The American Frontier as State of Nature

World Affairs ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 181 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-41
Author(s):  
Michael J. Faber
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
John Locke ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Frederick Jackson Turner ◽  
Early American ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
American Society ◽  
In The Beginning

John Locke claims that “in the beginning, all the world was America.” If this were, in fact, the case, then the early American frontier ought to resemble the state of nature that Locke describes. Louis Hartz finds in early American settlement a sort of instinctive Lockeanism, while Frederick Jackson Turner sees in the frontier the primary determining factor in American development. Combining the two suggests that American society may well have developed along Lockean lines, but only if the frontier was in fact at least an approximation of Locke’s state of nature. The frontier does resemble such a state in certain respects, though Locke’s concepts of natural law and justice are conspicuously absent, or at least very weak. This helps to explain why the Americanized version of Locke described by Hartz, rather than a more accurate and complete reading, became the dominant ideological force in early American political development.

Interest Groups and American Political Development

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dara Z. Strolovitch ◽  
Daniel J. Tichenor
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Organized Interests ◽  
Early American ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
American Interest ◽  
Group Politics

Do interest groups enhance or impede the democratic exercise of power? This chapter addresses this long-debated question by examining what longitudinal and American Political Development (APD) approaches contribute to the study of interest groups and what studies of organized interests illuminate about APD. We survey the dominant approaches to interest groups within political science, examine organized interests and lobbying in the early American republic, and document the rise of the modern interest group system at the beginning of the twentieth century. We then explore the role played by advocacy organizations in the trajectories of progress for marginalized groups. We show that APD scholarship has offered fresh insights about patterns and transformations of American interest group politics, and argue that our understanding of the development of American politics will benefit from more robust conversations between the traditional interest group literature and longitudinal and APD approaches to group politics.

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.

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.

Economic Validity of the Safety-Valve Doctrine

1941 ◽  
Vol 1 (S1) ◽  
pp. 96-98
Author(s):  
Sidney R. Packard
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
American History ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Frederick Jackson Turner ◽  
American Society

The frontier interpretation of American history with which Professor Frederick Jackson Turner captivated and intrigued the observers of American development more than forty years ago still retains its fascination. Professor Turner saw the American frontier as an area in which American society was constantly being rebuilt, each time shaped by special problems: “American social development,” he wrote, “has been continually beginning over again on the frontier.” It was on this theme that Professor Turner based his most striking contention that “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.”

Reconsideration of the Research Trajectory on the Carceral State

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-207
Author(s):  
Juliette Barbera
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Research Production ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
And Control

For decades, both incarceration and research on the topic have proliferated. Disciplines within the Western sciences have studied the topic of incarceration through their respective lenses. Decades of data reflect trends and consequences of the carceral state, and based on that data the various disciplines have put forth arguments as to how the trends and consequences are of relevance to their respective fields of study. The research trajectory of incarceration research, however, overlooks the assumptions behind punishment and control and their institutionalization that produce and maintain the carceral state and its study. This omission of assumptions facilitates a focus on outcomes that serve to reinforce Western perspectives, and it contributes to the overall stagnation in the incarceration research produced in Western disciplines. An assessment of the study of the carceral state within the mainstream of American Political Development in the political science discipline provides an example of how the research framework contributes to the overall stagnation, even though the framework of the subfield allows for an historical institutionalization perspective. The theoretical perspectives of Cedric J. Robinson reveal the limits of Western lenses to critically assess the state. The alternative framework he provides to challenge the limits imposed on research production by Western perspectives applies to the argument presented here concerning the limitations that hamper the study of the carceral state.

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