David P. Calleo

Fresh from a youthful year-long stint at the upper reaches of the State Department, Calleo presents a comprehensive but richly insightful and suggestive picture of the state of America’s grand federal experiment at the time of the Cold War and Vietnam.

Calleo examines how America’s character complicates its increasing domestic and foreign difficulties. The federal dispersion of power, along with the country’s great diversity and affluence, provide vast resources but make it difficult to set priorities and husband resources. The resulting tensions threaten the “Liberal Establishment” that has run the country since Roosevelt’s New Deal, and undermines the electoral coalition that has sustained that liberal consensus.

Pursuing these themes, the author examines the workings of the Presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the bureaucracy, as well as state and local governments. Further chapters consider America’s “land and people,” cultural and political traditions, and the operation of the party system. Calleo uses his studies of Europe’s states and their struggle to create a continental union to put American practices in an unusual cosmopolitan framework.

‘At last someone has explained clearly and authoritatively what must have been a source of confusion to many people – the American political system… Calleo has knowledge of many countries outside America and he makes useful comparisons of political systems. He notes that we can all no doubt learn much from reflecting on the similarities and differences’

– Japan Times, November 20, 1968