Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of
American Government, Higgs explains what he calls the “ratchet
effect,” that is, the way in which government expands in size
and scope to deal with a crisis, but remains permanently larger
after the crisis recedes—a sort of “two steps forward, one step
back” phenomenon. The ratchet effect is displayed schematically
in the figure below. (Congratulations to Bob, by the way; a 25th
anniversary edition of Crisis and Leviathan, with a new preface,
is just out, and belongs on your Christmas book list if you
don’t have it already.)If you follow the news you’ve no doubt
heard of the Higgs boson (named for physicist Peter Higgs), the
mysterious subatomic particle that helps explain the Big Bang
and the “standard model” of the universe. But there is another
important Higgs hypothesis that you should know about—named for
economist and historian Robert Higgs—that explains the big bang
of endless expansion of modern government. In his pathbreaking
1988 book The ratc