ABSTRACT
The executive, usually occupied or dominated by a single individual or a small group, is the strongest organ of government, even in democracies. Adam Smith had caustic words for the “man of system” who is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part. The United States illustrates the process of state expansion in slow motion. The two-centuries-long path of US federal expenditures as a percent of Gross Domestic Product is tracked. Whatever the actual mechanism may be, American political development represents yet another instance of what de Jouvenel observed in history: The picture of a concentration of forces growing to the hand of a single person, called the state, which disposes, as it goes, of ever ampler resources, claims over the community ever wider rights, tolerates less and less authority existing outside itself.
