Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the appearance of the second edition of Theodore J. Lowi’s The End of Liberalism, subtitled The Second Republic of the United States. The preface to the second edition ends, “I want to express a very belated thanks to Friedrich A. Hayek. His work had much more of an influence on me than I realized during the writing of the First Edition. I neither began nor ended as a Hayekist but instead found myself confirming, by process of elimination and discovery, many of his fears about the modern liberal state.”

Lowi argues that the Second Republic is marked by “the state of permanent receivership,” which is defined as “a state whose government maintains a steadfast position that any institution large enough to be a significant factor in the community may have its stability underwritten. It is a system of policies that sets a general floor under risk, either by attempting to eliminate risk or to reduce or share the costs of failure.” This state includes anticipatory receivership, which includes “businesses that are not actually on the brink of bankruptcy but are in a sector of the economy where bankruptcies or reorganizations are likely unless there is some kind of a preventive measure.”

Thirty years out, Ted Lowi looks pretty good this morning. Not much else looks good, but the second edition of The End of Liberalism shows that this dour morning has been coming for some time.

Read the book.