1. Carpenter, Daniel, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Networks, Reputations and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862– 1928 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

2. As I discuss in my book and have mentioned above, strategic bureaucratic entrepreneurs will occasionally try to exhibit neutrality even when they have strong stakes or preferences in a policy battle. In no way does the actual prevalence of neutrality in a bureaucracy matter to my argument.

3. Theda Skocpol, Marshall Ganz, and Ziad Munson, “The Institutional Origins of Civic Voluntarism in the United States,” American Political Science Review 94 (2000): 527–46.

4. Beyond this, I think Kernell is rather guilty of a narrow reading of Skowronek, There were far more “institutional politics” surging through the transformation of national civil administration, the centralizing overhaul of national military institutions, and the wrenching creation of transportation regulation than Kernell would have the reader believe. Skowronek undoubtedly believes that these stories share a common narrative, one that entails professionalism and an increasing reliance upon expertise. Yet Skowronek is, I think, as clear as anyone studying the Progressive Era that the struggle to build a state in this manner was mediated by “pre-existing institutional arrangements.” That phrase, which contains the core of Skowronek's claims, strongly implies “institutional politics” in my reading.

5. Silberman, Bernard, Cages of Reason: The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the United States and Great Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Bensel, Richard, Yankee Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6. Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanders, Elizabeth, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Laborers and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Bensel, , Sectionalism in American Political Development, 1880–1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

7. Shepsle, Kenneth A., “Congress Is a ‘They,’ Not an ‘It’: Legislative Intent as Oxymoron,” International Review of Law and Economics 12 (1992): 239–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Fowler, Dorothy Ganfield, Unmailable: Congress and the Post Office (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), 68–70 Google Scholar, 80–90, 93–101.

9. In David Epstein and Sharyn O’Halloran's study of all acts of congressional delegation to administrative agencies from 1947 to 1992, 79 percent of delegations gave laws to existing agencies, while only 21 percent of delegations were to newly created agencies (Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policymaking under Separate Powers [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 158). Without exception, none of the formal (or nonformal) models of delegation in political science recognizes this crucial fact. All are built upon the assumption (usually implicit) that agency creation is simultaneous with delegation.

10. Even here Kernell gets an important facet of the story wrong: The petitions did not “flow continuously” but were rather jump-started by Wanamaker's overture in 1891. The volume of petitions rose and fell over the 1890s, and it was not until August Machen and James Perry published a call for petitions as a prerequisite for routes in 1898 that the RFD program (and petitions) exploded.

11. On the unprecedented volume of RFD petitions, see Free Delivery of Mail in Rural Districts, House Report No. 1352, 52nd Cong., 1st Sess., (CIS 3046, vol. 5), 1.

12. Cunniff, “The Post Office and the People,” World's Work (December 1903): 4246.

13. Fuller, RFD, 40. Sperry, from House Committee, “Delivery of Mail in Towns, Villages, Etc.” (Feb. 5, 1896), Report No. 255, U.S. House of Representatives, 54th Cong., 1st Sess., 2.

14. In the original Studies article, I demonstrated that Bissell’s recalcitrance over RFD was really due to his anger at Congress’s meager $10,000 appropriation for the program in 1892–1893. Kernell tries to turn this back upon Wanamaker by arguing that the $10,000 given by Congress is “simply the same figure Wanamaker had requested two years earlier for his village experiment which Carpenter judges to have been a model of innovation” (109). I believe Kernell has confused the sequence of events here. Wanamaker first asked for money in 1889–1890 and 1890–1891 to launch an experimental RFD service. He did not specifically ask for $10,000; that is what the House gave him. Then came the early experiments of 1891–1892 – which showed that RFD could be selfsustaining – and Wanamaker's call for petitions to Congress. With a small degree of program efficiency demonstrated and the petitions behind him, Wanamaker then increased his request in 1892 and 1893 to $6 million. It was Congress that refused to budge, not Wanamaker. In this respect, Bissell simply thought the program a political waste of time. Bissell's bleak outlook for RFD was induced by Congress’ persistent refusal to fund the program in a way that would get it off the ground.

15. Fuller, RFD, 78–79; emphasis added.

16. Note in Figure 1 that Appropriations did not increase appreciably from 1908 to 1912 because Republicans had all of the routes that they wanted. As Fuller notes, appropriations do increase after 1912 because Democrats felt they were owed routes.

17. Fuller, RFD, 53 ff.

18. See Daniel P. Carpenter, “From Patronage to Policy: The Centralization Campaign in Iowa's Post Offices, 1890–1915,” Annals of Iowa 58 (1999): 291–302. See also, the original Studies article, “State Building through Reputation Building: Coalitions of Esteem and Program Innovation in the National Postal System, 1883–1913.” 19. See Kollman, Ken, Outside Lobbying (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.