AEI Press has brought back this classic book, which has been out of print since the 1950s. The new edition retains Banfield’s original text, Rexford Tugwell’s original introduction, and a new preface by Kevin R. Kosar.

Government Project tells the story of an attempt by the US government to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperative farm in Pinal County, Arizona, in 1937. These individuals were among the most desperately poor and disadvantaged in the nation.

Casa Grande Valley Farms was an elaborate venture that provided the Americans who volunteered to settle there with housing, work, and the opportunity to earn income. For five years, the farm succeeded. The revenues from the sale of its crops gave the Casa Grande settlers material comfort and wealth far beyond what they had ever possessed.

But in the farm’s seventh year of operation, the inhabitants shuttered it and walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay of the government officials overseeing it.

Banfield’s Government Project deftly explains what went wrong at Casa Grande. In telling this story, Banfield illuminates larger truths about human nature and the limits of governance.

Buy a copy.

Reviews

“It is not a nice story.”
-Rexford G. Tugwell, administrator, United States Resettlement Administration, from the 1951 introduction

“Devotees of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Dreiser will understand this book. With the relentlessness of a Greek tragedy, the story of this Resettlement Administration project… moves forward from relief and destitution… through hope, then security, to the very brink of success, only to disintegrate.”
-Howard J. McMurray, American Political Science Review

“Sociologists will find much meat in this book for the purposes of illustrating the processes of social interaction—conflict, co-operation, and attempts and failures at accommodation.”
-Lowry Nelson, American Journal of Sociology