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Rural Opportunities: Minimalist Policy and Community‐Based Experimentation
Author(s) -
Swanson Louis E.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-0072.2001.tb02077.x
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , subsidy , incentive , unintended consequences , public administration , political science , agricultural policy , rural area , business , economic growth , economics , agriculture , law , market economy , ecology , politics , biology
Rural America's experiences with federal policies provide lessons on both the benefits and liabilities of minimalist policy attention and community‐based policy experimentation. Prior to the New Deal federal rural policies promoted incentives to settle vast territories, subsidize private development of internal market structures, and invest in the benefits of higher education. The New Deal redirected rural policies to more narrow foci on the farm economic and environmental crises. These new, more centralized policies were built upon the rapid expansion of the Department of Agriculture into the first modern federal bureaucracy, politically legitimized on the basis of community‐based policy experimentation. The seemingly unintended consequence of these emergency efforts to rescue farming was the marginalization of most non‐farm policy concerns. The resulting minimalist federal approach to rural America was due to the absence of a unified national constituency for rural concerns. Understanding rural America's inadvertent experimentation in minimalist policy attention and in community‐based policy structures can inform current policy initiatives to decentralize federal authority.