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“Land of Liberty”: The American Governmental Exception

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The American Exception, Volume 2

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Abstract

Once upon a time, America was reputed to have an exceptionally small state. In the 1830s, Tocqueville could barely see it. In the decades after his visit, American government lagged in seizing central control of the country. Later observers claimed that Americans were “anti-statist” (Lipset 1996). Their liberal tradition, rooted in the Constitution, ostensibly aimed to restrain state power and free citizens to pursue their own purposes. With each branch of government checking the other two, and political power decentralized by a federalist division of labor, the United States resisted the kind of state building that became the mark of modernity across much of the globe. In the land of liberty, government was at best a necessary evil, or so conventional wisdom had it. History and law and culture combined to create a governmental exception.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA

    Frank J. Lechner

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Lechner, F.J. (2017). “Land of Liberty”: The American Governmental Exception. In: The American Exception, Volume 2. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58720-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58720-6_2

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