Three changes and three continuities
Period 9 is best organized around three changes and three continuities.
- Conservative ideas gained influence, but the federal government stayed large. It continued to intervene in social policy, security, and the economy.
- The Cold War ended, but the United States stayed deeply engaged abroad. It remained involved through alliances, military interventions, trade, and later the War on Terror.
- Globalization and digital technology reorganized work and communication, while older arguments persisted in new forms. Those arguments concerned immigration, inequality, regional development, citizenship, and federal power.
The sequence from Reagan to the Great Recession
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1980–1981 | Reagan elected, tax cuts, PATCO: the conservative coalition moves from organizing to federal policy. |
| 1986 | Tax reform, IRCA, and the exposure of Iran-Contra converge economic, immigration, and executive-power issues. |
| 1989–1991 | Fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet dissolution end the bipolar Cold War order. |
| 1992–1994 | NAFTA is signed, approved, and takes effect: global trade becomes a central domestic political issue. |
| 1996 | Federal welfare reform changes cash assistance through bipartisan retrenchment. |
| 2001 | September 11 and the Afghanistan invasion sharply change national-security priorities and domestic surveillance. |
| 2003 | The Iraq War begins as a separate post-9/11 conflict built on a different rationale. |
| 2008–2010 | Financial crisis, TARP, ARRA, Dodd-Frank, and the ACA: federal intervention expands during economic and health-policy crises. |
How Reagan redirected the federal state built since the 1930s
| Dimension | Continuity | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Federal institutions | Social Security, Medicare, a large federal bureaucracy, federal taxation, defense spending, and major regulatory responsibilities remained. | Greater emphasis on tax reduction, deregulation, markets, defense buildup, and skepticism toward further domestic-program expansion. |
The key sentence: the conservative turn redirected the federal government more than it dismantled the institutional state built since the 1930s. Use it as a thesis starter for any question on the role of government after 1980.
Using the review in an SAQ
The practice SAQ gives a 1990s economic analyst who argues that technological change and international competition are reorganizing American manufacturing faster than public policy can adapt. Three parts follow: describe an economic development, explain a social or geographic effect, and explain a federal policy debate.
Plan before you write. For a describe part, pick a concrete, dated development and say what it did. For an explain part, connect cause to effect: tie economic change to people and places, and tie a policy debate to the arguments on both sides. Each part is scored separately, so a missed part does not sink the whole question.
Review checklist
- Can you give two things that changed and two that stayed the same in the federal government after 1980?
- Can you explain, in order, the events that ended the Cold War from 1985 to 1991?
- Can you keep the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq separate, with the aims of each?
- Can you give three causes of Rust Belt decline?
- Can you connect the 2008 response and the Affordable Care Act to older debates from the New Deal and the Great Society?