Abstract

This article is excerpted from the concluding chapter of Thomas McCraw's "Prophets of Regulation," an important new study of the history of government regulation in the U.S. It appears inescapable that regulation in America has more often functioned as a protective device rather than as a promotional or developmental one. Of course, protection was not always inappropriate. By holding in check socially destructive forms of behavior, protective regulation often cushioned the impact of rapid industrial change. In America, in contrast to older societies, so many other forces consistently acted to promote economic growth that regulation can hardly be condemned for not always doing so. Because the appropriates balance between economic efficiency and legal due process has seldom been self-evident, individual persons and particular ideas have mattered a great deal in regulatory history. In thinking about the future of regulation, whether in broadcasting, telephones, or any other industry, it is important to keep in mind the ambiguous record of the past. Even though much of regulatory history is tinged with apparent failure, regulation cannot properly be said either to have "failed" or "succeeded" in an overall historical sense. Instead, individual regulatory experiments and episodes must be judged against a standard true to the particular historical moment.