State Regulators and Pragmatic Federalism in the United States, 1889–1945

William R. Childs

Business History Review, 2001, vol. 75, issue 4, 701-738

Abstract: State regulators played a large part in constructing the American regulatory system from the late nineteenth century to the midtwentieth. They faced an adversary relationship not only with businesses but also, beginning with passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, with national regulators. Shaping a process of “pragmatic federalism,” the state regulators forged a cooperative regulatory regime in which they and national regulators controlled the nations's railroads. In the 1930s and 1940s, state regulators extended the cooperative approach to numerous other regulated industries. These findings challenge the argument that the Shreveport case ended meaningful state regulation and suggest that the rise of big government included a continued commitment to the federalist framework of the U.S. Constitution, at least to the mid-twentieth century.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:75:y:2001:i:04:p:701-738_06

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().