Caroline Fong ’25
WUJUR (2025) | Cite this work
Abstract
Art as a tool of statecraft predates modernity, serving as a means to legitimize power, shape public opinion, and sustain collective identity. From the Cleopatra VII and Caesarion relief at Dendera to Ancient Egypt, visual culture has remained central to the articulation of state ideology. In the modern era, political art and propaganda must be understood in relation to the profound social, economic, and political disruptions of the early twentieth century, particularly World War I and the emergence of new global power dynamics. During periods of national instability, democratic states relied on federal bureaucracies to produce government-sponsored art that engaged shared traditions and values, especially amid the rise of the welfare state and the renegotiation of state–citizen relations. This study asks whether bureaucracies with less autonomy are more likely to produce integrative propaganda that fosters social cohesion. Using a comparative framework grounded in visual culture and national identity, the paper examines propaganda programs in the Weimar Republic and the United States during the interwar period. Divergent bureaucratic structures shaped contrasting artistic outputs: American programs tended toward integrative imagery, while greater artistic autonomy in Weimar Germany corresponded with less cohesive propaganda. These differences illuminate how bureaucratic design influenced national stability and political outcomes.
Main
This article is viewable by PDF download.
References
Adam-Troian, J. (2024). The Fitness-Validation Model of Propagandist Persuasion and the 5Ds of Propaganda. Journal of Media Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864- 1105/a000442.
Abhishek, A. (2021). Overlooking the political economy in the research on propaganda. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review., 2(2). https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-61.
Article 231 – Historical Documents – Office of the Historian. (n.d.). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv13/ch17subch1
Ashton, S. A. (2011). Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Cleopatra: A sphinx revisited, 21-36. Assmann, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German
Critique, 65, 125–133. https://doi.org/10.2307/488538
Berg-Schlosser, D. (2012). The impact of the Great Depression on democracy. In U. J. van Beek & E. Wnuk-Lipinski (Eds.), Democracy under stress: The global crisis and beyond (1st ed., pp. 47–58). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf06zh.7
Bersch, K., & Fukuyama, F. (2023). Defining Bureaucratic Autonomy. Annual Review of Political Science, 26, 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051921102914
Blouin, A., & Mukand, S. W. (2019). Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda, nation building, and Identity in Rwanda. Journal of Political Economy, 127(3), 1008–1062. https://doi.org/10.1086/701441
Campbell, J. (2020). Why Confederate monuments are coming down now. Stanford University. Retrieved February 19, 2025, from https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/07/confederate- monuments-coming-now
Chapman, K. (2010). Expressionism multiplied: Early twentieth-century German posters between art, commerce, and politics (Order No. 3434408). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (847198305). http://libproxy.wustl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations- theses/expressionism-multiplied-early-twentieth-century/docview/847198305/se-2
Charles, V. (2019). Neoclassicism. Parkstone International.
Cheles, L., & Taylor & Francis eBooks A-Z. (2020). Portraits of United States Presidents and National Candidates Past and Present. In The political portrait: Leadership, image and power (pp. 26-58). Essay, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Constas, H. (1958). Max Weber’s Two Conceptions of Bureaucracy. American Journal of Sociology, 63(4), 400–409. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2774140
Cox, K., Brown, A., & Menasce Horowitz, J. (2019). The role of race and ethnicity in Americans’ personal lives. In Pew Research Center. Retrieved February 12, 2025, from https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/the-role-of-race-and-ethnicity-in- americans-personal-lives/
Craven, W. (1979). The Grand Manner in Early Nineteenth-Century American Painting: Borrowings from Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Baroque. American Art Journal, 11(2), 5–43.
Deshmukh, Marion F. 1998. “‘Politics Is an Art’: The Cultural Politics of Max Liebermann in Wilhelmine Germany.” Studies in the History of Art, no. 53: 165.
Ellul, J. (1973). Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Vintage Books.
Fellows, E. W. (1959). “Propaganda:” History of a Word. American Speech, 34(3), 182–189.
Figura, S., & Jelavich, P. (2011). German expressionism: the graphic impulse. The Museum of Modern Art.
Friedkin, N. E. (2004). Social Cohesion. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 409–425. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737700
Fröschl, Thomas. (1998). Republican Virtues and the Free State: Conceptual Frame and Meaning in Early Modern Europe and North America. In Ellenius, A., & European Science Foundation, Iconography, propaganda, and legitimation (pp. 255-275). Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.
Fuchs, C. (2020). Nationalism, Communication, Ideology. In Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory (Vol. 15, pp. 235–258). University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12fw7t5.14
Galitz, K.C. (2004), Romanticism. Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm
Ginsberg, M. (2013). The art of influence: Asian propaganda.
Goldstein, R. J. (2014). Little ‘Red Scares’: Anti-Communism and Political Repression in the United States, 1921–1946 (1st ed.). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315592732
Great Depression. (n.d.). https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/uncovering- america/great-depression.html
Grotenhuis, R. (2016). Nation-building: Identity and identification, process and content. In Nation-Building as Necessary Effort in Fragile States (pp. 109–124). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gr7d8r.11
Paul, H. (2014). Christopher Columbus and the Myth of ‘Discovery.’ In The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies (pp. 43–88). transcript Verlag. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxsdq.5
Harris, J. (1995). Federal art and national culture: the politics of identity in New Deal America. Cambridge University Press.
Hass, J. K. (2018). Soviet Discursive Power versus War: Agitation and Propaganda in the Blockade of Leningrad. Modern History of Russia, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu24.2018.402
Heck, T. F., Erenstein, R., Katritzky, M. A., Peeters, F., Smith, A. W., & De Vries, L. (1999). Picturing performance the iconography of the performing arts in concept and practice . University of Rochester Press.
Hong, Y.-S., eBook Academic Collection – North America, & De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook Package Archive. (1998). Welfare, modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919- 1933 [electronic resource]. Princeton University Press.
Jenkins, T., & Secker, T. (2020). Battling for the Future of Space in Superhero Movies: NASA, the United States Space Force, The Avengers and Captain Marvel. Journal of American Culture (Malden, Mass.), 43(4), 285–299. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13205
Jones, M. (2016). Founding Weimar: violence and the German Revolution of 1918-1919.
Klinger, U., & Svensson, J. (2015). The emergence of network media logic in political communication: A theoretical approach. New Media & Society, 17(8), 1241-1257.
Lenoir, T., Caldwell, L., & eBook Community College Collection – Worldwide. (2018). The military-entertainment complex [electronic resource]. Harvard University Press.
Jia , L., Lei , Y., Hendriks, E., & Wang, J. Z. (2012). Rhythmic brushstrokes distinguish Van Gogh from his contemporaries: Findings via Automated Brushstroke Extraction. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 34(6), 1159–1176. https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2011.203
Lipsky, M., (1980). Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. Russell Sage Foundation.
Mahler, L. (2016). Käthe Kollwitz. MoMA. Retrieved August 8, 2024, from https://www.moma.org/artists/3201
Manza, J. (2000). Political Sociological Models of the U.S. New Deal. Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1), 297–322. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.297
Mavigliano, G. J. (1984). The Federal Art Project: Holger Cahill’s Program of Action. Art Education, 37(3), 26–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.1984.11654165
McHale, V. E., & Johnson, E. A. (1976). Urbanization, Industrialization, and Crime in Imperial Germany: Part I. Social Science History, 1(1), 45–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170932
Mckinzie, R. D. (1969). THE NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Milestones in the history of U.S. Foreign Relations – Office of the Historian. (n.d.). https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi#:~:text=Germany%27s%20resumption%20of%20submarine%20attacks,States%20into%20World%20War%20I.
What is modern art? | MoMA. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/modern-art/what-is-modern-art.
Myers, J. M. (1998). The Bureau of Motion Pictures: Its influence on film content during World War II and the reasons for its failure. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Ocampo, J. A., & Stiglitz, J. E. (2018). The Welfare State Revisited.
O’Connor, F. V., & Federal Art Project. (1973). Art for the millions: essays from the 1930s by artists and administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project. New York Graphic Society.
Oliphant, A. W., Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, & eBook Academic Collection – North America. (2014). Nation formation and social cohesion [electronic resource]: an enquiry into the hopes and aspirations of South Africa. Real African Publishers on behalf of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).
Oliveros, V., & Schuster, C. (2018). Merit, Tenure, and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic. Comparative Political Studies, 51(6), 759–792. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414017710268
Ottaway, M. (2002). Nation Building. Foreign Policy, 132, 16–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/3183443
Paret, P. (1983). The Artist as “Staatsbürger”: Aspects of the Fine Arts and the Prussian State before and during the First World War. German Studies Review, 6(3), 421–437. https://doi.org/10.2307/1429754
Pearson, G. (2021). Sources on social media: Information context collapse and volume of content as predictors of source blindness. New Media & Society, 23(5), 1181–1199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820910505
Rigby, I. K., San Diego State University. University Art Gallery, Detroit Institute of Arts, & David Alfred Smart Gallery. (1983). An alle Künstler!: war-revolution-Weimar: German Expressionist prints, drawings, posters and periodicals from the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation. San Diego State University Press.
Ross, C. (2006). Mass Politics and the Techniques of leadership: The promise and perils of propaganda in Weimar Germany. German History, 24(2), 184–211. https://doi.org/10.1191/0266355406gh371oa
Ross, S. T. (2002). Understanding Propaganda: The Epistemic Merit Model and Its Application to Art. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 36(1), 16–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/3333623
Roudometof, V. (2003). BEYOND COMMEMORATION: THE POLITICS OF COLLECTIVE
MEMORY. Journal of Political & Military Sociology, 31(2), 161–169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45293737
Smith, W. D. (1979). IDEOLOGIES OF EMPIRE IN GERMAN POLITICS BEFORE WORLD WAR I. Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, 4, 184–194. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45137344
Sowerby, T. A. (2014). “A Memorial and a Pledge of Faith”: Portraiture and Early Modern Diplomatic Culture. The English Historical Review, 129(537), 296–331. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24473825
Suzuki, K., & Hur, H. (2020). Bureaucratic structures and organizational commitment: findings from a comparative study of 20 European countries. Public Management Review, 22(6), 877–907. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2019.1619813
Tal, D., & Gordon, A. (2016). Jacques Ellul revisited: 55 years of propaganda study. Social Science and Modern Society, 53(2), 182–187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-016-9994-7
Tarbert, J. (2019). The Quest to Bring “Business Efficiency” to the Federal Executive: Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Civil Service Reformers in the Late 1920s. Journal of Policy History, 31(4), 512–532. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030619000204
“Think Big! – Les Salles Rouges (The Red Rooms).” Le Louvre. Accessed February 23, 2025. https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/think-big.
Welch, D. (2019). ‘We are all propagandists now’: Propaganda in the twenty-first century. In M. Connelly, J. Fox, U. Schmidt, & S. Goebel. (2019). Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781788316736
White, J. A. (2000). Democracy, justice, and the welfare state: reconstructing public care. Pennsylvania State University Press.
The White House. (2025, January 21). Promoting beautiful federal civic architecture. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/promoting-beautiful-federal- civic-architecture/
Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: what government agencies do and why they do it. Basic Books.Zmigrod, L. (2022). A Psychology of Ideology: Unpacking the Psychological Structure of Ideological Thinking. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(4), 1072–1092. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211044140.
Supplemental material
There is no supplemental material provided by the author(s) for this work.
About this article
Citation (APA)
Fong, C. (2025). Communicating with the masses: The impact of bureaucratic autonomy on integrative propaganda. WUJUR, 2(1), 24-36.
A DOI link will soon be supplied for this article and added to the above citation.
Author Information
Caroline, Fong. Washington University in St. Louis.
Corresponding Author. Send correspondence to carolinefong@wustl.edu.
Additional Information and Declarations
There is no additional information or declarations provided by the author(s).
Peer Review
WUJUR thanks the anonymous Peer Reviewers who contributed to the review of this work.
Rights and Permissions
Individual articles © 2025 by their respective authors. Illustrations and images remain the property of their respective authors or rights holders and are reproduced here with permission or under fair use.
The author(s) may grant certain license permissions to the public.
Copyright © 2025. Washington University Journal of Undergraduate Research. All rights reserved for compilation, design, and editorial content.
WUJUR 
WUJUR comments may be moderated.