In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs documented the responsibility of major crises and emergencies for ratcheting up the size of government in the U.S. over the course of the twentieth century—the foremost of which were the two world wars. The Second World War imposed an even more dramatic upheaval on Western Europe, and the continent’s supersize welfare states remain as a legacy of the even greater disruption that they suffered.

Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Defense and Foreign PolicyEntitlements and WelfareEuropeInternational Economics and DevelopmentTaxes and Budget