The Federal Government in the Year 2000: Administrative Legacies of the Reagan Years

Historians writing in the future are likely to regard the two terms of the Reagan administration as a watershed period in the development of the American administrative state. This period is likely to be seen as a time when some issues of governance and public administration that had been brewing for quite a while were finally brought to the surface of political debate. At the center of this debate is the issue of the desirability of government intervention in the nation's social and economic affairs. An airing of this issue in the 1980s is particularly compelling because it is obvious to even the most casual observer that the United States is in the midst of a longterm technological, economic, and demographic transformation that is creating problems and opportunities for its people and government at a rapid pace. The technical and economic changes are closely interwoven. The nation is moving from an industrial era where the United States dominated the world economy through durable goods manufacturing and financial dealing toward what some have labeled a postindustrial, technoservice, or knowledgeintensive society. I In this new era, the world economic system is quickly becoming considerably more complex than before, with the movement of money and the production of goods and services more internationalized than in the past. In the process, the economic dominance of the United States has become more problematic than at any time since World War II reflecting a change in America's ability to control international markets and their importance in the economic health of the nation. To further complicate this picture, the demographic shape of the nation itself is changing. At least four dimensions of this demographic shift are cause for concern: (1) the growth in our aged population-the population of people over age 65 is expected to rise from 27 million in 1983 to about 35 million by the year 2000that will generate new demands on private resources and the federal treasury by way of pension, social security, and health care costs; (2) the aging of the baby boom generation-those born between 1945-1959-who will also be expected to place heavy demands on government but may also produce pressure for conservative social