Office: 5205 GC
Office hours: Th., 3-4 PM
Phone: (212) 772-5507 (Hunter College)
e-mail: apolsky@hunter.cuny.edu
ajpolsky@aol.com
http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~apolsky/
 

Course Description

    The study of American political development offers scholars a vehicle for exploring many dimensions of politics and state formation in the United States without being constrained by conventional American politics subfield divisions. Proponents of various analytical approaches have embarked upon historical research to test propositions about political institutions, political behavior, the impact of ideas on political practices, political exclusion and durable inequalities, forces propelling political change, and more. Through this research, American political development (commonly called APD) has become the terrain upon which different major approaches to the study of American politics (and political phenomena more generally) engage each other. The results range from positive cross-fertilization to sharp and sometimes angry debate.

    In this seminar we will examine a number of approaches to the study of American political development. We will focus on three themes that shape historical patterns: continuity, change, and recurrence. Note that unlike a history course, this one is not organized chronologically. Rather, each session will be devoted to the discussion of a different analytical approach or the tensions between approaches. The overlap in historical coverage will help us understand how different approaches draw upon different kinds of evidence and illuminate different aspects of the same phenomenon. I have selected readings that I regard as "productive": that is, they have either generated significant discussion or have given rise to further research that employs the same analytical tools. Students will be encouraged to consider how the material we cover in the course might be used as a springboard for their own research, up to and including doctoral dissertations, in American politics and other fields.

Course Requirements

    1. Complete assigned readings before class meetings. I have limited the number of pages in assigned readings to keep the reading assignment manageable, though of course you may disagree with my notion of what that means. The syllabus may also be found on-line at http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~apolsky/.

    2. Submit seven two-page summaries of assigned readings. These must be done in standard paper format: double-spaced, typed, with one-inch margins. No summary may exceed three pages, standard format. These summaries will be due at the start of the class session at which the reading will be discussed. I do not accept late summaries for any reason or summaries submitted via fax or e-mail. (See hand-out on summaries.) If you are absent, you must arrange to have someone deliver a summary on time or it will not be accepted. I often ask certain students in advance to be ready to lead the discussion of specified readings and to raise questions about an author's method and use of evidence. It makes sense to write summaries of readings you are designated to discuss. As indicated below, the course grade is based in part on the summaries.

    3. Attend class regularly and participate. Presentations to lead discussions, contributions to discussions, and the presentation of your research (see below) will be considered in the calculation of the final grade for the course. Frequent absences will result in a penalty in the participation grade. (See below under grading.)

    4. Complete the final exam. We will decide together whether the final exam will be an in-class exercise or a take-home exam. Either way, you must complete the exam by the scheduled date. I will grant an extension only for documented, valid reasons, and I will give you only as much time as you were incapacitated. Students who do not complete the final exam will not be able to pass the course and will not be given an incomplete grade.

    5. Complete the research paper. As an 800-level research seminar, this course requires a substantial research paper of standard journal-article length (20-25 pages in standard format). I encourage you to select a topic that reflects both the course content and your major interest in political science. For example, if comparative politics is your major, you may wish to do a paper comparing some aspect of American political development to that of another nation; if you are primarily interested in international relations, consider doing a paper on the development of American foreign policy or on how international events have shaped domestic American development; etc. The research paper may use existing secondary literature to explain some aspect of American political development or may rely upon original research using archival and other sources. To get a sense of how research in American political development is presented, I recommend you review journals like Studies in American Political Development or Polity.

    I will require that you identify a topic and prepare a preliminary bibliography by a specified date during the semester. Failure to do so will make you ineligible for an incomplete grade in the course. The schedule of topics below contains many bibliographic citations that may serve as a useful starting point for your research. Late in the term students will give an oral presentation to the seminar in which they will state the central theoretical problem or question that guides their research, identify the specific historical outcome(s) they seek to explain, present a "causal story" that connects causal factors to the outcome(s), and indicate their plan for carrying out the research needed to investigate the posited causal connection. All papers must be completed by the end of the summer vacation period and submitted to me by September 1, 2005.

Grading

Grading for the course will be based on the following:
    Class participation and preparation: 25%
    Final exam: 25%
    Research paper: 50%
The class participation grade will be based upon the summaries, attendance, and participation. Timely completion of seven summaries establishes a base participation grade of A-. If you submit fewer than seven, the base participation grade drops to B; if you submit fewer than four, to C+. I permit two unexcused absences per student during the semester. The base participation grade will drop by one-third letter grade for three or more absences and by a full letter grade for five or more. The participation grade will also reflect your active, thoughtful contribution to the discussion.

You must maintain "satisfactory progress" in the course in order to complete it in good standing or to be eligible for an incomplete grade. You cannot attend sporadically, fail to submit summaries, fail to identify a paper topic or present it to the class, tell me you are unprepared for the final exam, and then expect to receive an incomplete. It is my goal to ensure that you have finished all in-semester course requirements and made a serious start on your research paper before the summer, and to have you complete the course by September 1, 2005.

Books for Purchase

The titles listed here and the course pack containing the other required readings are available through the Labyrinth Books at the Graduate Center. Less expensive used copies of several titles are available on-line through Amazon.com or other vendors; the course pack is also available directly from Campus Coursepaks, Inc. One copy of the course pack has been placed on library reserve, too, but I strongly recommend that you buy it.

Richard F. Bensel, The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Dan Carpenter, The Forging if Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
 

Schedule of Class Topics and Assignments

Required readings are preceded by a double asterisk. You should read them in the order in which they are listed. Additional readings for each topic (listed alphabetically) are intended as a guide to further research. These readings may be linked to the assigned reading by a shared or similar analytical approach and/or an overlapping substantive focus.

January 27th and February 3rd. Introduction: The Scope of American Political Development.

**Orren and Skowronek, Search for American Political Development.

Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

"Forum: Timing and Sequence in Political Processes," Studies in American Political Development 14 (1) (Spring 2000): 72-119. (Includes pieces by Paul Pierson, Robert Jervis, Kathleen Thelen, and Amy Bridges.)

Ellen M. Immergut, "The Theoretical Core of the New Institutionalism," Politics and Society 26:1 (March, 1998) 5-34.

Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

Ira Katznelson, "The Doleful Dance of Politics and Policy: Can Historical Institutionalism Make a Difference?" American Political Science Review 92:1 (March 1998): 191-198.

Ira Katznelson, "The State to the Rescue? Political Science and History Reconnect," Social Research 59 (4) (Winter 1992): 719-37.

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of

Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989).

Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1990).

Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Paul Pierson, "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics," American Political Science Review 94 (2) (June 2000): 251-67.

David Brian Robertson, "Politics and the Past: History, Behavioralism, and the Return to Institutionalism in American Political Science," in Eric H. Monkkonen, ed., Engaging the Past: The Uses of History Across the Social Sciences (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 113-53.

Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Kathleen Thelen, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 369-404.

February 10th. Building a New Approach to the Study of American Politics: State Formation in the Modern United States.

**Skowronek, Building a New American State, chaps. 1-3, 5-6, 8, Epilogue.

Terrence J. McDonald, "Building the Impossible State: Toward an Institutional Analysis of Statebuilding in America, 1820-1930," in John E. Jackson, ed., Institutions in American Society: Essays in Market, Political, and Social Organizations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).

"Social Science History Roundtable: Twenty Years After Building a New American State,"Social Science History 27 (3): 425-80. (Includes contributions by Julian E. Zelizer, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Brian balogh, and Daniel P. Carpenter, and a response by Stephen Skowronek).

William G. Shade, "'Revolutions Can Go Backwards': The American Civil War and the Problem of Political Development," Social Science Quarterly 55 (3) (December 1974): 753-67.
 

February 17th. The Impact of Political Culture: Values, Boundary Conditions, Continuity, and Change.

**J. David Greenstone, "Political Culture and American Political Development: Liberty, Union, and the Liberal Bipolarity," Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 1-49. [course pack]

**Rogers M. Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America," American Political Science Review 87 (3) (September 1993): 549-66. [course pack]

**Karen Orren and Rogers Smith (forum), "Structure, Sequence, and Subordination in American Political Culture: What's Tradition Got to Do with It?" Journal of Policy History 8 (4) (1996): 470-84. [course pack]

**Hugh Heclo, "The Sixties False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policymaking," Journal of Policy History 8 (1) (1996): 34-63. [course pack]

James E. Block, A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2002).

Gillian Brown, The Consent of the Governed: The Lockean Legacy in Early American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962).

Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

James A. Morone, The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of American Government, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2003).

Theda Skocpol, "Thinking Big: Can National Values or Class Factions Explain the Development of Social Provision in the United States?: A Review Essay," Journal of Policy History 2 (4) (1990): 425-38.

Sven Steinmo, "Why is Government So Small in America?" Governance 8 (3) (July 1995): 303-34.
 

February 24th. Geography is Destiny: Sectional Political Economy and Political Development.

**Bensel, The Political Economy of American Industrialization. chaps. 1-2, 4-6.

Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie, Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Richard F. Bensel, Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880-1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

David W. Brady and Bernard Grofman, "Sectional Differences in Partisan Bias and Electoral Responsiveness in US House Elections, 1850-1980," British Journal of Political Science 21 (April 1991): 247-56.

James G. Gimpel and Jason Schuknecht, Patchwork Nation: Sectionalism and Political Change in American Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

Scott C. James, "A Party System Perspective on the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887: The Democracy, Electoral College Competition, and the Politics of Coalition Maintenance,"Studies in American Political Development 6 (Spring 1992): 163-205.

Desmond King, "Sectionalism and Policy Formation in the United States: President Carter's Welfare Initiatives," British Journal of Political Science 26 (3) (July 1996): 337-68.

Elizabeth Sanders, "Industrial Concentration, Sectional Competition, and Antitrust Politics in America, 1880-1980," Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 142-214.

Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Regina Werum, "Sectionalism and Racial Politics: Federal Vocational Policies and Programs in the Predesegregation South," Social Science History 21:3 (Fall 1997): 399-453.
 

March 3rd. Entrepreneurial Leadership in Political Development: The Case of the Bureaucratic State.

**Adam D. Sheingate, "Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development," Studies in American Political Development 17 (2) (Fall 2003): 185-203. [course pack]

**Bruce Miroff, "Entrepreneurship and Leadership," Studies in American Political Development 17 (2) (Fall 2003): 204-11. [course pack]

**Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy, Introduction and chaps. 1-2, 6-10.

Peri Arnold, "Effecting a Progressive Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and the Pursuit of Strategic Resources," Studies in American Political Development 17 (1) (Spring 2003): 61-81.

Terry Bimes and Quinn Mulroy, "The Rise and Decline of Presidential Populism," Studies in American Political Development 18 (2) (Fall 2004): 136-59.

Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)

Andrew J. Polsky, "When Business Speaks: Political Entrepreneurship, Discourse, and Mobilization in American Partisan Regimes," Journal of Theoretical Politics12 (4) (October 2000): 451-72.

Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Mark Schneider and Paul Teske, with Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
 

March 10th. Positive Theory Meets the Past.

**Barry R. Weingast, "Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions, Commitment, and American Democracy," in Robert H. Bates et al., Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 148-93. [course pack]

**Terry M. Moe, "Interests, Institutions, and Positive Theory: The Politics of the NLRB,"Studies in American Political Development 2 (1987): 236-299. [course pack]

**Charles Stewart III and Barry Weingast, "Stacking the Senate, Changing the Nation: Republican Rotten Boroughs, Statehood Politics, and American Political Development,"Studies in American Political Development 6 (Fall 1992): 223-71. [course pack]

**Rogers M. Smith, "If Politics Matters: Implications for a 'New Institutionalism,'" Studies in American Political Development 6 (Spring 1992): 1-36. [course pack]

John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Michael J.G. Cain and Keith L. Dougherty, "Suppressing Shays' Rebellion: Collective Action and Constitutional Design under the Articles of Confederation," Journal of Theoretical Politics 11:2 (April 1999): 233-260.

Keith L. Dougherty, Collective Action under the Articles of Confederation (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.)

Charles Stewart III, Budget Reform Politics: The Design of the Appropriations Process in the House of Representatives, 1865-1921 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

William H. Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
 

March 17th. Theory Development: The Recurrent Logic of Partisan Regimes.

**Stephen Skowronek, "Notes on the Presidency in the Political Order," Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 286-302.

**Andrew J. Polsky, "A Theory of American Partisan Regimes," Philadelphia American Politics Research Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, November 1, 2002. [course pack]

**Andrew J. Polsky, "'Mr. Lincoln's Army' Revisited: Partisanship, Institutional Position, and Union Army Command, 1861-1865," Studies in American Political Development 16 (2) (Fall 2002): 176-207. [course pack]

**Andrew J. Polsky, "The Political Economy of Partisan Regimes: Lessons from Two Republican Eras," Polity 35 (4) (July 2003): 595-612. [course pack]

**Daniel M. Cook and Andrew J. Polsky, "Political Time Reconsidered: Unbuilding and Rebuilding the State Under the Reagan Administration," American Politics Research (forthcoming). [hand out]

Andrew J. Enterline, "Regime Changes and Interstate Conflict, 1816-1992," Political Research Quarterly 51:2 (June, 1998): 385-410.

Howard Gillman, "How Political Parties Can Use the Courts to Advance Their Agendas: Federal Courts in the United States, 1875-1891," American Political Science Review[APSR] 96 (3) (September 2002): 511-24.

Andrew S. McFarland, "Interest Groups and Political Time: Cycles in America," British Journal of Political Science 21 (July 1991): 257-84.

Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, "Regimes and Regime Building in American Government: A Review of the Literature on the 1940s," Political Science Quarterly 113 (4) (1998-1999): 689-701.

David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

David Resnick and Norman C. Thomas, "Reagan and Jackson: Parallels in Political Time,"Journal of Policy History 1 (2) (1989): 181-205.

David Resnick and Norman C. Thomas, "Cycling Through American Politics," Polity 23 (Fall 1990): 1-21.

Martin Shefter, "Party, Bureaucracy, and Political Change in the United States," in Shefter, ed.,Political Parties and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. 61-97.

Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Patricia Sykes, "Party Constraints on Leaders in Pursuit of Change," Studies in American Political Development 7 (1) (Spring 1993): 151-76.

Keith Whittington, "Presidential Challenges to Judicial Supremacy and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning," Polity 33 (3) (Spring 2001): 365-95.
 

March 24th. No Class (Friday Schedule).
 

March 31st. Policy Domains and Political Development.

**Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chaps 1-5, 8-10.

Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Bryan D. Jones, Tracy Sulkin, and Heather A. Larsen, "Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions," American Political Science Review 97 (1) (February 2003): 151-69.

Rogan Kersh and James Morone, "How the Personal Becomes Political: Prohibitions, Public Health, and Obesity," Studies in American Political Development 16 (2) (Fall 2002): 162-75.

Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

Christopher McGrory Klyza, "Ideas, Institutions, and Policy Patterns: Hardrock Mining, Forestry, and Grazing Policy on United States Public Lands, 1870-1985," Studies in American Political Development 8 (2) (1994).

Gary Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 1945-1982 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990).

Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Adam D. Sheingate, The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State: Institutions and Interest Group Power in the United States, France, and Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Margaret Weir, Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
 

April 7th. Gender and Welfare State Formation in the United States

**Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), chaps. 1-6, 9.

Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

"Conference Panel: On Theda Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States," Studies in American Political Development 8 (1) (1994): 111-149

Alice Kessler-Harris, "In the Nation's Image: The Gendered Limits of Social Citizenship in the Depression Era," Journal of American History 86:3 (December 1999): 1251-1279.

Suzanne Mettler, "Dividing Social Citizenship by Gender: The Implementation of Unemployment Insurance and Aid to Dependent Children, 1935-1950," Studies in American Political Development 12:2 (Fall 1998): 303-342.

Sonya Michel and Seth Koven, "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920,"American Historical Review 95 (October 1990): 1076-1108.

Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality and the Welfare State, 1917-1942 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).

Patrick J. Kelly, Creating a National Home: Building the Veteran's Welfare State, 1860-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Ann Shola Orloff, "The Political Origins of America's Belated Welfare State," in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Theda Skocpol and Gretchen Ritter, "Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States," Studies in American Political Development 5 (1) (1991): 36-93.
 

April 14th. The United States in the Post-War Era: America as a "Normal" Empire.

**Ira Katznelson and Bruce Pietrykowski, "Rebuilding the American State: Evidence from the 1940s," Studies in American Political Development 5 (2) (1991): 301-39. [course pack]

**Brian Balogh, "Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal-Professional Relations in Modern America," Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991): 119-72. [course pack]

**Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), chaps. 1-2, pp. 9-61. [course pack]

**John J. Coleman, "State Formation and the Decline of Political Parties: American Parties in the Fiscal State," Studies in American Political Development 8 (2) (Fall 1994): 195-230. [course pack]

Jonathan J. Bean, Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies toward Small Business, 1936-1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

Ballard Campbell, The Growth of American Government: Governance From the Age of Cleveland to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

John J. Coleman, Party Decline in America: Policy, Politics, and the Fiscal State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Andrew Grossman, Neither Dead Nor Red: Civilian Defense and American Political Development During the Early Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2001).

David M. Hart, Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921-1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Bartholomew H. Sparrow, From the Outside In: World War II and the American State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
 

April 21st (half class). The "Messy Face" of APD: Multiple Orders and Institutional Overlap

**Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, "Beyond the Iconography of Order: Notes for a 'New Institutionalism,'" in Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson, eds., The Dynamics of American Politics: Approaches and Interpretations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 311-30. [course pack]

**Andrew J. Polsky, "The Odyssey of the Juvenile Court: Policy Failure and Institutional Persistence in the Therapeutic State," Studies in American Political Development 3 (1989): 157-98. [course pack]

Robert Lieberman, "Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change,"American Political Science Review 96 (4) (December 2002): 697ff.

Andrew J. Polsky, The Rise of the Therapeutic State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
 

April 21st (half class). Conclusion: APD as Social Science.

**John Gerring, "APD from a Methodological Point of View" and responses by Richard Bensel, Stephen Skowronek, and Rogers M. Smith, Studies in American Political Development 17 (1) (Spring 2003): 82-115. [Course pack]
 

May 5th and May 12th. Student Presentations.
 

May 26th. Final Exam (in class or take-home due).
 

Supplemental Topics:
 

Below I have listed several other substantive topics that have attracted significant attention in recent scholarship on American political development. These topics are grouped together thematically. I have not included scholarship listed in the regular course syllabus, including recommended readings. Given the overlap with topics we cover in the seminar, you also should be sure to review the additional readings listed above. Similarly, there may be overlap between the supplemental topics, so be sure to examine related topics.
 

I General Overviews and Synthetic Statements

Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Ira Katznelson and Martin Shefter, Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, Basic Books, 2000).

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

Byron E. Shafer and Anthony J. Badger, eds., Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History 1775-2000 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
 

II. Struggles for Inclusion
 

Gender in American Political Development

Kristi Anderson, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review 85 (3) (June 1984): 620-47.

Lee Ann Banaszak, Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Elisabeth S. Clemens, "Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920," American Journal of Sociology 98 (4) (January 1993): 755ff.

Philip N. Cohen, "Nationalism and Suffrage: Gender Struggle in Nation-Building America,"Signs 21 (3) (Spring 1996): 707-727.

Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

Anna L. Harvey, Votes Without Leverage: Women in American Electoral Politics, 1920-1970 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Suzanne M. Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).1

Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign Against Woman Suffrage (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

Carol R. McCann, Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).

Michael McGerr, "Political Style and Women's Power, 1830-1930," Journal of American History 77 (Dec. 1990): 864-885.

Gretchen Ritter, "Gender and Citizenship After the Nineteenth Amendment," Polity 32:3 (Spring 2000): 345-376.

Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Christina Wolbrecht, The Politics of Women's Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
 

Race in American Political Development.

Pamela Brandwein, Reconstructing Reconstruction, The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Truth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

Michael K. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Gareth Davies and Martha Derthick, "Race and Social Welfare Policy: The Social Security Act of 1935, "Political Science Quarterly 112:2 (Summer 1997): 217-236.

Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Paul Frymer, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race, Class, and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: New Press, 1997).

Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Philip A. Klinkner with Rogers M. Smith, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Robert C. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Robert C. Lieberman, Weak State, Strong Policy: Paradoxes of Race Policy in the United States, Great Britain, and France," Studies in American Political Development 16 (2) (Fall 2002): 138-61.

Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1991).

Doug McAdams, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chicago: University if Chicago Press, 1982).

Richard Valelly, "Party, Coercion, and Inclusion: The Two Reconstructions of the South's Electoral Politics," Politics and Society 21 (1) (1993): 37ff.

Hanes Walton, Jr. and Robert C. Smith, American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom (New York: Longman, 2000).

Richard P. Young and Jerome S. Burstein, "Federalism and the Demise of Prescriptive Racism in the United States," Studies in American Political Development 9 (1) (Spring 1995): 1-54.
 

Social Change: Social Movements, Framing Interests, and Politics.

Peter H. Argersinger, The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism: Western Populism and American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).

Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

Elizabeth S. Clemens, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

Michael Goldfield, "Worker Insurgency, Radical Organization, and New Deal Labor Legislation," American Political Science Review 83 (1989): 1257-82.

Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

Hugh Heclo, "Ideas, Interests, and Institutions," in Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson, eds.,The Dynamics of American Politics: Approaches and Interpretations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 366-92.

David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America, 1865-1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

William G. Ross, A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890-1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).

Richard M. Valelly, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
 

III. Parties, Elections, and American Political Development
 

Parties, Party Systems, and Elections.

William Bianco, David B. Spence, and John D. Wilderson, "The Electoral Connection in the Early Congress: The Case of the Compensation Act of 1816," American Journal of Political Science 40 (1) (February 1996): 145-71.

Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran, "The Partisan Paradox and the U.S. Tariff, 1877-1934,"International Organization 50 (2) (Spring 1996): 301-24.

John Gerring, "Continuities of Democratic Ideology in the 1996 Campaign," Polity 30 (1) Fall 1997): 167-86.

John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Anna L. Harvey, Votes Without Leverage: Women in American Electoral Politics, 1920-1970 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Scott C. James and Brian L. Lawson, "The Political Economy of Voting Rights Enforcement in America's Gilded Age: Electoral College Competition, Partisan Commitment, and the Federal Election Law," APSR 93 (1) (March 1999): 115-31.

Scott C. James, Presidents, Parties, and the State: A Party System Perspective on Democratic Regulatory Choice, 1884-1936 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
 

The Electoral Realignment Debates.

David W. Brady, Critical Elections and Congressional Policy Making (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1988).

Clem Brooks, "Civil Rights Liberalism and the Suppression of a Republican Political Realignment in the United States, 1972-1996," American Sociological Review 65:4 (August 2000): 483-505.

Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970).

William N. Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, 1975).

Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Sage, 1980).

Gerald H. Gamm, The Making of the New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

John B. Gates, The Supreme Court and Partisan Realignment: A Macro- and Microlevel Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

James M. Glaser, Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

David G. Lawrence, The Collapse of the Democratic Presidential Majority, Realignment, Dealignment, and Electoral Change from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

David Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

Richard L. McCormick, "The Realignment Synthesis in American History," in McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 64-88.

Gary Miller and Norman Schofield, "Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States,"American Political Science Review 97 (2) (May 2003): 246-60.

Peter F. Nardulli, "The Concept of a Critical Realignment, Electoral Behavior, and Political Change," American Political Science Review 89 (1) (March 1995): 10-22.

Norman Schofield, Gary Miller, and Andrew Martin, "Critical Elections and Political Realignments in the USA: 1860-2000," Political Studies 51 (2) (June 2003): 217-40.

Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

Robert W. Speel, Changing Patterns of Voting in the Northern United States: Electoral Realignment 1952-1996 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998).

Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Mark D. Brewer, and Mack D. Mariani, Diverging Parties: Social Change, Realignment, and Party Polarization (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002).

James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1973, 1983).
 

IV. Class, Capital, and the State
 

Business and State Formation

Michael Patrick Allen, "Capitalist Response to State Intervention: Theories of the State and Political Finance in the New Deal," American Sociological Review 56 (October 1991): 679-89.

Edwin Amenta and Sunita Parikh, "Capitalists Did Not Want the Social Security Act: A Critique of the 'Capitalist Dominance' Thesis," American Sociological Review 56 (February 1991): 124-131.

Robert F. Burk, The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts and American National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

Thomas Ferguson, "From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition, and American Public Policy in the Great Depression," International Organization 38 (Winter 1984): 41-94.

Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995).

Marie Gottschalk, The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health Care in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public Private Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
 

Labor in American Political Development.

Stephen Amberg, "Declension and Construction Themes in the Study of Labor Politics in the United States," Studies in American Political Development 17 (1) (Spring 2003): 34-60.

Robin Archer, "Unions, Courts, and Parties: Judicial Repression and Labor Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century America," Politics and Society 26:3 (September, 1998): 391-422.

Taylor Dark, The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

William Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

Julie Greene, Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Victoria C. Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 1994).

Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).

Ruth O'Brien, Workers' Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

Karen Orren, Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Karen Orren, "The Primacy of Labor in American Constitutional Development," American Political Science Review 89 (2) (June 1995): 377-88.

David Brian Robertson, Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
 

V. The Constitution and Law
 

Constitutional Foundations.

Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Volume 1: Foundations (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1991).

Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Volume 2: Transformations (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1998).

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers (or The Federalist) (many editions).

Calvin C. Jillson, Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787 (1988; reprint ed., Algora Publishing, 2003).

Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: NYU Press, 1998).

Robert A. McGuire, To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Peter F. Nardulli, ed., The Constitution and American Political Development: An Institutional Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1996).

Martin A Reddish, The Constitution as Political Structure (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

David J. Siemers, Ratifying the Republic: Antifederalists and Federalists in Constitutional Time (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969).

Yale Law Journal 108:8 (June 1999) [Special issue on Bruce Ackerman's We the People.]
 

Legal Change: Causes and Consequences.

Maxwell Bloomfield, Peaceful Revolution: Constitutional Change and American Culture from Progressivism to the New Deal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

John Braeman, "Law and American Economic Development," Journal of Policy History 6 (4) (1994): 439-67.

Michael Kent Curtis, Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

Barry Cushman, Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Paul Frymer, "Acting When Elected Officials Won't: Federal Courts and Civil Rights Enforcement in U.S. Labor Unions, 1935-85," American Political Science Review 97 (3) (August 2003): 483-499.

Howard Gillman, The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993).

Howard Gillman, "Preferred Freedoms: The Progressive Expansion of State Power and the Rise of Modern Civil Liberties Jurisprudence," Political Research Quarterly 47 (1994): 622-53.

Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).

Herbert Hovencamp, Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Harvard University Press, 1991).

Ken I. Kersch, Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Ken I. Kersch, "The Reconstruction of Constitutional Privacy Rights and the New American State, Studies in American Political Development 16 (1) (Spring 2002): 61-87.

Donald J. Pisani, "Promotion and Regulation: Constitutionalism and the American Economy,"Journal of American History 74 (December 1987): 740-68.

Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Martin Shapiro, "The Supreme Court's 'Return' to Economic Regulation," Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 91-141.

Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
 

VI. Historical Periods
 

The Early American State

Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Charles C. Bright, "The State in the United States During the Nineteenth Century," in Charles Bright and Susan Harding, eds., Statemaking and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 121-58.

Laura Jensen, Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Richard R. John, "Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787-1835," Studies in American Political Development 11 (2) (Fall 1997): 347-80.

Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Samuel Kernell and Michael P. McDonald, "Congress and America's Political Development: The Transformation of the Post Office from Patronage to Service," American Journal of Political Science 43:3 (July 1999): 792-811.

Charles A. Kromkowski, Recreating the American Republic: Rules of Apportionment, Constitutional Change, and American Political Development, 1700-1870 (New York: Cambridge University press, 2002).

John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Stephen Minicucci, "Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790-1860," Studies in American Political Development 18 (2) (Fall 2004): 160-85.

William E. Nelson, The Roots of American Bureaucracy, 1830-1900 (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1982).

William J. Novak, "The American Law of Association: The Legal-Political Construction of Civil Society," Studies in American Political Development 15 (2) (Fall 2001): 163-88.

William J. Novak, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
 

The Progressive Period

Eldon J. Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994).

William Graebner, "Federalism and the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform,"Journal of American History 64 (2) (September 1977): 331-57.

Jonathan M. Hansen, The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-1920 ((Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Beatrix Hoffman, The Wages of Sickness, The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Scott C. James, "Building a Democratic Majority: The Progressive Party Vote and the Federal Trade Commission," Studies in American Political Development 9 (2) (Fall 1995): 331-85.

Scott C. James, "Prelude to Progressivism: Party Decay, Populism, and the Doctrine of 'Free and Unrestricted Competition' in American Antitrust Policy, 1890-1897," Studies in American Political Development 13:2 (Fall 1999): 288-336.

Eileen L. McDonagh, "The 'Welfare Rights State' and the 'Civil Rights State': Policy Paradox in the Progressive Era," Studies in American Political Development 7 (2) (1993): 225-274.

Sidney Milkis and Daniel Tichenor, "The Progressive Party, Social Reformers, and the Politics of 'Direct Democracy,'" Studies in American Political Development 8 (2) (1994).

Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, Progressivism and the New Democracy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999).

David Brian Robertson, Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Martin J. Sklar, "Periodization and Historiography: Studying American Political Development in the Progressive Era, 1890s-1916," Studies in American Political Development 5 (Fall 1991): 173-213.

Camilla Stivers, Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing Public Administration in the Progressive Era (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
 

The New Deal and Its Aftermath

Michael K. Brown, "State Capacity and Political Choice: Interpreting the Failure of the Third New Deal," Studies in American Political Development 9 (1) (Spring 1996): 187-228. (Includes comments by Ira Katznelson and Bruce Pietrykowski and Brown's rejoinder.)

Kenneth Finegold and Theda Skocpol, State and Party in America's New Deal (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, eds., The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).

James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933-1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967).

Peter Swenson, "Arranged Alliance: Business Interests in the New Deal," Politics and Society 25 (1) (March 1997): 66-116.
 

Recent American Political Development

Richard A. Harris and Sidney M. Milkis, eds., Remaking American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).

Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by Other Means (New York: Basic Books, 1990).

David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger, and Paul D. Mueller, The Politics of Cultural Difference: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Alan Ware, The Breakdown of Democratic Party Organization, 1940-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 1989).

Martin P. Wattenberg, The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1988 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

Margaret Weir, ed., The Social Divide: Political Parties and the Future of Activist Government (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1998).

Julian Zelizer, On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).