Synopses & Reviews
Gerald Berk's Alternative Tracks is a lean but provocative, timely, insightful, and forcefully written challenge to the conventional wisdom about industrial America's political economy. -- Review of Politics
At the heart of Alternative Tracks is the historical relationship between democracy. and the modern corporation. Gerald Berk uses the case of the railroad industry to show that industrial centralization and corporate hierarchy did not follow a course solely determined by the efficiency imperatives of modern technology. Rather, collective choice and the state had lasting influence on the development of corporate capitalism. Moreover, the role of government depended less on the exercise of interest-group or class power than it did on the protracted struggle over constitutional norms of fairness and justice relating to corporation and the market. Mediated through the court, Congress, and the bureaucracy, this struggle had profound effects on the organization of railroads, the pattern of urbanization, and the practice of business regulation.
A very impressive work ... Offers the reader real insight into the technical factors and financial arrangements involved in the development of American railroads. -- Perspectives on Political Science
Berk has offered some powerful questions for future scholars to keep in mind, and no student of railroad history or the history of business can afford to overlook this book. -- American Historical Review
An ambitious effort to make sense of how the modern American state was fashioned. -- American Political Science Review
Synopsis
Alternative Tracks provides a novel interpretation of industrialization and political development in the United States. Focusing on the critical case of railroads, Gerald Berk shows that alternative forms of economic organization and governmental regulation existed in the late nineteenth century. Constitutional choices, not technological imperatives or economic interests, determined the outcome in the twentieth century: a centralized industry regulated according to liberal principles of redistribution. Alternative Tracks reveals a nineteenth-century rival to this political economy--an equally efficient and more democratic system of regional railroads regulated according to republican principles.
Synopsis
A novel interpretation of industrialization and political development in the United States, focusing on the critical case of railroads.
Winner of the J. David Greenstone Prize from the American Political Science Association
Alternative Tracks provides a novel interpretation of industrialization and political development in the United States. Focusing on the critical case of railroads, Gerald Berk shows that alternative forms of economic organization and governmental regulation existed in the late nineteenth century. Constitutional choices, not technological imperatives or economic interests, determined the outcome in the twentieth century: a centralized industry regulated according to liberal principles of redistribution. Alternative Tracks reveals a nineteenth-century rival to this political economy--an equally efficient and more democratic system of regional railroads regulated according to republican principles.