Abstract

Robert Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan argues that there is a ratchet effect both after major wars and other serious crises, such as depressions: attitudinal or ideological changes lead not only to greater government spending but greater intrusion of government into economic command and control. Higgs's explanation of the growth of government, however, is embedded in and driven by a particular ideological view of the legal‐economic world, one that misapprehends certain legal‐economic fundamentals, including the scope of economic command and control, and that fails to deal with certain interpretive complexities, including alternative explanations.