Introduction
The Great Society is an ambitious set of domestic programs in the United States adopted by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Great Society assumed the life of a nation without poverty and the eradication of racial segregation in the country. Parallel to this, rapid reforms were undertaken in the fields of health care, education, and transport. Substantial US spending on the Vietnam War left no room for the development of the Great Society’s programs. Nevertheless, specific successes have been achieved, such as an increase in the gross domestic product, increased taxes and personal incomes of Americans (Davies, 2002). However, these programs have led to opposite processes in matters of racial segregation and urban revolts. The US South and New York, and Los Angeles are at the center of the unfolding civil rights struggle. In this paper, three main reasons will be considered that led to the collapse of this program implementation.
Hierarchy Complexity
The complicated hierarchy of bureaucracy is the first reason for the failure of the program. The channel connecting the initiator of the program and its implementation should not include many parallel collaborations with organizations that have little interest in the process itself or evaluate it negatively (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). In addition, the project integration error was also in the fact that the groups that initiated the project at the political level did not implement it on their own, delegating this work to other organizations and groups. These facts are explained and are a consequence of the complexity of the bureaucratic machine and the very hierarchical structure, which was far from perfect.
While some progress has been made in economic reforms, which has a positive effect on various quantitative indicators, social reforms, due to the structural distance between the project’s initiators and ordinary citizens, turned out to be a complete failure. At the local and regional levels, implementation control was relatively low, and neglect of this stage of introducing specific project reforms proved fatal for the Great Society (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). However, it is also worth noting that the Great Society program was experimental, which had its pros and cons, although it was possible to appreciate them only in the long term fully. The social resonance and the events caused by these reforms did not tolerate long and soft decisions of the government, which, due to the unworked theory of its experiment, had to treat symptoms or patch holes in the consequences of decisions made without the ability to work with the root causes.
Economic Mechanisms
State policy adhered to two main mechanisms of social choice – voting and the market, ignoring an essential point of structure or hierarchy. Economists were the first to take this category into account, developing control issues within structures and creating the first principle-agent models (Moe, 1984). The structural disagreement between the Economic Development Administration and other involved organizations stalled and ultimately froze the project (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). In addition, simply subsidizing the salaries of the unemployed for employers to take them to work was not the only correct solution and rested on many complex social issues and disagreements.
The separation of income and expenses, proposed by Reagan, is a reasonably promising direction. However, the credibility of his statements was questioned, despite reasonably rational thoughts, among which was the prediction of Congressional interference in the funding of welfare and medical services (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). In addition, the reason for the hierarchical complexity imposed restrictions on the smooth operation of project financing, which required constant changes in plans and the corresponding cost overruns.
The absence of thought-out control mechanisms within the hierarchy, methods for assessing this control, issues of integration, and other theoretical models developed by economists at that time had negative consequences on the deployment of the Great Society. Moreover, even though these methods could be widely and qualitatively applied in the economy, the difficulty was precisely in their political integration. Many articles by prominent minds were extremely frequently cited but rarely used (Moe, 1984). Moreover, resource accounting has led to the creation of methods for optimizing and allocating resources under certain constraints (Moe, 1984). Such approaches were called adaptive, which, taking into account the local and regional conditions of the Great Society program, would come in very handy.
At that time, case-based economic mechanisms were also being developed. In many studies and theories, economists have even abandoned the categories of optimization, revenue maximization, and information accuracy to benefit situation-oriented business decisions. In a sense, this is extreme, implying the correction of symptoms, which they reached in the development of the Great Society. However, these methods involved building sub-theories for each case (Moe, 1984). In other words, any problem was not limited to a temporary solution. The problem required promotion, and analysis, which helped to reproduce the entire chain of events that led to this problem, focusing more on the root causes or some links in the chain that slow down or complicate the work. A distinctive feature of these methods was that the search for a solution was carried out taking into account the resources available at that time and had a more internal character than blaming external circumstances. Reflection in politics of these methods only much later than the events described in the 1980s in budget planning, policy management, and organizational approaches (Moe, 1984). All these factors gave impetus to the development of behavioral paradigms, which took into account global political and economic factors and local social ones. Optimization in its global sense, like such categories as equality, and marginality created the basis for new traditions in the economy and politics of the state. Such approaches were lacking for such an ambitious program as the Great Society, which affected not only the economic well-being of citizens but also social factors that contribute to the general level of peace and well-being of society.
Organizational advances in economics could have helped in the more successful deployment of the Great Society program. The integration of behavioral paradigms, and organizational methods of management into the political bureaucracy in the scientific literature was like recommendations that could, if not impeccably improve, then at least adopt certain aspects of the organization. Perhaps politicians should have listened to the economic leaders of the time, but progress in economic mechanisms at the federal level has always undergone long-term changes, usually dictated by empirical errors. The struggle between interests and power has always been of a multi-criteria nature and was not limited only to structural issues of imperfect actions taken. In addition, there was another problem with solid roots in US history.
Racial Segregation
For all its complexity, agreement within the hierarchy would significantly speed up program implementation, but many organizations deliberately slowed down the progress It was due to several reasons. First, the positive dynamics in implementing the project in terms of eliminating unemployment and racial segregation contributed to a certain reluctance of conservative organizations to fit into this program. Second, the refusal of cooperation by federal agencies, on whose decisions many others have relied, also hampered development. In addition, the statistics showed a meager percentage of total decision-making due to the need for the participation of dozens of organizations (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). The reason for conservative views exists to this day, but then the trend of tolerance and equality of citizens was relatively fresh, like traditional stereotypes, firmly reinforced by centuries of history.
Moreover, local grievances caused by the riots of communities of color were misinterpreted at the higher federal level. The rejection at the level of established stereotypes of workers with a different skin color arising from the first two problems met with the same harsh measures to suppress uprisings caused by working conditions. The original idea of granting equality of civil rights and all possible life benefits to all races within the state met aggression in subsequent actions that tried to hide the unfortunate symptoms of the program. Moreover, the war which began in Vietnam only complicated the already difficult situation of national cohesion. Many non-white races have found their vocation in military affairs, sometimes paying too high a price for this recognition and financial well-being.
Conclusion
The three problems voiced in this work are interrelated, and the dynamics of the program’s development were of decisive importance in its final failure. The roots of the problems originated in the history of the United States and had to go through certain stages of their overcoming. Many of these, such as structural racism and discrimination, occur in modern times, but the consequences of the Great Society should not be underestimated. This program laid the foundation for a focus on domestic production, raising the gross domestic product, and creating ideas of equality that are still cultivated today. The mistakes and reasons that led to these problems turned out to be instructive and, in the long term, bore fruit in the creation of a great society, steps towards which are still being taken. The idea was too ambitious for that time, but the global goal expressed by Johnson finds echoes in modern political programs adopted not only in the United States.
References
Davies, G. (2002). The great society after Johnson: The case of bilingual education. The Journal of American History, 88(4), 1405-1429.
Moe, T. M. (1984). The new economics of organization. American Journal of Political Science, 739-777.
Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A. (1984). Implementation: How great expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland; Or, why it’s amazing that federal programs work at all, this being a saga of the Economic Development Administration as told by two sympathetic observers who seek to build morals on a foundation (Vol. 708). Univ of California Press.