Crisis and Leviathan

Higgs’s account of why American government grew: not steadily, but in jumps during emergencies — the world wars, the Depression — after which it never fully receded. He calls the residue a ratchet effect, and argues the mechanism is partly ideological: a crisis changes what citizens believe government is for, and the new powers and the new beliefs outlast the emergency that produced them.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in the Public Choice Theory section as the historical test of the theory — a documented mechanism for why state expansion is asymmetric, read next to Buchanan and Tullock’s models of the incentives that drive it.

Where I saw it: On Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Public Choice Theory, saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription lives on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Government — the subject of the book’s growth thesis.
• Regulation — the form most of that growth took.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the list this came from.