American Political Development from Citizens' Perspective: Tracking Federal Government's Presence in Individual Lives over Time

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler ◽  
Andrew Milstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

Although scholars of American political development (APD) have helped transform many aspects of the study of U.S. politics over the last quarter-century, they have barely begun to use the powerful analytical tools of this approach to elucidate the relationship between government and citizens. APD research has probed deeply into the processes of state-building and the creation and implementation of specific policies, yet has given little attention to how such development affects the lives of individuals and the ways in which they relate to government. Studies routinely illuminate how policies influence the political roles of elites and organized groups, but barely touch on how the state shapes the experiences and responses of ordinary individuals. As a result, we know little about how governance has influenced citizenship over time or how those changes have, in turn, affected politics.

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.

Neither Markets nor Administration: Brandeis and the Antitrust Reforms of 1914

1994 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Berk
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Old Order

The election of 1912 retains its hold on the imagination of students of American political development. Long interpreted as a conflict between tradition and modernity, Martin Sklar has recently argued that the old order had passed by 1912. In law and economy, competitive-proprietary capitalism had been eclipsed by administration. The political conflict was now overwhowould administer prices and investment, the corporation of the state?

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.

scholarly journals Gender and the American State

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen McDonagh ◽  
Carol Nackenoff
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
The Family ◽  
Independent Variable

The study of gender in American political development (APD) challenges the efficacy for advancing women’s political inclusion of a liberal tradition valorizing principles of individual equality and positing a separation of the family and the state. Masked are ways in which gender roles and the family are integral to governance and state-building. Gender is both a dependent and an independent variable in APD. Shaped by institutions and policies of the state, it also shapes institutions and policies that promote women’s political citizenship and expand the state’s capacity for social provision—by asserting not only liberal claims of women’s equality with men, but also by invoking maternalist claims based on women’s difference from men, thereby challenging and altering relationships between public and private spheres.

Transatlantic Anxieties: Democracy and Diversity in Nineteenth-Century Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (02) ◽  
pp. 139-177
Author(s):  
David A. Bateman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Action ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Intimate Encounters ◽  
Social Intercourse

This article reconstructs a set of widely disseminated nineteenth-century ideas about the relationship between diversity and democracy and details how these informed state-building and political action. An emerging argument in nineteenth-century discourse held that representative governments in diverse societies would degenerate into anarchy without “amalgamation,” extermination, expulsion, or enslavement: Only in societies where there was sympathy across the entire community, constantly renewed through intercourse among social equals, could free institutions be sustained. This argument gave support for state-builders to regulate diversity either through an imperial politics of “moving people” or by interposing the state in intimate encounters of sexual and social intercourse. The intimate and imperial dimensions of state-building were thereby conceptually linked. This account helps explain important features of nineteenth-century politics, including the frequent criticism of abolitionists that by supporting racial civic or political equality they were encouraging “racial amalgamation.” In responding to this charge, American antislavery discourse contributed to a distinction between political and social equality that would fundamentally shape state-building after the Civil War. The article shows scholars of American political development how our accounts might be revised by situating debates and developments within a transnational perspective.

The Development of State Capacity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillel David Soifer
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
State Building ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Evolution ◽  
Failed State ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

Building on the longstanding affinity between historical institutionalism and the development of state capacity, this chapter explores opportunities for deeper engagement. First, it sketches a research agenda for the study of failed state-building and its implications. Second, it identifies two elements of continuity in state development: the steady growth of state scope over time, and the persistence over time of state capacity. Studying these issues will require historical institutionalists to think more broadly about assessing institutional evolution, and press scholars of the state to better theorize the relationship between the state’s capacity and the strength of its component institutions.

The State in the Pulpit: State Incorporation of Religious Institutions in the Middle East

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birol Baskan
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Capacity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Development Literature ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractPolitical development literature held that the process of secularization is conflict-ridden between the state and religious institutions. Later state building literature left state-religion relations outside its theoretical scope and left a puzzle in our understanding of state building. How did state-religion relations really change in the course of modern state formation? This article argues that the relationship between state builders and religious institutions was not necessarily conflictual. Rather, there were potential areas of cooperation between the two. However, whether any cooperation was realized was historically contingent. Depending on the type of relationship established, state-religion relations took different institutional shapes. This article makes two observations. First, if the religious institutions have a fairly hierarchical internal organization, then the state and religious institutions part their ways. This is the picture classical political development literature paints. Second, in cases where the state faces a disunited body of religious institutions, the state incorporates religious institutions into its apparatus, its extent depending on the institutional capacity of the state. As the institutional capacity of the state increased, its control over religious institutions also increased. The article then illustrates these observations through major cases from the Middle East.

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.

The Concept of the Political

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 2 reinterprets Schmitt’s concept of the political. Schmitt argued that Weimar developments, especially the rise of mass movements politically opposed to the state and constitution, demonstrated that the state did not have any sort of monopoly over the political, contradicting the arguments made by predominant Weimar state theorists, such as Jellinek and Meinecke. Not only was the political independent of the state, Schmitt argued, but it could even be turned against it. Schmitt believed that his contemporaries’ failure to recognize the nature of the political prevented them from adequately responding to the politicization of society, inadvertently risking civil war. This chapter reanalyzes Schmitt’s political from this perspective. Without ignoring enmity, it argues that Schmitt also defines the political in terms of friendship and, importantly, “status par excellence” (the status that relativizes other statuses). It also examines the relationship between the political and Schmitt’s concept of representation.

Colonialism, the Shuar Federation, and the Ecuadorian State

10.1068/d236t ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Indigenous Movements ◽  
Ecuadorian Amazon ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Relationship

This author suggests new avenues for thinking about the relationship between formerly stateless societies and the state. It does so through a detailed study of one particular group, the Shuar, indigenous to the Ecuadorian Amazon. Formerly an acephalous society of hunter-gardeners, the Shuar now constitute a federation with a democratically elected, hierarchical leadership and are at the forefront of indigenous movements in Latin America. The author analyzes this transformation in the context of colonialism but argues that colonialism involves far more than the movement of people from one place to another or the extension of state authority over new territory. Rather, he reveals colonialism to hinge on the transformation of sociospatial boundaries. Such transformations were critical not only to Shuar ethnogenesis but also to Ecuadorian state-building. That is, colonialism involves a dialectical reorganization both of the state and of its new subjects.

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