Regulation and the Collapse of the New Deal Order, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market

This chapter will examine the emergence of this new, post-New Deal conception of the role of the administrative state, often called “The New Governance.” I will first describe the policy premises of the New Deal administrative state and contrast them with the underlying assumptions of the New Governance. In doing so, I will explain how the ideas that permeated the New Governance shaped regulatory policy in the 1990s and 2000s. I will then explore the reasons for the rise of this new conception of the administrative state. In particular, I will demonstrate that the New Governance had its origins not only in conservative attacks on the premises of the New Deal Order, but also from the left’s powerful critique of the postwar liberal state