State Building Through Partnership: Delegation, Public-Private Partnerships, and the Political Development of American Imperialism, 1898–1916

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the United States transformed itself from a commercial republic into a major international actor and acquired its first overseas colonies and dependencies. This article investigates the role of public-private partnerships between American state officials and American financiers in the management and expansion of American empire. Confronted with tepid support from Congress for further imperial expansion and development, colonial bureaucrats looked to investment bankers to accomplish goals for which they lacked the financial capacity and political support to achieve independently. These partnerships were soon formalized as "Dollar Diplomacy," an arrangement that would govern America's imperial strategy in the Caribbean. This article highlights two theoretical processes: (1) the downstream effects of congressional delegation decisions and their role in motivating institutional adaptations, and (2) the formation of public-private partnerships as an alternative means of state development, and the unique pitfalls of this approach. To illustrate these mechanisms, this article presents historical narratives, based largely on archival research, on the emergence of this Dollar Diplomacy partnership in the formal American colonies, the spread of this system of imperialism to the Caribbean, and its partial collapse during the early Wilson administration.

Defining the State from within

“…Current accounts stress that governments often adopt complex associational forms because government officials seek to mobilize the existing administrative capacity of the private sector when designing programs (e.g., Clemens 2006; Donahue and Zeckhauser 2011; Frasure and Jones-Correa 2010; Moore 2011). By contrast, our focus on schemas suggests that, for legislators, categorizing a given practice as “state” or “not state” by affiliating it with a public or private entity (that is, repurposing existing institutions to take advantage of their schematic associations) may be as important a motivator in designing policies as these administrative or financial considerations.…”

“…In most cases, they find that doing so offers a pragmatic solution to the problems of governance. For example, associational policies allow officials to reduce costs (Landow and Ebdon 2012; Rosenau 1999), draw on the administrative capacity of the private sector (Clemens 2006; Donahue and Zeckhauser 2011; Frasure and Jones-Correa 2010; Moore 2011), and overcome institutional or political roadblocks (Clemens 2006; Hacker 2002; Hawley 1966; Howard 1997; Mettler 2011; Morgan and Campbell 2011), including ideological objections to the expansion of central state power (Balogh 2015; Hawley 1974). Despite this interest, scholars have yet to examine why officials choose one associational policy form over another.…”

American Political Development: Expansion and Sovereignty Beyond the States

“…Too often, the dominance of the president in American foreign affairs is assumed, but a careful review of the presidency during the early acquisition of overseas territories reveals a much weaker executive. The president’s powers grew as the colonial bureaucrats charged with managing the overseas colonies began to augment the capacity of the nascent American foreign-policy state by monopolizing information about the colonies and, through their relationship with American banks, finding ways to achieve foreign-policy objectives with little interference from Congress (Moore 2011). By exploring the politics of territorial governance, the theoretical literature on the president’s ability to act unilaterally in foreign affairs can be evaluated in its proper historical context (Kriner 2010).…”

Innovation without Reputation: How Bureaucrats Saved the Veterans’ Health Care System

“…These theoretical predictions are confirmed by historical research, as well as by many recent statistical studies that show how agencies with consistently poor performance receive less discretion to implement their programs and are often the first on the chopping block when politicians are looking to shrink the bureaucracy. 28 For an application of this mechanism in a very different context, see Moore 2011. 29 Granovetter 1973Carpenter 2001, 29.…”