Title: bureaucratic autonomy - before the New Deal!
Product review: Carpenter's study of bureaucratic autonomy is innovative in a few respects. First, he takes seriously intra-country differences in bureaucratic autonomy. As he shows, some agencies are more autonomous than others. Second, he looks at agency autonomy before the New Deal revolution, removing that as an intervening variable. Finally, the book uses historical narratives of the Postal Office, USDA, and Interior. At times, the book contains too much a history of the agencies and not enough theory-building. However, the book does produce interesting theoretical arguments about how bureaucracies gain autonomy in large part through outside interest-groups and networks. Definitely worth reading for scholars of bureaucracies.
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