Andrew S.

Terrell
Spring 2010

Précis: Davies, Gareth. From Opportunity to Entitlement: the Transformation and Decline of Great Society
Liberalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

British historian, Gareth Davies, surveyed the War on Poverty through the vantage of

liberalism being more based on the tradition of individual mobility through hard work and
determination. He argued LBJ’s Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was aimed at preparing

those living in ghettos to enter lower middle class society leaving poverty. This was
revolutionary because this act in particular was usually seen by future generations as a collection
of “handouts” and entitlements through most of the latter 20th century. In defending this view of

LBJ’s legislation, Davies showed how lack of funding disallowed the true intentions of LBJ to
come to fruition. To Davies, the Vietnam War more than any other devastation during LBJ’s

tenure drained funding for Great Society programs. This view was in line with much of
scholarship over the Great Society. After guiding the reader through domestic and foreign
clashes, Davies revealed how liberalism moved from opportunity to entitlement ideologies much

because of these exterior forces during the 1960s and early 1970s on funding and plausible
implementation. What we see from Davies’s approach is traditional liberal politicians moving

from opportunity ideology leaving behind individualism and embracing a counter philosophy of
entitlement.
Davies’s monograph is a more recent response to the infamous Losing Ground by Charles

Murray from 1984. Davies engages Murray’s thesis--that Great Society efforts were handouts
that perpetuated poverty--by showing how LBJ wanted his acts to be implemented and

explaining that the Great Society never fully developed. In this way, Davies does add a new
conversation to LBJ scholarship in his dissertation turned monograph. However, Davies
weakens his argument by never defining certain terms and ideologies. Would defining

“liberalism” or at least differentiating it from late 1990s political liberalism have helped him
better focus his argument and better explain his thought process throughout the book? Does

Davies defend his concluding remarks that the politics of welfare had come full circle with
Clinton’s administration, or was Clinton’s “new covenant” to face the same reproach as the Great
Society because indeed the politics of welfare had not completed its 360º circle?