Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 240 pages
• Published by: University Press of Kentucky August 3, 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0813121876
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0813121871
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

From Booklist
Bean is an associate history professor at Southern Illinois University and author of Beyond the Broker State: A History of the Federal Government's Politics towards Small Business, 1936-1961 (1996). He now continues to look at the role government plays in small business with this critical history of the Small Business Administration, which was established in 1953 as a "tiny lending agency." Bean's overriding theme is the contradictory nature of the SBA. Supposedly established to advocate for small-business owners and free enterprise, the agency's biggest support comes from Congress and it is frequently the target of critics of big government. Bean highlights the "corruption, fraud, and incompetence [that has] marred its minority enterprise programs," but he focuses on the "affirmative action" role of the SBA--first as it favored small companies over large ones and later, beginning with the Nixon administration, as it targeted loans to black-owned businesses. Nearly a third of Bean's book is devoted to notes and an extensive bibliography. David Rouse
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Product Review
"Powerful argument for killing off the agency and shrewd analysis of the political impulses that make its termination nearly impossible." -- Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2001

"Provides a critcal analysis of history of the SBA, which sheds light on the growth of government in the U.S." -- Journal of Economic History

“A well-written, well-researched study that touches on important issues.” -- Wyatt Wells

“The first full-length academic assessment of the agency.” -- Wall Street Journal

Reader Reviews
"In "Big Government and Affirmative Action," Jonathan J. Bean tells the story of the role of small business in the growth of the American state. This compact account is a fine sequel to the author's award winning "Beyond the Broker State: A History of the Federal Government's Policies Toward Small Business, 1936-61" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). It describes the process by which interest-group actors (business groups, congressional committee, and bureaucrats) operate to build nearly indestructible government programs. In addition, the book adds an important dimension to the story of the development of affirmative action. In manifold ways, congressional and bureaucratic policy toward "disadvantaged" businesses adumbrated later policy toward disadvantaged minorities and myriad of other victim groups, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) itself took up minority preferences as its raison d'etre." Jonathan Bean pulls no punches in this nonpartisan look at an agency notorious for corruption. Republicans, he explains, have supported the Small Business Administration to deflect criticism that they are beholden to "big" business, whereas Democrats have supported it to show that they are not "anti-business." "Bean has done a model job in producing a smoothly written and often amusing policy history, and the University Press of Kentucky has done excellent work in editing and publishing it."