Managing the Periphery in the Gilded Age: Writing Constitutions for the Western States

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Bridges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
State Governments ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Constitutional Conventions

In this essay I argue that in the Gilded Age (the last quarter of the nineteenth century), delegates to constitutional conventions in the western territories designed state governments to manage, as best they could, the development of their economies. They were, and understood themselves to be, citizens of the periphery of the United States. Delegates to the conventions hoped to shield their states from the worst possible outcomes of that peripheral relationship, and foster the best ones. My arguments contribute to our understanding of state constitutions and, more broadly, to central concerns of American political development—regionalism, labor law, and state building.

Comparing America: Reflections on Democracy across Subfields

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 788-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didi Kuo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Public Sphere

Is America in a period of democratic decline? I argue that there is an urgent need to consider the United States in comparative perspective, and that doing so is necessary to contextualize and understand the quality of American democracy. I describe two approaches to comparing the United States: the first shows how the United States stacks up to other countries, while the second uses the theories and tools of comparative politics to examine relationships between institutions, actors, and democratic outcomes. I then draw on research in three literatures—clientelism and corruption, capitalism and redistribution, and race and ethnic politics and American Political Development—to lay out a research agenda for closing the gap between the subfields of American and comparative politics. In doing so, I also argue for richer engagement between academics and the public sphere, as opportunities for scholars to provide commentary and analysis about contemporary politics continue to expand.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, POLITICAL HOPE, RACIAL JUSTICE

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Gooding-Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Black President ◽  
American Political Science

AbstractAfter the overthrow of Jim Crow and the reelection of our first Black president, how should we conceptualize the tasks of a racially progressive politics in the United States? I address this question through (1) the lens of recent philosophical work on the relation between narrative and the justification of political hope and (2) a comparison of two autobiographies, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Dusk of Dawn. In light of this comparison, the paper also evaluates some recent contributions to the American Political Science subfield of American Political Development.

scholarly journals Ironies of State Building: A Comparative Perspective on the American State

2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond King ◽  
Robert C. Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Capacity ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
American State

This review of new directions in the American and comparative literatures on the state reveals important intellectual trends that parallel each other quite closely. Both comparativists and Americanists address similar questions about the sources of state authority, and both propose similar answers. Collectively, these scholars and others are retheorizing the state—developing a suppler, multidimensional picture of the state's origins, structure, and consequences—to shed light on the reasons for the state's stubborn refusal to cede the stage. The emerging understanding of the state that the authors describe provides a framework not only for revisiting the state in the international realm but also, in dialogue with recent Americanist studies, for revising and deepening the understanding of the state's paradoxical role in American political development and finally setting aside the assumption of the United States as stateless. In this emerging view, American state building, strength, and institutional capacity form through links with society, not necessarily through autonomy from society. But such distinctive patterns provide insights for comparative studies, too, for instance, in respect to the relationship between the state and welfare policy across nations.

Back to the Future: Historical Political Science and the Promise of Canadian Political Development

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Lucas ◽  
Robert Vipond
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Methodological Foundation ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
The Future

AbstractHow “historical” is Canadian political science? This paper sets out to answer this question through an analysis of historically oriented articles that have appeared in this journal from its first volume, in 1968, to 2015. We suggest that historical research in this journal is at once enduring and uneven, a pattern that we then explore in more detail in a case study, spanning forty years, of historical articles that focus on the interconnected themes of the constitution, courts, and federalism. The unevenness of this pattern suggests that the intellectual and methodological foundation of “historical” Canadian political science may not be as firm as it appears. We therefore conclude with a description of some methodological and conceptual tools, originally fashioned within the historically oriented subfield of American political development in the United States, that Canadian political scientists might deploy to probe important and enduring questions of Canadian politics.

The Carceral State and American Political Development

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy E. Lerman ◽  
Vesla M. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Order ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
Institutional Landscape

Since mid-century, the capacity of the United States to punish and surveil its citizenry has undergone tremendous expansion. Yet this phenomenal transformation and its repercussions for citizens has engendered surprisingly little discussion among scholars of American political development (APD). Nor have criminal justice scholars been sufficiently attentive to the intersection between democratic development and the carceral state. In this essay, we highlight how several well-worn tools and concepts in APD have begun to pave new understandings in criminal justice. Many of the studies we describe here have profound consequences for how we see American democracy and citizenship today. They require us to attend to the fact that criminal justice is not just one more slice of the American institutional landscape, but is in fact central to the development of the modern American state, its political order, and how the state interacts with its citizens.

American Political Development in the Mirror of Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amel Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The 19Th Century

Area-specific knowledge is indispensable for studying political development, but this can also lead to “blindspots” when conducting historical research if one’s horizons are limited to conventionally defined “areas.” Focusing on the 19th century, the author argues that the compartmentalization of the study of European and American political development has restricted our understanding of both. Particularly in struggles over democratization, pre-democratic elites in both regions saw their fates as linked and adopted similar strategies. In fact, one such strategy—the manipulation of electoral systems to limit working-class influence—was a mainstay of European politics, but first emerged in the American context. This finding illustrates the benefits of a comparative area studies (CAS) framework. A context-sensitive comparison of European and American political development offers a new perspective on the question of institutional endogeneity in Europe, while offering a new take on the question of “why no workers’ parties in the United States?”

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-150
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Modernization ◽  
Us Constitution

Interpreting the US Constitution as an instrument of federal union has important implications in terms of understanding of the American founding. The Constitution mattered much more to the international than to the domestic history of the United States. Its importance to the latter was dwarfed by the role of state constitutions and state legislation. The Constitution provided the institutional basis on which the nation would grow in territory, population, and riches in the nineteenth century. But if the federal government was active in foreign policy, so-called Indian diplomacy, and the management of the national domain, it played only a limited role in domestic developments. To understand the processes of economic and political modernization that characterized the United States in the nineteenth century, that is, the transition to a market economy and to liberal democracy, it is necessary to study the actions and inactions of the American state governments.

Constitutional Law, 1780s

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-119
Author(s):  
John B. Nann ◽  
Morris L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Continental Congress ◽  
American Law ◽  
Constitutional Conventions ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses sources for information about the United States and state constitutions; constitutional conventions, especially the Constitutional Convention of 1787; the ratification of the U.S. Constitution; and the ratification of the Bill of Rights and other amendments. Although the Constitution of the United States is extremely important to American law and legal history, researchers should keep in mind that it is not the only constitution in play, nor was it the first. Even before the Declaration of Independence was promulgated on July 4, 1776, states had begun to work on their own constitutions. Meanwhile, sources of information about the Constitutional Convention of 1787 include materials about the Continental Congress. While comparatively little material is available from the actual constitutional convention, a great deal of information from the process of the Constitution's ratification exists.

Cherokee Political Thought and the Development of Tribal Citizenship

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Aaron Kushner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Analytical Strategies ◽  
Political Idea

Abstract Citizenship, a fundamental political idea, exists in many forms in the United States. In this study, I apply the analytical strategies of American political development to examine the evolution of Cherokee constitutional citizenship law since 1827. The lack of political development studies on Cherokee governance presents a unique opportunity to identify foundational and second-story ideas underpinning Cherokee political thought. I contribute to the ongoing discussion of indigenous political development by creating a new theoretical framework for interpreting and analyzing durable shifts in Cherokee citizenship law. As America expands and diversifies, alternate, nonliberal views of citizenship increase in political relevance. Understanding why certain laws exist and where they came from is crucial for cultivating political engagement, engaging in productive discourse, and creating humanizing policies.

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