11 The making of American domestic policy
The uniqueness of American society, and of its political system, lies in the
combination of stability and change that has characterised American life
since the end of the eighteenth century. Today the American system of gov-
ernment is in a very real sense the most ‘modernised’ political system in
the world, less inhibited than any other by traditionalist modes of behaviour,
and yet it operates within a constitutional framework of unparalleled stabil-
ity and strength. By the end of the Second World War, the political system
seemed to have set firmly into the mould created during the long domination
of the presidency by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, however, the political
system has evolved into something very different from the ‘Roosevelt Sys-
tem’ which then characterised the processes of decision-taking. In order to
understand the way in which decisions are taken today it is necessary to chart
the developments that have taken place since 1945 and observe the way in
which the system of government that President Roosevelt bequeathed to the
United States has been transformed.
The Roosevelt system
The dominant characteristic of the Roosevelt system was a pluralist political
system in which a number of traditional groupings – labour, business and
agriculture – operated through the channels of the government machine.
Federalism, the division of power between the national government and the
states, was well adapted to the working of this system of pluralism. Pres-
sure groups brought about the compromises on policy decisions that were
necessary for the government of the country. The political parties remained
a vitally important structure through which political offices were allocated.
The Roosevelt coalition of the Northern cities and the predominantly rural
South seemed to have established a mechanism by which the national gov-
ernment could, through the medium of the Democratic Party, pull together
the disparate parts of the nation. Under Roosevelt the presidency had be-
come the central driving force in the system of government. The need for
presidential leadership during the years of the Depression and throughout