Bridging State and Society

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Julian E. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Internal Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
External Forces ◽  
New Generation

Congressional scholars have a unique opportunity to reconnect the histories of American state and society, a task central to the new generation of political historians. As MarkLeff (1995:852) recently argued, social and political historians have come to realize that they “ignored the other at their peril” and that “interaction was the only way to interrogate power—how it was structured and changed, where it was contested, how it was exerted, what its impact was, and what assumptions shaped the discourse that framed it” (see also Gillon 1997).To accomplish the challenge of integrating social and political history, congressional historians will have to examine how the institution’s development related to external forces. Much of what has been written about Congress thus far remains insular.A handful of books published in the past two decades suggest how integration can be accomplished. In Sectionalism and American Political Development 1880–1980, Richard Bensel (1984) situates the internal development of Congress within the larger context of sectional tensions between the “industrial northern core” and the “underdeveloped southern and western periphery.” He pays close attention to key policy decisions and the ongoing struggle between decentralized committee and centralized partisan power to show the influence of sectionalism.

(Hi)story Telling in the Books of Samuel

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Story Telling ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Studies ◽  
Books Of Samuel ◽  
2 Samuel

This chapter introduces the books of Samuel from three angles. The first angle is an overview of its content and macro-structures. Close attention is paid to the patterns in its narrative: the rise and fall of Israel’s leadership and the comparisons and contrasts between these leaders. Second, the focus shifts from the books themselves to the methods of reading them, tracing the development of narrative studies in Samuel. It advocates the integration of final form readings with investigation into historical and source-critical questions of the book, each informing and developing the other. Finally, an example of this integration is demonstrated in a narrative reading of the story of Shimei, David, and Joab in 2 Samuel 20 through the lens of its characteristics of historiography: causation, meaning, and evaluation. Attention to these categories deepens our literary reading, highlighting its values and conception of significance in the past.

Nigeria

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakah Saidu Mahmud
Keyword(s):  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Legal Code ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Islamic Identity ◽  
External Forces

Abstract:The recent (2000) reenactment of the Shari'a legal code in twelve states of Northern Nigeria and the other expressions of Islam in public affairs in the region have been preceded by a long history that should also be understood as determined by the social and political conditions of specific stages in the evolution of the Nigerian social formation. This article attempts to explain Islamism in the region through such factors as Islamic identity for many Muslims, the competition over interpretation and representation of Islam, the nature of the Nigerian state and society, Muslim organizations and leadership, as well as the activities of other religious organizations (especially Christian evangelicals). In this regard, Islamism is driven essentially by internal (Nigerian) forces, even though external forces may have had an effect. The article argues that while Islamism poses major challenges to the Nigerian state and society, it has also exposed itself to challenges from both Muslims and Nigerian society as a whole.

Polarization and American Political Development

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nolan McCarty
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political System ◽  
Dynamic Change ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
American System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Vital Debate ◽  
And Behavior

One of the most fertile areas of research has been the question of why the American political system has polarized so sharply over the past four decades. The academic debates about polarization have largely been carried out by mainstream scholars of political behavior and institutions. Scholars of American Political Development (APD) have a major opportunity to participate in a vital debate about the emergence of a central feature of the contemporary American system while mainstream scholars should come to appreciate that one cannot easily develop explanations for dynamic change with static models of institutions and behavior. This chapter reviews the literature on polarization to introduce scholars of APD to debates about the measurement of polarization and its causes Also areas in which our knowledge about polarization can be improved by historical–institutional analysis are identified.

The Feudal Paradigm as a Hindrance to Understanding Ethiopia

1976 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Cognitive Styles ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Formulation

Several years ago A. O. Hirschman wrote an article entitled ‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding’ in which he attempted to ‘delineate various areas in which an impatience for theoretical formulation leads to serious pitfalls’ He reviewed two books which used opposite ‘cognitive styles’ in seeking to elucidate Latin American political development. One author was eager to set forth a paradigm of Columbian politics, and to show that all events–past, present, and future–are explained by the model (which is reducible to 34 stated hypotheses); the other wrote a study of Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution in which he was extremely reluctant to explain, moralise, or draw conclusions, but whose book is such that ‘whoever reads through [it] will have gained immeasurably in his understanding not only of the Mexican Revolution, but of peasant revolutions everywhere’.

Introduction

Vessels ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Brittenham
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Intellectual Power ◽  
Good Proportion

The vessel might seem an unproblematic category. Vessels are, after all, essential to human survival. They are necessary to contain water, to cook, to store food and goods for future use. Nearly all societies have made and used them; indeed, clay vessels, or their fragments, are one of the principal kinds of archaeological data that give us empirical access into distant worlds of the past. A good proportion of ancient art in museum collections around the world consists of things we would categorize as vessels. Such ubiquity makes vessels central to many kinds of historical investigation. Archaeologists rely on quantitative surveys of durable potsherds to answer questions about chronology, population, trade, and the function of particular spaces, while close attention to the iconography on vessels furnishes important documentary evidence about many aspects of ancient society. Yet as the essays in this volume demonstrate, such approaches by no means exhaust the perspectives that vessels may offer on ancient societies. Many vessels—and assemblages of vessels— were in their own time sites of considerable intellectual power, smart and sophisticated commentaries on the very categories that they embody. On closer examination, the category of the vessel is complex. A vessel is defined not only by its shape, but also by its function, by the presumption that it contains something, though that something may be concealed when the vessel is in use and is not always easy to reconstruct from the archaeological record. But what about a Greek rhyton, a drinking horn with an opening at the bottom, so that liquids poured into one end stream out the other? What about an unused vessel that never held its intended contents; a Maya chocolate pot, broken and then repaired in a way that is no longer watertight; or a thin and fragile gu cup from a Chinese tomb, the form so attenuated that it could never be used? “Is it really a vessel?” is perhaps the least interesting question we can ask about these objects. As Richard Neer argues in his essay in this volume, for us as much as for the ancient Greeks, the value of the category “vessel” might lie precisely in its openness.

Bureaucracy and the Administrative State

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin D. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
American State

Over the past thirty years, scholars in the field of American Political Development (APD) have made major advances in understanding the structure and development of the US administrative state. This chapter considers the exceptionalism of the American state and reviews dominant theories advanced by scholars of APD to explain change in American bureaucracy. It also examines how the unique development of this state influences American social policy and contributes to racial and economic inequality. Evidence is drawn from some of the watershed moments of administrative state development, such as Jacksonian spoils system, the creation of a modern civil service during the Progressive Era, and the remarkable expansion of American state capacity in the post-war period. It argues that such research reveals how the liberal American state exercises power and why it developed as such a unique and fragmented set of institutions.

Cities and Urbanization in American Political Development

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richardson Dilworth
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Political System ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Over Time

I suggest in this chapter that the uneasy fit of cities in the American political system (something that has persisted despite the fact that both cities and the American political system, and their relationships to one another, have changed dramatically over the past two centuries) might tell us something interesting about American political development. My suggestion fits into the strain of historical institutionalist research that sees institutional ‘friction’ or ‘intercurrence’ as key to explaining significant change over time. It diverges, however, from the dominant traditions within the study of American urban politics. I provide an overview of these dominant traditions, and I then suggest how viewing cities as ill-fitting elements within American political development might open up new avenues for researching the relationships between cities and American political thought, federalism, and the construction of political roles and identities.

Periodization and Historiography: Studying American Political Development in the Progressive Era, 1890s–1916

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Sklar
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
Social History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Selection Of

In keeping with the social character of the advancement of knowledge, and in spite of a strong competitive impulse among scholars to magnify small differences into warring schools of thought, the leading historical writings in the past four decades have yielded substantial agreement on the identification of critical trends that were transforming United States society in the period of the 1890s to 1916. Implicitly, at least, they may well have been anticipating the way to resolving some latest of these small differences before they get too far out of hand, such as that between “social history” and “political history” and, in a variation upon the theme, that between “society-centered” (or “movement-centered” or “interest-centered”) and “state-centered” history. The common acknowledgment of critical trends has served newcomers and veterans alike, including partisans on either side of these differences, and historians in the various genres, in the selection of authoritative frameworks of continuing research into the period. In this respect, the historical discipline shares with other disciplines, including those in the physical sciences, attributes held to be common to a “normal science.”

Gender and Political Citizenship

2020 ◽  
pp. 353-370
Author(s):  
Eileen McDonagh ◽  
Danielle M. Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
The Family ◽  
American Heritage

The trajectory of women’s citizenship over the past two centuries reflects the changing political and cultural landscape at various moments in American history as well as a more constant liberal tradition. Women have made clear gains since the nation’s founding, though the rights granted to women came later than those granted to other groups and women continue to face barriers to political inclusion. Two key factors are women’s social construction as maternalists who are associated with the family, which liberal precepts define as separate and different from the state; and the incompatibility of women’s social construction as maternalists with the liberal American heritage that presumes individuals are equal. To promote their political citizenship, women had to transform the identity of the American state to be an institution similar to, not opposite to, the family, and they had to transform the identity of women so that the public and political elites viewed women not only as maternalists but also legally and constitutionally as individuals who were equal to men. To understand the trajectory of women’s political citizenship requires understanding how it is integrated with their social and civil citizenship as well as how that trajectory intersects with partisan disparities in women’s representation through the policies and platforms parties adopt over the course of American political development.

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