Pivotal Policies in Delaware: From Desegregation to Deregulation by William W. Boyer, and Edward C. Ratledge, and: Battleground New Jersey: Vanderbilt, Hague, and Their Fight for Justice by Nelson Johnson, and: Pennsylvania Elections by John J. Kennedy (review)

Students of politics must contend with an inescapable irony: American democracy requires an electorate actively engaged with the making of policy, but most citizens, regardless of the era, hate politics. Then again, perhaps it is not ironic. As the old adage goes, you may like sausage, but you do not necessarily want to see how it is made. Dining on Middle Atlantic politics is not for those with delicate digestive systems.

Attorney and legal scholar Nelson Johnson, who achieved acclaim with Boardwalk Empire, is the nation’s foremost bard of New Jersey political corruption. In Battleground New Jersey, Johnson wonderfully describes the Captain Ahab/Moby Dick relationship between Jersey City Democratic boss Frank “I am the Law” Hague and gentleman lawyer, reformer, and professor, Arthur Vanderbilt. There is dedication, and then there is obsession. Vanderbilt spent decades futilely trying to bring down Hague’s venal organization. Only death ended the duel.

Hague, like many other Irish Catholic politicians on the East Coast who clawed their way to the top, served his tribe. In Boston, New York City, and Jersey City, the Irish had no problem excluding other ethnic Catholics, as well as Jews, blacks, and middle-class Protestants, from patronage and leadership positions. As Johnson emphasizes, in Hague’s world Protestants were congenital oppressors who needed to be wrung of every cent they had stolen from working-class Irish Catholics. Others were to fall in line, grateful for the grandiose hospital Hague built—a temple that generated kickbacks to favored contractors and that employed enough Irish loyalists to add another suburb to Dublin.

During the 1930s Hague’s Irish police force famously beat and arrested industrial union organizers. While many of those union activists may have been fellow Catholics and Democrats, Hague did not tolerate potential rivals to his absolute power. Hague had cause to defend his political power so brutally: it was the source of his wealth. As George Washington Plunkitt of New York’s Tammany Hall Democratic machine had observed a generation earlier, “I seen my opportunities and took ’em.” The difference between Plunkitt and Hague, however, was that Plunkitt recognized there were moral and practical limits to corruption. Building shoddy, overpriced, bridges and orphanages would come back to haunt a politician, at election time or at Heaven’s gate. Hague knew no limits.

Hague’s nemesis, Arthur Vanderbilt, was the quintessential good government advocate; the kind of reformer that Plunkitt contemptuously referred to as a “good-goo.” Vanderbilt, however, had difficulty arousing the public against Hague. The problem was that to upper-class Protestant Republicans like Vanderbilt, good government often translated into no government for unemployed workers, the impoverished, and the victims of ethnic, racial, and religious discrimination. It would take a younger generation of reformers, one willing to compromise across the political aisle, to clean up Jersey City.

Political machine bosses are one aspect of politics; another component is the conception and execution of public policy. Political scientists William Boyer and Edward Ratledge use Delaware as the backdrop for understanding public policy initiatives over the recent decades. Although Delaware is easy to overlook given that the state is comprised of just three counties and is often mistaken for Philadelphia’s backyard, there are important geographical and demographic differences that make for a potentially rewarding study.

Boyer and Ratledge examine ten public policy issues ranging from racial desegregation in the 1950s to business deregulation in the 1990s. If anyone ever wondered why Delaware became a national center for the incorporation...