Review 2: The Political Economy of the New Deal by Jim F. Couch and William F. Shughart (1998)
Reviewed by:
Ulbrich, H.H.,
Clemson University,
Choice (June 1999)
"Couch (Univ. of North Alabama) and Shughart (Univ. of Mississippi) are the latest in a series of economists to revisit the New Deal from a variety of perspectives, but mainly from that of Public Choice. They fairly thoroughly if somewhat critically summarize the nature and impart of the agricultural programs and the core elements of New Deal I and New Deal II, emphasizing the distribution of dollars across the states. The authors find a systematic bias in the distribution towar the West and away from the Southeast. Their primary purpose is to explore the role of electoral politics in determining the allocation of funds, as opposed to or in conjunction with such allocation factors as matching by states, measures of need, or special circumstances. They make a fairly convincing case that electoral politics, primarily but not exclusively presidential, was a significant contributing factor in the allocation of funds in a number of New Deal programs, despite efforts by southerners in Congress (particularly Richard Russell) to shift the distribution toward the safely Democratic South. Well written, this volume is a useful blend of public choice theory and economic history. Lower-division undergraduate through professional collections."
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