Towards Big-government Conservatism: Conservatives and Federal Aid to Education in the 1970s

Journal article

If conservatives have dominated American political life since the 1960s, this article argues, it is a conservatism that bears little resemblance to that of Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator whose failed 1964 presidential campaign is often seen as marking the beginnings of the modern conservative movement in the United States. Goldwater's anti-statism, it seems, has yielded to a species of 'big-government conservatism'. In this article, Davies uses the case of federal education policy to probe some of the dynamics of this shift. He argues that it is intrinsically difficult to convert anti-government rhetoric into action. First, while Americans may dislike government in the abstract, they approve of most of the specific things that it does, including federal aid to schools. Second, the Madisonian structure of the political system gives great political leverage to clientele groups wishing to preserve the status quo - in this case, the bold social policy of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society'. Faced with these political realities, American conservatives have little choice but to accommodate the continuing growth of government. Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications.

Authors: Davies, G

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 621-+
• Publication date: 2008-10-01
• DOI: 10.1177/0022009408095419
• ISSN: 0022-0094
• Language: English
• Keywords: Elementary and Secondary Education Act; conservatism; Richard Nixon; No Child Left Behind Act; Lyndon Johnson; George W. Bush