f Progressive legislation (p. 6). The broker-state model maintains that policymakers brokered between competing interest groups seeking government assistance. Bean identifies corporate-liberal, pluralist, neopluralist, public choice, and neo-Marxist versions of the broker-state model. He contends that the broker-state model of the welfare-regulatory states growth in the twentieth century tends to ignore the role played by policy entrepreneurs and that this role is especially important in the development of small-business legislation.
Bean makes a convincing case that, at best, support from small businesses for federal intervention was narrow rather than widespread. However, policy entrepreneurs such as Wright Patman, Joseph Robinson, John Miller, and Millard Tydings listened to pleas from some individuals and specialized small-business interest groups and responded to them. Neither bill had the kind of impact its supporters anticipated. The Robinson-Patman bill turned out to be ambiguous, and it accelerated franchising as a means of avoiding its reach. The FTCs enforcement also took some of the teeth out of the bill. The Miller-Tydings bill did not include a nonsigner clause until the McGuire Act of 1952 and received lackluster state enforcement. Fair trade continued to fall into disuse in many industries, and in 1975 Congress repealed the Miller-Tydings Act.
The Second World War brought a new crisis and a new opportunity for the promotion of small businesses. This time, however, small manufacturing firms were the objects of solicitude. Critics argued that the federal governments contracts for war materials production favored big businesses, as did labor shortages and price controls. The 1942 Smaller War Plants Corporation Act (SWPC) was to correct this imbalance. Though the SWPC brought about few changes, surveys showed that small manufacturers enjoyed wartime prosperity and few of them complained. Unable to develop a small business constituency, the SWPC expired in 1946.
A new crisis, the Korean War, allowed political entrepreneurs to guide into existence new legislation for small manufacturers. In 1950 the Smaller Defense Plants Administration (SDPA) was established. It too, was ineffective. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), one of the largest agencies in the federal government, had survived the Second World War, but tales of its misconduct increased. The new Republican Congress took aim at eliminating the RFC. As the expiration date for the SDPA loomed, a compromise was reached. A Small Business Administration (SBA) was created to assume the roles previously played by the RFC and the SDPA. During the Eisenhower administration the SBA had little effect except as a patronage tool for the Republicans, but the legislation was renewed in 1955, and in 1957 the SBA was given permanent status. The SBA remained a marginal player because of limited funding from the Eisenhower administration and Republican control of the SBAs Loan Policy Board. After John F. Kennedys election the SBA began to grow, and it has continued to do so. Bean notes that by the 1980s, the agency was guaranteeing nearly half of the intermediate and long-term credit extended to small businesses (p. 160).
Bean has given us an important account of how this frequently symbolic small-business legislation came into existence. He shows that the legislation did not have the desired effect, nor was it generally sought by small businesses. The continually repeated and exaggerated warnings of the coming disaster for small businesses were not just premature; they ignored the continuing strength of the small-business sector in the United States. Bean supports his thesis about the importance of political entrepreneurs well, thereby explaining how such legislation could come into existence without strong interest groups to foster it.
A few issues merit more discussion. There were two very different types of legislation for small businesses during the era Bean studied. The legislation of the 1930s was clearly aimed at aiding small retail businesses, whereas t