Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-253
Author(s):  
George Breckenridge
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Political Studies

Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate, James W. Ceaser; with responses from Jack N. Rakove, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rogers M. Smith, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. viii, 197.James Ceaser gave the first Tocqueville Memorial Lecture on American Politics sponsored by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard in 2004. This volume contains an expanded version of his lecture, the three responses by, respectively, a historian, a political theorist, and a political scientist, and Ceaser's rejoinder or, in the case of Rosenblum, rebuttal to each. There are two things going on in this volume: a scholarly debate on how to approach the elusive question of the role of ideas in politics and a rather acrimonious argument over Ceaser's motivation.

Political Parties in American Political Development

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Karol
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
New Form

This article examines the role of political parties in America’s political development, with emphasis on parties as institutions. It considers three developments in American politics: the emergence of mass parties that flourished during the so-called Party Period in the mid-nineteenth century; the decline and increasing regulation of traditional parties since the Progressive Era; and the revival of parties in a new form since the 1970s. It also analyses how parties have influenced—and have been influenced by—major institutions such as Congress, the Presidency, the national bureaucracy, and interest groups. The article concludes by discussing two key concerns of scholars of American political development: development and exceptionalism.

Racial Orders in American Political Development

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
DESMOND S. KING ◽  
ROGERS M. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Race And Politics ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Development Literature ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
The Impact

American political science has long struggled to deal adequately with issues of race. Many studies inaccurately treat their topics as unrelated to race. Many studies of racial issues lack clear theoretical accounts of the relationships of race and politics. Drawing on arguments in the American political development literature, this essay argues for analyzing race, and American politics more broadly, in terms of two evolving, competing “racial institutional orders”: a “white supremacist” order and an “egalitarian transformative” order. This conceptual framework can synthesize and unify many arguments about race and politics that political scientists have advanced, and it can also serve to highlight the role of race in political developments that leading scholars have analyzed without attention to race. The argument here suggests that no analysis of American politics is likely to be adequate unless the impact of these racial orders is explicitly considered or their disregard explained.

The Phantom at The Opera

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Tarrow
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Social

Movements and parties have given rise to two largely separates specialties in the social sciences. This Element is an effort to link the two literatures, using evidence from American political development. It identifies five relational mechanisms governing movement/party relations: two of them short term, two intermediate term, and one long-term. It closes with a reflection on the role of movement/party relations in democratization and for democratic resilience.

Looking Backward, Looking Forward

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter summarizes the book’s conclusions and suggests directions for future research. It also explores the book’s broader implications for democracy and the dynamics of political-economic power. The chapter stresses the need for interdisciplinary analyses that employ multiple methods and sources of evidence to better understand the role of media and public opinion in American political development. It also discusses how news coverage may contribute to the durability of key aspects of the broader neoliberal policy regime. It ends by situating the book’s analyses within scholarship on inequalities in political and economic power, arguing that political scientists should recognize the news media’s central institutional role at the intersection of American politics and American capitalism.

The Family

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Strach
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The Family ◽  
Over Time

Though family is often seen as private and outside the sphere of politics, some scholars have demonstrated the important role family plays in American politics over time. Integrating family into the repertoire of American political development (APD) will offer new insights into how citizens are made, how states develop capacity, and how change happens over time.

Law and American Political Development

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (03) ◽  
pp. 779-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Frymer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Change ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
Institutional Autonomy ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
The Supreme Court

This essay reviews the recent volume edited by Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch, The Supreme Court and American Political Development(2006), as well as the broader literature by law scholars interested in American Political Development (APD). The Law and APD literature has advanced our knowledge about courts by placing attention on the importance of executive and legislative actors, and by providing political context to our understanding of judicial decision making. But this knowledge would be more powerful if it would embrace the broader APD field's orientation toward the importance of state and institutional autonomy for understanding politics and political change. Law and APD scholars could go further in examining the ways in which courts and judges act institutionally, and how the legal branch as an institution impacts American politics and state-building. In doing so, Law and APD scholars would contribute not only to our understanding of judicial decision making but also to our understanding of the place and importance of courts in American politics.

Understanding Law as a Democratic Institution Through US Constitutional Development

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (03) ◽  
pp. 811-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Novkov
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Democratic Institution ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Oxford University Press

This essay reviews Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, and Keith Whittington, American Constitutionalism: Volume I: Structures of Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, and Keith Whittington, American Constitutionalism: Volume II: Rights and Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). It defends developmental approaches in the study of US constitutional law. It explains how law has been studied in political science, illustrating how political development became part of the story. It outlines how American political development approaches work when applied to law, noting how studying law transforms these approaches. It notes the insights produced through the blending of American political development and constitutional law, explaining how these insights provide more leverage for understanding the role of courts as democratic institutions. The essay closes by discussing the promising directions these approaches suggest, defending their value beyond political science.

The Color Line and the State

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley S. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
Early American ◽  
Core Questions

This article examines the ways in which scholars of American political development (APD) have encountered the color line through their research, and the strides they have made in bringing race back into the field of political science in general and the study of the state in particular. Three core questions about race and APD are considered: How is race defined? When does race matter? In what direction does race matter? Two approaches relating to race and American politics are discussed: the race relations approach and the racial politics (or minority politics) approach. It then explores five challenges that must be addressed in order to overcome the persistent connections between APD and the discipline’s racial anomalism. It also analyzes the role of race in the establishment of the early American welfare state and concludes by reflecting on the persistence of racial inequality and prospects for APD in the twenty-first century.

On Categories and Configurations: Further Remarks on Rebuilding the American state

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Katznelson ◽  
Bruce Pietrykowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Past Half ◽  
American State

“Rebuilding the American State” was written in the manner of a bozzetto: it is a sketch drawn to reshape interlocking analytical and historiographical conversations and to suggest pathways joining the era of Roosevelt to the qualities and conundrums of postwar Democratic party liberalism. We underscored the key role of what might be called the long 1940s, stretching from the economic and political crisis faced by the New Deal in 1937–38 to the election in 1952 of the first Republican president since Hoover. We claimed that institutional and policy decisions taken across a number of domains in this period coherently recast the state and, in so doing, the contours and possibilities of American politics. We argued as well that old and new institutionalist approaches to state capacity have shared an unfortunate propensity to inventory organizational resources without regard to the normative and practical policy visions that define the content of what it is the state actually is meant to accomplish. In this light, simple dichotomous distinctions between weak and strong states appear as too blunt to sharply etch our understanding of the past half-century of American political development.

Making a Slave State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan A. Quintana
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Post War ◽  
Enslaved African Americans

How is the state produced? In what ways did enslaved African Americans shape modern governing practices? Ryan A. Quintana provocatively answers these questions by focusing on the everyday production of South Carolina’s state space—its roads and canals, borders and boundaries, public buildings and military fortifications. Beginning in the early eighteenth century and moving through the post–War of 1812 internal improvements boom, Quintana highlights the surprising ways enslaved men and women sat at the center of South Carolina’s earliest political development, materially producing the state’s infrastructure and early governing practices, while also challenging and reshaping both through their day-to-day movements, from the mundane to the rebellious. Focusing on slaves’ lives and labors, Quintana illuminates how black South Carolinians not only created the early state but also established their own extralegal economic sites, social and cultural havens, and independent communities along South Carolina’s roads, rivers, and canals. Combining social history, the study of American politics, and critical geography, Quintana reframes our ideas of early American political development, illuminates the material production of space, and reveals the central role of slaves’ daily movements (for their owners and themselves) to the development of the modern state.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document