Review 2: The Political Economy of the New Deal
by Jim F. Couch and William F. Shughart
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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