed account of the American state's development from the nineteenth century to the present. It focuses in particular on the state-produced inequalities and administrative incoherence that became so apparent in the post-1970s era. Collectively, the book offers an unsettling account of the growth of racial and economic inequality, the ossification of the state, the gradual erosion of democracy, and the problems deriving from imperial overreach. Utilizing the framework of sustainability, a concept that is currently informing some of the best work on governance and development, the contributors show how the USA's current trajectory does not imply an impending collapse, but rather a gradual erosion of capacity and legitimacy. That is a more appropriate theoretical framework, they contend, because for all of its manifest flaws, the American state is durable. That durability, however, does not preclude a long relative decline.

About the Author
Lawrence Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He also is a professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Political Science. Desmond King is the Andrew Mellon Professor of American Government and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford University and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Reviews
A searing critique of the American state's failure to contain growing economic inequality and to respond effectively to the recent financial meltdown and economic collapse as well as an impressive effort to tap scholarship on American political development for insights into prospects for that state's sustainability and legitimacy. * Thomas E. Mann W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195392142
Author Lawrence Jacobs
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 490g
Dimensions(mm) 150mm * 234mm * 23mm