ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to review the evolution of American administrative reform and state building, and opponents’ arguments, during the first three decades of the Cold War era. Discussed are the amplifying effects of IRP-based administrative reform within the expanding compensatory state, both nationally and internationally; the role of, and benefits to, the corporate–social science nexus pursuing further legitimacy by expanding the compensatory state during the Great Society; and, then, the anti-bureaucratic cultural revolts from the Left and the Right in America as threats to American exceptionalist values. This, at a time when Cold War anti-communist hysteria produced an assault on the loyalty of government workers in a second Red Scare that did lasting damage to the image of public service. Launched at the same time were conflicts among the general public, and within the social sciences, over the utility of the scientific method as an authority structure in America. However, the historic first-mover advantages in legitimacy of the economics profession within the social sciences continued the spread of econometric modeling in public administration and other disciplines. Still, opponents stressing deficiencies in this approach again set the stage for the next round of American administrative reform in the 1980s and beyond.
