New Deal

:Alternative meaning: New Deal (United Kingdom)

The legacies of the New Deal

Although the New Deal did not end the depression, all in all it helped to prevent the economy from decaying further by increasing the regulatory functions of the federal government in ways that helped stabilize previous trouble areas of the economy: the stock market, the banking system, and others. It also produced a new political coalition that sustained the Democratic Party as the majority party in national politics for more than a generation after its own end.

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Also laying the foundations for the postwar era, Roosevelt and the New Deal helped increase the power of the federal government as a whole. Roosevelt also established the presidency as the preeminent center of authority within the federal government. By creating a large array of protections for various groups of citizens—workers, farmers, and others—who suffered from the crisis, enabling them to challenge the powers of the corporations, the Roosevelt administration generated a set of political ideas—known to later generations as New Deal liberalism—that remained a source of inspiration and controversy for decades and that helped shape the next great experiments in liberal reform, the civil rights movement and Great Society of the 1960s.

Related Topics:
Civil rights movement - Great Society

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