We study how the organization of the state evolves over the process of development of a nation, using a new dataset on … the internal organization of the U.S. federal bureaucracy over 1817-1905. First, we show a series of facts, describing how … the size of the state, its presence across the territory, and its key organizational features evolved over the nineteenth …

Americans have a love-hate relationship with government. Rejecting bureaucracy--but not the goods and services the … welfare state provides--Americans have demanded that government be made to run like a business. Hence today's privatization … revolution. But as Jon D. Michaels shows, separating the state from its public servants, practices, and institutions does …