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Until astonishingly recent times American national government played a marginal role in the life of the nation. Even as late as the eve of World War I, the State Department could support itself on consular fees. In most years revenues from tariffs supplied adequate financing, plus a surplus, from all other responsibilities. In 1800, there was less than one-half a federal bureaucrat per 1,000 citizens. On the eve of the Civil War there were only 1.5 federal bureaucrats per 1,000 citizens, and by 1900 that ratio had climbed to 2.7. This compares with 7 per 1,000 in 1940 and 13 per 1,000 in 1962—exclusive of military personnel.The relatively small size of the public sphere was maintained in great part by the constitutional wall of separation between government and private life. The wall was occasionally scaled in both directions, but concern for the proper relation of private life and public order was always a serious and effective issue. Americans always talked pragmatism, in government as in all other things; but doctrine always deeply penetrated public dialogue. Power, even in the United States, needed justification.Throughout the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, almost every debate over a public policy became involved in the larger debate over the nature and consequences of larger and smaller spheres of government. This period was just as much a "constitutional period" as that of 1789–1820. Each period is distinguished by its effort to define (or redefine) and employ a "public philosophy."

In the life of all organizations there seems to be a general tendency toward a state of affairs called "equilibrium" by the favorably disposed and "rigidity" by the disaffected. Once the internal processes of an organization have become routine and its relations to the outside world have become stabilized, a kind of inertia seems to set in. The prevailing patterns are seen as good by the members. Identification involves a good deal of resistance to change. But if this is true of organizations, certain conditions also provide incentives for innovation.All stable organizations are in a continual process of adaptation. Innovation is that part of the process which is deliberate, self-conscious adaptation. Activities are innovative if they are attempts to change the organization and its environment in keeping with policies thought out in advance of the attempt. Innovation is not to be confused with liberalism or reform. The antonym for innovation is "consolidation," not conservatism. Liberalism and conservatism are postures toward the kinds of changes required. To have no policy at all for changing things or to have a policy against changing things is to be neither liberal nor conservative; it is to be non-innovative or consolidative.

The role of ideology in American politics has been neglected by political scientists and historians in favor of a realist approach, which looks at group, partisan, and constituency interests to explain parties, elections, and policies. In this book, however, Lowi treats ideology as an equal and sometimes superior political force. The account of each of the four ideological traditions is in large part a success story in the affairs of American democracy; each has long occupied a political space within the structure of federalism. But each story is also a tragedy, because each possesses the seeds of its own collapse