Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati
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Building an American Empire
The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion
by Paul Frymer
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2018 J. David Greenstone Book Prize, Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship, Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" Paul Frymer is professor of politics and director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America and Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (both Princeton).
How American westward expansion was governmentally engineered to promote the formation of a white settler nation
Westward expansion of the United States is most conventionally remembered for rugged individualism, geographic isolationism, and a fair amount of luck. Yet the establishment of the forty-eight contiguous states was hardly a foregone conclusion, and the federal government played a critical role in its success. This book examines the politics of American expansion, showing how the government's regulation of population movements on the frontier, both settlement and removal, advanced national aspirations for empire and promoted the formation of a white settler nation.
Building an American Empire details how a government that struggled to exercise plenary power used federal land policy to assert authority over the direction of expansion by engineering the pace and patterns of settlement and to control the movement of populations. At times, the government mobilized populations for compact settlement in strategically important areas of the frontier; at other times, policies were designed to actively restrain settler populations in order to prevent violence, international conflict, and breakaway states. Paul Frymer examines how these settlement patterns helped construct a dominant racial vision for America by incentivizing and directing the movement of white European settlers onto indigenous and diversely populated lands. These efforts were hardly seamless, and Frymer pays close attention to the failures as well, from the lack of further expansion into Latin America to the defeat of the black colonization movement.
Building an American Empire reveals the lasting and profound significance government settlement policies had for the nation, both for establishing America as dominantly white and for restricting broader aspirations for empire in lands that could not be so racially engineered. "Groundbreaking. . . . The book's central contribution is to show how the adaptations of American institutions intersected with America's racial orders.. . . . It will be essential reading for scholars and students, graduate and undergraduate, of APD, American politics, and of the legacies and contemporary practices of settler colonialism in other countries."---David Bateman, Journal of Politics "Paul Frymer has written one of the best available accounts of the United States' long and troubled history as a white settler nation. For anyone wanting to know why that particular form of nationalism continues to resonate so forcefully today, Building an American Empire should be required reading."---Eliga Gould, Diplomatic History "Building an American Empire is, in short, a terrific book-important, thoughtful, provocative, and seminal."---Todd Estes, American Political Thought "Paul Frymer's excellent new book interrogates our most enduring myth-the 'Taming of the West'-and in its place delivers a rich analysis of how U.S. leaders decided which territories and peoples would be included in the American civilizational project. His account puts original insights about space and race . . . at the center of our national story."---Thomas Ogorzalek, Political Science Quarterly "Building an American Empire is a valuable contribution to the conversation on the rise of the American national state."---William H. Bergmann, American Historical Review "Ranging across a wide arra
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The Regime Question
Foundations of Democratic Governance in Europe and the United States
by Amel Ahmed
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Ongoing struggles over core principles of democratic governance
The regime question-often boiled down to "democracy or autocracy?"-has been central to democratic politics from the start. This has entailed not only fights over the extent of the franchise but also, crucially, ongoing struggles over core principles of democracy, the "rules of the game." In this timely study, Amel Ahmed examines the origins and development of the regime question in Western democracies and considers the implications for regime contention today. She argues that battles over the regime question were so foundational and so enduring that they constitute a dimension of politics that polarized political opponents across the regime divide.
Ahmed investigates four historical cases in the study of democratic development: the United Kingdom between the Reform Act of 1832 and World War II (1832–1939), Imperial and Weimar–era Germany (1876–1933), the French Third Republic (1870–1939), and the United States before World War II (1789–1939). Focusing on legislative politics as an essential site of democratic governance and key to understanding long-term democratic endurance, she shows that when the regime question became salient, it hindered the formation of viable legislative coalitions along the left-right policy spectrum. This failure opened the door to executive encroachment, destabilizing the regime. Ahmed shows that the resurgence of the regime question today is not, as is often assumed, a break with prior trajectories of political development but a new instantiation of battles fought in previous eras. Amel Ahmed is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance. "A bold and innovative study with clear and important implications for contemporary politics. This book will be a major contributor to debates over democracy, democratic backsliding, American political development, and comparative historical institutionalism."-David Bateman, Cornell University
"After decades of taking democratic stability for granted in the West, the future of democracy is once again being debated. Amel Ahmed's The Regime Question provides well-needed historical context to these debates. This book reminds us how much this question structured Western political development up through 1945 and how much political stability after 1945 depended on its repression. Ahmed also shows that it brings in its train polarization, zero-sum politics, gridlock, and other divisive trends that impede effective governance. This book should be of immense interest to anyone trying to understand the challenges facing democracy today."-Sheri Berman, Barnard College
"An important contribution to the literature on historical democratization. The book's argument supersedes and improves upon the structural functionalist literature very significantly."-Giovanni Capoccia, University of Oxford
"An ambitious, sweeping account, spanning Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. With this book, Amel Ahmed distinguishes herself as an important and innovative voice on the history of democracy itself."-Daniel Ziblatt, coauthor of How Democracies Die "Interesting and innovative. . . . [The Regime Question] really contributes something different in a way that adds to the conversation"---Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox
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American Bonds
How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation
by Sarah L. Quinn
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the Viviana Zelizer Award for Best Book, Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the Theory Prize, Theory Section of the American Sociological Association" Sarah L. Quinn is associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington.
How the American government has long used financial credit programs to create economic opportunities
Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, but issues of government credit have been part of American life since the nation's founding. From the 1780s, when a watershed national land credit policy was established, to the postwar foundations of our current housing finance system, American Bonds examines the evolution of securitization and federal credit programs. Sarah Quinn shows that since the Westward expansion, the U.S. government has used financial markets to manage America's complex social divides, and politicians and officials across the political spectrum have turned to land sales, home ownership, and credit to provide economic opportunity without the appearance of market intervention or direct wealth redistribution.
Highly technical systems, securitization, and credit programs have been fundamental to how Americans determined what they could and should owe one another. Over time, government officials embraced credit as a political tool that allowed them to navigate an increasingly complex and fractured political system, affirming the government's role as a consequential and creative market participant. Neither intermittent nor marginal, credit programs supported the growth of powerful industries, from railroads and farms to housing and finance; have been used for disaster relief, foreign policy, and military efforts; and were promoters of amortized mortgages, lending abroad, venture capital investment, and mortgage securitization.
Illuminating America's market-heavy social policies, American Bonds illustrates how political institutions became involved in the nation's lending practices. "In American Bonds, Quinn performs an improbable alchemy. With superb insight, she transforms the seemingly arid technical terrain of credit markets into a vivid political, sociological, and moral territory. This book will attract not only specialists but also anyone interested in learning why and how government policy has shaped American lending practices." -Viviana Zelizer, author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy "American Bonds traces the historical development of the U.S. mortgage market over two centuries, and with it the evolution of credit as a powerful lever of statecraft. Quinn's meticulously researched account shows how credit has long been central to policymakers' attempts to resolve particularly American dilemmas of growth and distribution. This satisfying, accomplished book elaborates as no other work has done the ways in which credit organizes the American state and polity."-Greta R. Krippner, University of Michigan "In compelling detail, Quinn shows that credit is a durable, supple, but often invisible tool of domestic statecraft. For more than two centuries, the U.S. government's regulation of finance spurred development and dramatically refashioned America's social and economic landscape. With this insightful analysis, we can appreciate how credit became a key site of social and political conflict."-Bruce Carruthers, Northwestern University
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Dividing Lines
The Politics of Immigration Control in America
by Daniel J. Tichenor
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the Gladys M. Kammerer Award" Daniel J. Tichenor is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He has published extensively in leading journals on immigration policy.
Immigration is perhaps the most enduring and elemental leitmotif of America. This book is the most powerful study to date of the politics and policies it has inspired, from the founders' earliest efforts to shape American identity to today's revealing struggles over Third World immigration, noncitizen rights, and illegal aliens. Weaving a robust new theoretical approach into a sweeping history, Daniel Tichenor ties together previous studies' idiosyncratic explanations for particular, pivotal twists and turns of immigration policy. He tells the story of lively political battles between immigration defenders and doubters over time and of the transformative policy regimes they built.
Tichenor takes us from vibrant nineteenth-century politics that propelled expansive European admissions and Chinese exclusion to the draconian restrictions that had taken hold by the 1920s, including racist quotas that later hampered the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. American global leadership and interest group politics in the decades after World War II, he argues, led to a surprising expansion of immigration opportunities. In the 1990s, a surge of restrictionist fervor spurred the political mobilization of recent immigrants. Richly documented, this pathbreaking work shows that a small number of interlocking temporal processes, not least changing institutional opportunities and constraints, underlie the turning tides of immigration sentiments and policy regimes. Complementing a dynamic narrative with a host of helpful tables and timelines, Dividing Lines is the definitive treatment of a phenomenon that has profoundly shaped the character of American nationhood. "Daniel Tichenor's Dividing Lines is one of the best books on U.S. immigration policy to appear in the past decade. Political scientists, sociologists, historians, and nonacademic readers will all find it illuminating."-Martin Shefter, Cornell University "This is an excellent book. It constitutes a superb narrative history of American immigration policy and reform, makes sense of the trajectory of this development, and connects the politics and history of immigration reform to a set of larger theoretical claims in the field of American political development. It thus makes a number of important contributions, not only to immigration history but also to American political development and the historical-institutional study of politics generally."-Robert C. Lieberman, Columbia University
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Prisoners of Myth
The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933-1990
by Erwin C. Hargrove
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
“Prisoners of Myth” is the first comprehensive history of the Tennessee Valley Authority from its creation to the present day. It is also a telling case study of organizational evolution and decline. Building on Philip Selznick's classic work “TVA and the Grass Roots” (1949), a seminal text in the theoretical study of bureaucracy, Erwin Hargrove analyzes the organizational culture of the TVA by looking at the actions of its leaders over six decades-from the heroic years of the New Deal and World War II through the postwar period of consolidation and growth to the time of troubles from 1970 onward, when the TVA ran afoul of environmental legislation, built a massive nuclear power program that it could not control, and sought new missions for which there were no constituencies.
The founding myth of multipurpose regional development was inappropriately pursued in the 1970s and '80s by leaders who became "prisoners of myth" in their attempt to keep the TVA heroic. A decentralized organization, which had worked well at the grass roots, was difficult to redirect as the nuclear genius spun out of control. TVA autonomy from Washington, once a virtue, obscured political accountability. This study develops an important new theory about institutional performance in the face of historical change.
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Taxation and Resentment
Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes
by Andrea Louise Campbell
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice
Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich to pay more. But the specific tax policies that most favor are more regressive than progressive. What is behind such a disconnect? In this book, Andrea Louise Campbell examines public opinion on taxation, exploring why what Americans favor in principle differs from what they accept in practice. Campbell shows that since the federal income tax began a century ago, the rich have fought for lower taxes through reduced rates and a complicated system of tax breaks. The resulting complexity leaves the public confused about who benefits from the convoluted tax code, and leads to tax preferences that are driven by factors other than principles or interests.
Campbell argues that tax attitudes vary little by income, or by party, as some Democrats, more Republicans, and even more independents want most taxes decreased. Instead, white opinion on nearly every tax is racialized. Many do not realize the rich benefit the most from tax breaks, attitudes toward which are racialized, too. And among Black and Hispanic Americans, long subject to government coercion, greater support for government spending is not matched by greater support for taxation. Everyone has a reason to dislike taxes, which helps antitax Republicans win votes-and helps the rich in their long campaign to get their own taxes reduced and undermine progressivity. Andrea Louise Campbell is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Activism and the American Welfare State and Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle (Princeton). "An important and very welcome addition to the literature on public attitudes about public policies, which has not received as much attention as it deserves, with rich and often unexpected findings."-Martin Gilens, University of California, Los Angeles
"In Taxation and Resentment, Andrea Campbell demonstrates that the wealthy have capitalized on white voters' racial resentment in undermining support for progressive taxation and in shaping a revenue system that disproportionately burdens Black and Latino Americans. This persuasive and original account makes an essential contribution to our understanding of the impact of public opinion on the development of a fundamental feature of the American state."-Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley
"Taxation and Resentment is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Americans actually think about taxes. The scope of the data Campbell brings to bear on this question is unparalleled, and the depth of her analysis of public opinion across time and demography is a monumental achievement."-Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution "Andrea Louise Campbell's new book Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes argues that many Americans fundamentally misunderstand taxpaying, and so actively vote against their own interests. . . . Campbell finds that racial sentiment has the single largest influence on white Americans' tax attitudes, with white taxpayers perceiving their tax dollars as aiding nonwhites-a resentful relationship dating to the post–Civil War era. Black and Brown communities, meanwhile, are generally wary of a coercive state, and often believe they are taxed unfairly."---Carey Mott, Los Angeles Review of Books
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Divergent Democracy
How Policy Positions Came To Dominate Party Competition
by Katherine Krimmel
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
An innovative examination of the shift by American political parties toward issue-based differentiation
Recent Democratic and Republican party platforms display clear differences on such issues as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, and the environment. These distinctions reflect a programmatic party system-that is, one in which policy positions serve as a key basis of electoral competition. Yet party politics were not always so issue-oriented; the rise of policy positions as the dominant marker of party appeal occurred largely over the last fifty years. In Divergent Democracy, Katherine Krimmel examines this transformation of the American party system, using innovative machine learning techniques to develop and present the first measure of party differentiation on issues since Democrats and Republicans began competing with each other in 1856.
Why did the shift to issue-based party competition take more than a century to materialize? Krimmel offers a groundbreaking theory, focusing on what aids and constrains parties' abilities to do the difficult, conflict-ridden work of developing issue positions. She argues that clientelistic subnational party organizations, promising material support or jobs in return for votes, long impeded programmatic partisanship while the growth of national party organizations facilitated it. Moreover, institutions and agents of racial oppression extended the life of nonprogrammatic practices, as they attempted to shield discriminatory laws and institutions from interparty competition. Following the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, space opened for programmatic competition to grow.
Using both quantitative and qualitative tools, Krimmel offers a vital view of the foundations of today's issue-based party competition and its alternatives. Katherine Krimmel is assistant professor in the department of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. "Divergent Democracy provides a genuinely new take on polarization, and what makes today's partisan differences so distinctive in US history. It is an impressive achievement."-David Bateman, Cornell University
"The most historically and institutionally sophisticated treatment of national party divergence yet published."-Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University
"Katherine Krimmel's invaluable and thought-provoking research invites us to consider whether today's divisive partisan conflicts over competing policy visions still represent necessary progress from the issue-averse, patronage-fueled parties of the past. This persuasive book shows that the American party system has not only become polarized-it has been fundamentally transformed."-David A. Hopkins, Boston College
"This book is a significant advancement in how we should understand-conceptually, methodologically, even normatively-the changing relationship between political parties and the role of policy in American political life."-Chloe Thurston, Northwestern University "Innovative. . . . [A] rich trove of evidence regarding party history and the present state of American party politics." "An interesting. . . . [and] excellent book."---Allison G. S. Knox, International Social Science review
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Why We Vote
How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life
by David E. Campbell
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
David E. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is a coauthor of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It and The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools as well as a coeditor of Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education.
Why do more people vote--or get involved in other civic and political activities--in some communities than in others? Why We Vote demonstrates that our communities shape our civic and political engagement, and that schools are especially significant communities for fostering strong civic norms.
Much of the research on political participation has found that levels of participation are higher in diverse communities where issues important to voters are hotly contested. In this well-argued book, David Campbell finds support for this view, but also shows that homogenous communities often have very high levels of civic participation despite a lack of political conflict.
Campbell maintains that this sense of civic duty springs not only from one's current social environment, but also from one's early influences. The degree to which people feel a sense of civic obligation stems, in part, from their adolescent experience. Being raised and thus socialized in a community with strong civic norms leads people to be civically engaged in adulthood. Campbell demonstrates how the civic norms within one's high school impact individuals' civic involvement--even a decade and a half after those individuals have graduated.
Efforts within America's high schools to enhance young people's sense of civic responsibility could have a participatory payoff in years to come, the book concludes; thus schools would do well to focus more attention on building civic norms among their students. "[A]n impressive study. . . . Extremely compelling and provocative. . . . Why We Vote challenges us to think seriously about the role of schools in society."---André Blais, Science Magazine "In this examination of public engagement in the United States today, Campbell . . . argues that voter turnout is affected not only by people's desire to protect their own interests -- the view traditionally taken by political scientists -- but by their feelings of civic obligation as well." "This book provides the first solid, generalizable evidence of the influence of an adolescent's surroundings on adult political behavior. It offers a significant contribution to the study of voter turnout by showing how citizen duty is a factor in predicting political participation."-Richard Niemi, University of Rochester "Why We Vote makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ways community contexts prompt voting. This clear and compelling analysis will add energy to the resurgence of interest in the study of political socialization."-Joseph Kahne, Mills College
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The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy
Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928
by Daniel Carpenter
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the Levine Memorial Book Prize" "Winner of the Gladys M. Kammerer Award" Daniel P. Carpenter is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He has also taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. This book is based upon his dissertation, which won the 1998 Harold Lasswell Award of the American Political Science Association, and includes a chapter that won the 1995 Herbert Kaufman Award of the APSA.
Until now political scientists have devoted little attention to the origins of American bureaucracy and the relationship between bureaucratic and interest group politics. In this pioneering book, Daniel Carpenter contributes to our understanding of institutions by presenting a unified study of bureaucratic autonomy in democratic regimes. He focuses on the emergence of bureaucratic policy innovation in the United States during the Progressive Era, asking why the Post Office Department and the Department of Agriculture became politically independent authors of new policy and why the Interior Department did not. To explain these developments, Carpenter offers a new theory of bureaucratic autonomy grounded in organization theory, rational choice models, and network concepts.
According to the author, bureaucracies with unique goals achieve autonomy when their middle-level officials establish reputations among diverse coalitions for effectively providing unique services. These coalitions enable agencies to resist political control and make it costly for politicians to ignore the agencies' ideas. Carpenter assesses his argument through a highly innovative combination of historical narratives, statistical analyses, counterfactuals, and carefully structured policy comparisons. Along the way, he reinterprets the rise of national food and drug regulation, Comstockery and the Progressive anti-vice movement, the emergence of American conservation policy, the ascent of the farm lobby, the creation of postal savings banks and free rural mail delivery, and even the congressional Cannon Revolt of 1910. "Carpenter's book is intellectually arresting--weaving quantitative and qualitative empiricism through an impressive array of theoretical propositions toward an attractive theory of bureaucratic autonomy in the administrative state . . . . [A]dmirably successful in adding to our narrative of the development of the American administrative state."---Anthony Bertelli, Public Administration Review "The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy is a major work sure to influence future understandings of progressivism, state-building, and American political development. Carpenter delves into the highly variable world of bureaucratic entrepreneurship and innovation in organization to explain the emergence of scattered pockets of administrative autonomy within the executive branch of American government. His carefully crafted analysis of the conditions under which administrators have gained control over the political authorities that ostensibly control them presents a formidable challenge to the assumptions of political scientists, and it should prompt some equally careful rethinking of the operations of American democracy more generally."-Stephen Skowronek, Yale University "Although we tend to discuss the strength, or weakness, of state autonomy as though it were the same for every agency, the fact of the matter is that autonomy varies considerably from agency to agency. In this excellent book, Daniel Carpenter is among the first to make this observation and explore its implications."-Graham K. Wilson, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Whether we regard the modern state as fair as Athena, stepping fully formed from the brow of Zeus, or as foul as Frankenstein, sutured on a scientist's table, there had to be a time of quickening when the limbs began to twitch and the brain began to spark. In a splendid reinterpretation of the classic period of American state formation, Dan Carpenter demonstrates that
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The Hidden Welfare State
Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States
by Christopher Howard
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Christopher Howard is Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary.
Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs.
Howard helps the reader to appreciate the historic links between the hidden welfare state and U.S. tax policy, which accentuate the importance of Congress and political parties. He also focuses on the reasons why individuals, businesses, and public officials support tax expenditures. The Hidden Welfare State will appeal to anyone interested in the origins, development, and structure of the American welfare state. Students of public finance will gain new insights into the politics of taxation. And as policymakers increasingly promote tax expenditures to address social problems, the book offers some sobering lessons about how such programs work. "Mr. Howard's book is not meant for the reader with a casual interest in his subject. But. . . it stimulates all sorts of radical thoughts--some of them perhaps more radical than the author intended."---David Frum, The Wall Street Journal
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Faithful and Fearless
Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military
by Mary Fainsod Katzenstein
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 1999 Victoria Schuck Award, American Political Science Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1999" Mary Fainsod Katzenstein is a professor of government and a member of the faculty of the Women's Studies Program at Cornell University. She is the author of Ethnicity and Equality: The Shiv Sena Party and Preferential Policies in Bombay and has cowritten and coedited several books, including, with Carol McClurg Mueller, The Women's Movements of the United States and Europe.
Riots and demonstrations, the lifeblood of American social and political protest in the 1960s, are now largely a historical memory. But Mary Fainsod Katzenstein argues that protest has not disappeared--it has simply moved off the streets into the country's core institutions. As a result, conflicts over sexual harassment, affirmative action, and the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and people of color now touch us more than ever in our daily lives, whether we are among those seeking change or those threatened by its prospects. No one is more aware of this than women demanding change from within the United States military and the American Catholic church.
Women in uniform are deeply patriotic and women active in the church are devoted to their callings. Yet Katzenstein shows that these women often feel isolated and demeaned, confronted by challenges as subtle as condescension and as blatant as career obstruction. Although faithful to their institutions, many have proved fearless in their attempts to reshape them. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred women in the military and the church--including senior officers, combat pilots, lay activists, and nuns--this book gives voice to the struggles and vision of these women as they have moved protest into the mainstream.
Katzenstein shows why the military and the church, similarly hierarchical and insistent on obedience, have come to harbor deeply different forms of protest. She demonstrates that women in the military have turned to the courts and Congress, whereas feminists in the church have used "discursive" protests--writing, organizing workshops and conferences--to rethink in radical ways the meanings of faith and justice. These different strategies, she argues, reflect how the law regulates the military but leaves the church alone.
Faithful and Fearless calls our attention to protest within institutions as a new stage in the history both of feminism and of social movements in America. The book is an inspiring account of strength in the face of adversity and a groundbreaking contribution to the study of American feminism, social protest, and the historical development of institutions in American society. "Katzenstein ... has done a great service to those working for equality inside the sacred and secular fortresses.... Clearly written, it is easy to read. I recommend that before the next pope takes office, all women in the church should have this book thoroughly digested as a cure for naiveté."---Ruth McDonough Fitzpatrick, National Catholic Reporter "The feelings of the many women Katzenstein interviewed come through loud and clear, giving an insightful glimpse into how they view their predicaments."
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The Fifth Freedom
Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972
by Anthony S. Chen
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Co-Winner of the 2010 Gladys M. Kammerer Award, American Political Science Association" "Co-Winner of the 2010 J. David Greenstone Award in the Politics and History section by the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2010 Best Book Award, Race, Ethnicity and Politics section of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2008 President's Book Award, Social Science History Association" Anthony S. Chen is associate professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Michigan.
Where did affirmative action in employment come from? The conventional wisdom is that it was instituted during the Johnson and Nixon years through the backroom machinations of federal bureaucrats and judges. The Fifth Freedom presents a new perspective, tracing the roots of the policy to partisan conflicts over fair employment practices (FEP) legislation from the 1940s to the 1970s. Drawing on untapped sources, Anthony Chen chronicles the ironic, forgotten role played by American conservatives in the development of affirmative action.
Decades before affirmative action began making headlines, millions of Americans across the country debated whether government could and should regulate job discrimination. On one side was an interfaith and interracial bloc of liberals, who demanded FEP legislation that would establish a centralized system for enforcing equal treatment in the labor market. On the other side was a bloc of business-friendly, small-government conservatives, who felt that it was unwise to "legislate tolerance" and who made common cause with the conservative wing of the Republican party. Conservatives ultimately prevailed, but their obstruction of FEP legislation unintentionally facilitated the rise of affirmative action, a policy their ideological heirs would find even more abhorrent.
Broadly interdisciplinary, The Fifth Freedom sheds new light on the role of parties, elites, and institutions in the policymaking process; the impact of racial politics on electoral realignment; the history of civil rights; the decline of New Deal liberalism; and the rise of the New Right.
Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. "This meticulously researched book makes a bold new contribution to the literature on the origins of affirmative action. . . . [T]he book is well written . . . a valuable contribution to the literature."---Paul Moreno, Journal of American History "[T]he main narrative of the book, grounded in extensive research and reading on mid-twentieth-century politics, makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the opposition to civil rights and its link to modern American conservatism."---Tracy E. K'Meyer, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "The Fifth Freedom is a thoughtful and challenging book. The chapters on state antidiscrimination measures are illuminating accounts of grass-roots debates over the public policy of race in the North during the heyday of civil-rights activism in the South. Indeed, Chen makes a compelling case that the classic narrative of the postwar struggle for racial justice in the South has obscured the equally fierce, if less lethal, battle for employment rights that raged throughout the northern states during those years. . . . [A] valuable addition to the literature on the civil-rights era."---Robert H. Zieger, Business History Review "The Fifth Freedom is a comprehensive, compelling account of affirmative action's development. Appropriate for graduate-level methods courses, where Chen's incisive use of quantitative models should prompt valuable discussion of scholarly approaches, this impressive contribution to scholarship on postwar US culture should be read by any student of twentieth-century America."---David Kieran, Journal of American Studies "Fifth Freedom is a fine text (appropriate for most graduate courses), engagingly written, stunningly thorough, and certain to be integral to charting th
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Checks in the Balance
Legislative Capacity and the Dynamics of Executive Power
by Alexander Bolton
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the Alan Rosenthal Prize, Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association" Alexander Bolton is assistant professor of political science at Emory University. Website alexanderbolton.com Twitter @alexbolton Sharece Thrower is associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Website sharecethrower.com Twitter @ShareceThrower
How access to resources and policymaking powers determines the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches
The specter of unbridled executive power looms large in the American political imagination. Are checks and balances enough to constrain ambitious executives? Checks in the Balance presents a new theory of separation of powers that brings legislative capacity to the fore, explaining why Congress and state legislatures must possess both the opportunities and the means to constrain presidents and governors-and why, without these tools, executive power will prevail.
Alexander Bolton and Sharece Thrower reveal how legislative capacity-which they conceive of as the combination of a legislature's resources and policymaking powers-is the key to preventing the accumulation of power in the hands of an encroaching executive. They show how low-capacity legislatures face difficulties checking the executive through mechanisms such as discretion and oversight, and how presidents and governors unilaterally bypass such legislative adversaries to impose their will. When legislative capacity is high, however, the legislative branch can effectively stifle executives. Bolton and Thrower draw on a wealth of historical evidence on congressional capacity, oversight, discretion, and presidential unilateralism. They also examine thousands of gubernatorial executive orders, demonstrating how varying capacity in the states affects governors' power.
Checks in the Balance affirms the centrality of legislatures in tempering executive power-and sheds vital new light on how and why they fail. "The conversation about separation of powers and the legislative branch's ability to check the executive continues to be one not just one for practitioners and academics but also for American society, and that conversation is one which Checks in the Balance effectively joins and enriches."---Jonathan Lewallen, Perspectives on Politics "An exceptional resource for those seeking to gain a deeper understanding of how legislative capacity affects the actions of the executive."---Michelle Belco, Congress & the Presidency "For too long, conventional wisdom has focused almost exclusively on the institutional arrangements that weaken Congress's ability to push back against an ascendant executive. Congressional capacity to resist is assumed to be limited and constant. Bolton and Thrower offer an important corrective, systematically mapping changes in legislative capacity over time and assessing how these changes shape inter-branch politics."-Douglas L. Kriner, coauthor of Investigating the President "This book could not be timelier. Drawing on a strikingly impressive dataset that spans multiple periods of US history, Bolton and Thrower explain why legislatures underperform in exercising their power at the national and state levels."-Wendy J. Schiller, coauthor of Electing the Senate: Indirect Democracy before the Seventeenth Amendment "Bolton and Thrower address an important and underappreciated aspect of our political system. Bringing an impressively unique approach to the topic, they show how checks and balances are not enough to constrain executive tyranny unless the legislative branch has sufficient capacity to stand up to the executive."-James M. Curry, author of Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the House of Representatives "This creative and impressive book tackles whether, when, and why legislatures can constrain unilateral action by executives in the American political system. Checks in the Balance adds a critical
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Rough Draft of History
A Century of US Social Movements in the News
by Edwin Amenta
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year" Edwin Amenta is professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. His books include When Movements Matter and Bold Relief (both Princeton). Twitter @EdwinAmenta Neal Caren is associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Twitter @HaphazardSoc
A comprehensive account of the media's coverage of social movements in the United States
A new view of twentieth-century US social movements, Rough Draft of History examines how national newspapers covered social movements and the organizations driving them. Edwin Amenta and Neal Caren identify hundreds of movement organizations, from the Women's Christian Temperance Union to Occupy Wall Street, and document their treatment in the news. In doing so, Amenta and Caren provide an alternative account of US history from below, as it was refracted through journalistic lenses.
Iconic organizations in the women's rights, African American civil rights, and environmental movements gained substantial media attention. But so too did now-forgotten groups, such as the German-American Alliance, Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Peace and Freedom Party. Amenta and Caren show why some organizations made big news while others did not, why some were treated well while others were handled roughly. They recover forgotten stories, including that of the Townsend Plan, a Depression-era organization that helped establish Social Security. They also reveal that the media handled the civil rights movement far more harshly than popular histories recount. And they detail the difficulties movements face in today's brave new media world.
Drawing from digitized newspapers across a century and through to the present, Rough Draft of History offers insights for those seeking social and political change and those trying to make sense of it.
"A comprehensive, compelling analysis of print media's coverage of social movements, Rough Draft of History is a great read for activists and social movement scholars alike. Amenta and Caren explore the central role of media and the factors that influence the coverage social movements receive. This careful investigation extends our understanding of the role of the Fourth Estate in movement politics."-Lee Ann Banaszak, Pennsylvania State University
"Rough Draft of History is an evocative, often surprising consideration of the links between social movements and the press. Combining historical sweep with analytical sensibilities, this fascinating account of media attention and the notice-seeking strategies of movements illuminates critical trends and developments."-Ira Katznelson, Columbia University
"Scholars use newspaper articles to understand social movements, but rarely have they sought to systematically understand the dynamics of press coverage. In this important and innovative book, Amenta and Caren do just that, offering a rich, historically sensitive portrait of American social movements as seen through the often-distorting lens of the country's newspapers."-Doug McAdam, Stanford University "This exciting and important book breaks fresh ground in the study of political movements. Amenta and Caren look at four major newspapers from 1900 forward, to learn which movements got coverage, what kinds of coverage they got, when they got it, and why. Rough Draft of History has much to teach us."-James Morone, Brown University
"Examining a century of media coverage, Amenta and Caren offer a panoramic perspective on social movements. The results are eye-opening, informing our understanding of how movements gain traction, and why some succeed and others fail. A very impressive work of social science."-Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley "Rough Draft of History combines a new theory along with some very interesting data to show how media coverage of social movements is a function of
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Experts and Politicians
Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago
by Kenneth Finegold
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Kenneth Finegold is Associate Professor of Government at Eastern Washington University.
During the Progressive Era, reform candidates in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago challenged the status quo--with strikingly different results: brief triumph in New York, sustained success in Cleveland, and utter failure in Chicago. Kenneth Finegold seeks to explain this phenomenon by analyzing the support for reform in these cities, especially the role of an emerging class of urban policy professionals in each campaign. His work offers a new way of looking at urban reform opposition to machine politics.
Drawing on original research and quantitative analysis of electoral data, Finegold identifies three distinct patterns of support for reform candidates: traditional reformers drew support from native-stock elites; municipal populists found support among stock immigrant groups and segments of the working class; and progressive candidates won the backing of coalitions made up of traditional reform and municipal populist voters. The success of these reform efforts, Finegold shows, depended on the different ways in which experts were incorporated into city politics. This book demonstrates the significance of expertise as a potential source of change in American politics and policy, and of each city's electoral and administrative organizations as mediating institutions within a national system of urban political economies. "For those who believe that we can only understand urban politics today by knowing yesterday's outcomes, Finegold's careful blend of historical understanding and empirical analysis is an important contribution to the literature." "A provocative, well-researched, and well-written book on a topic of enduring interest." "Fingold's bold and provocative book is an important contribution to our understanding of Progressive reform . . . . A new and useful synthesis that helps make sense of a remarkably wide range of historical outcomes."-Stephen Skowronek, Yale University
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Bold Relief
Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy
by Edwin Amenta
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Co-Winner of the 1999 Distinguished Publication Award, Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1998" Edwin Amenta is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University.
According to conventional wisdom, American social policy has always been exceptional--exceptionally stingy and backwards. But Edwin Amenta reminds us here that sixty years ago the United States led the world in spending on social provision. He combines history and political theory to account for this surprising fact--and to explain why the country's leading role was short-lived.
The orthodox view is that American social policy began in the 1930s as a two-track system of miserly "welfare" for the unemployed and generous "social security" for the elderly. However, Amenta shows that the New Deal was in fact a bold program of relief, committed to providing jobs and income support for the unemployed. Social security was, by comparison, a policy afterthought. By the late 1930s, he shows, the U.S. pledged more of its gross national product to relief programs than did any other major industrial country.
Amenta develops and uses an institutional politics theory to explain how social policy expansion was driven by northern Democrats, state-based reformers, and political outsiders. And he shows that retrenchment in the 1940s was led by politicians from areas where beneficiaries of relief were barred from voting. He also considers why some programs were nationalized, why some states had far-reaching "little New Deals," and why Britain--otherwise so similar to the United States--adopted more generous social programs. Bold Relief will transform our understanding of the roots of American social policy and of the institutional and political dynamics that will shape its future. "In Bold Relief, Edwin Amenta brings welcome attention to the wide range of social services promulgated in the mid- and late 1930s.... Bold Relief offers a useful and insightful overview of the origin and limits to US social policy." "With convincing evidence, Bold Relief limns a bold new vision of federal social policy from the New Deal through the 1940s." "Amenta insists that [social insurance and assistance programs] were constructed around the public provision of work for those in need.... The argument is impressive, and it offers a political reminder that providing work was, for a time, thought a legitimate and desirable role for governments." "Bold Relief restores an important dimension to the history of American social policy.... One hopes that the book will inspire advocates of all kinds of policy to be bolder--and better informed--about creating the political and administrative preconditions necessary for new social policies."
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Facing Up to the American Dream
Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation
by Jennifer L. Hochschild
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 1996 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Sociology and Anthropology, Association of American Publishers" "Winner of the 2000 David Easton Award, American Political Science Association" Jennifer L. Hochschild is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Among her other works are The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation and What's Fair?: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice.
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent.
Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks.
Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best. "Jennifer Hochschild bravely tries to disassemble the central elements that are bound up in that vague but still politically and ideologically potent thing, `the American dream.' . . . She wants to iron out the defects of the dream rather than to overturn it, and she feels the good health of our society depends not only on belief in the American dream but on its realization, and in particular on repairing its central failure, which is the inability of some many black Americans to participate in what it promises. . . . [T]here is a division between the way American blacks and American whites see our great racial problem, and it is very unsettling that this division is so great. . . ."---Nathan Glazer, The New Republic "Drawing on a rich lode of polling data, policy studies and popular journalism, Hochschild probes the essential questions suggested by this book's title. . . . Without new politics to alleviate race and class injustice, she warns, we face abandonment of the dream, perhaps leading to a formalization of American hierarchy and a separatist black nationalism." "At the center of U.S. ideology rests the promise that all Americans have a reasonable chance at success, however defined; Hochschild demonstrates how that promise now faces severe challenge from real and perceived barriers of race and class. . . . Overall, she shows that shared disaffections and hardening black and white views of each other threaten to rend the nation's social fabric. Her work demands thoughtful reading and earnest discussion." "A major study of current public opinion that o
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The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State
Institutions and Interest Group Power in the United States, France, and Japan
by Adam D. Sheingate
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2001" Adam D. Sheingate is Assistant Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University.
A long-dominant reading of American politics holds that public policy in the United States is easily captured by special interest groups. Countering this view, Adam Sheingate traces the development of government intervention in agriculture from its nineteenth-century origins to contemporary struggles over farm subsidies. His considered conclusion is that American institutions have not given agricultural interest groups any particular advantages in the policy process, in part because opposing lobbies also enjoy access to policymakers. In fact, the high degree of conflict and pluralism maintained by American institutions made possible substantial retrenchment of the agricultural welfare state during the 1980s and 1990s. In Japan and France--two countries with markedly different institutional characters than the United States--powerful agricultural interests and a historically close relationship between farmers, bureaucrats, and politicians continue to preclude a roll-back of farm subsidies.
This well-crafted study not only puts a new spin on agricultural policy, but also makes a strong case for the broader claim that the relatively decentralized American political system is actually less prone to capture and rule by subgovernments than the more centralized political systems found in France and Japan. Sheingate's historical, comparative approach also demonstrates, in a widely useful way, how past institutional developments shape current policies and options. "A good read on the origin, evolution, and contemporary politics of agricultural-support policies in the United States, France and Japan." "A splendid comparative study of agricultural policy processes in the US, France, and Japan." "This historical and comparative analysis is well executed. . . . The book makes a contribution by virtue of its historical sweep and the quality of research. . . . A helpful addition to the growing body of historical institutionalist literature that demonstrates the influence of macro- and sectoral-level institutions on policymaking."---Grace Skogstad, American Political Science Review "This is a splendid book with many admirable qualities. It makes a provocative but convincing argument that cuts against the conventional wisdom on the capacity of American institutions to withdraw established benefits. It makes an important contribution to the supremely important theoretical debate on when or whether institutions make a difference. Finally, the book displays admirable scholarship. Sheingate clearly understands the details of complicated policies during an extended period in three different countries; this is itself a major achievement."-Graham K. Wilson, author of Only in America? American Politics in Comparative Perspective
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The Power of Separation
American Constitutionalism and the Myth of the Legislative Veto
by Jessica Korn
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1997" Jessica Korn, a Freedom Forum Fellow (1997-1998), is an Adjunct Professor of Business at Columbia University.
Jessica Korn challenges the notion that the eighteenth-century principles underlying the American separation of powers system are incompatible with the demands of twentieth-century governance. She demostrates the continuing relevance of these principles by questioning the dominant scholarship on the legislative veto. As a short-cut through constitutional procedure invented in the 1930s and invalidated by the Supreme Court's Chadha decision in 1983, the legislative veto has long been presumed to have been a powerful mechanism of congressional oversight. Korn's analysis, however, shows that commentators have exaggerated the legislative veto's significance as a result of their incorrect assumption that the separation of powers was designed solely to check governmental authority. The Framers also designed constitutional structure to empower the new national government, institutionalizing a division of labor among the three branches in order to enhance the government's capacity.
By examining the legislative vetoes governing the FTC, the Department of Education, and the president's authority to extend most-favored-nation trade status, Korn demonstrates how the powers that the Constitution grants to Congress made the legislative veto short-cut inconsequential to policymaking. These case studies also show that Chadha enhanced Congress's capacity to pass substantive laws while making it easier for Congress to preserve important discretionary powers in the executive branch. Thus, in debunking the myth of the legislative veto, Korn restores an appreciation of the enduring vitality of the American constitutional order. "Jessica Korn has done a masterful and convincing job of pointing out some common misconceptions about the way our Constitutional separation of powers works and what the well-known Supreme Court decision in INS v. Chadha actually accomplished."-Derek Bok, Harvard University "In this superb study, Jessica Korn not only explodes several myths about the legislative veto, but captures many timeless truths about America's Madisonian system of governance. The story is fascinating and the news is good: American government can adapt to new challenges without weakening the separation of powers.... Scholars, journalists, students, and average citizens who care about the future of American politics ought to read this book."-John J. DiIulio, Jr., Princeton University/Brookings Institution
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Firepower
How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force
by Matthew J. Lacombe
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Matthew J. Lacombe is the Alexander P. Lamis Associate Professor in American Politics at Case Western Reserve University. He is the coauthor of Billionaires and Stealth Politics.
How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday Americans
The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations-even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths. Firepower provides an unprecedented look at how this controversial organization built its political power and deploys it on behalf of its pro-gun agenda.
Taking readers from the 1930s to the age of Donald Trump, Matthew Lacombe traces how the NRA's immense influence on national politics arises from its ability to shape the political outlooks and actions of its followers. He draws on nearly a century of archival records and surveys to show how the organization has fashioned a distinct worldview around gun ownership and used it to mobilize its supporters. Lacombe reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a large, unified, and active base has enabled it to build a resilient alliance with the Republican Party, and examines why the NRA and its members formed an important constituency that helped fuel Trump's unlikely political rise.
Firepower sheds vital new light on how the NRA has grown powerful by mobilizing average Americans, and how it uses its GOP alliance to advance its objectives and shape the national agenda. "Firepower is the best scholarly analysis of the National Rifle Association (NRA) yet published …. [Lacombe] effectively argues that the NRA has long been political, but that the form of its politics changed from its "quasi-governmental phase" (pre-1970s) to its "partisan phase" (1970s onward) …. Anyone interested in the NRA and gun politics today should read this book." "Lacombe's book is a worthy read because it provides a new lens through which to view the NRA and the development of the gun rights movement more broadly. Its reorientation of the discussion from material and partisan to psychological processes makes Firepower an important addition to any syllabus on gun politics and interest group politics."---Alexandra Filindra, Perspectives on Politics "Timely and persuasive. Firepower is the book that everyone who studies gun politics has been waiting for."-Kristin A. Goss, coauthor of The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know "This is an insightful book. Lacombe tells a great story and backs it up with important new data and analysis."-Matt Grossmann, coauthor of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats "Firepower is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the political power of the NRA. Combining trenchant analysis with careful empirics, Lacombe shows that the strategies the NRA used to build its constituency base had far-reaching ramifications for the power it exerted in the political arena. This book demystifies how some organizations turn people into political power."-Hahrie Han, inaugural director, SNF Agora Institute, and professor of political science, Johns Hopkins University "Lacombe has written a groundbreaking book that explains the overwhelming political power of the NRA to prevent gun-control policies from being enacted despite widespread public support for them, tackling a central puzzle of American policymaking. Firepower lays the groundwork for a novel research agenda that will inspire future scholars interested in political influence and identity building."-Lilliana H. Mason, University of Maryland
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The Road to Nowhere
The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security
by Jacob S. Hacker
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Co-Winner of the 1997 Louis Brownlow Book Award, National Academy of Public Administration" Jacob S. Hacker is a Guest Scholar in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution, a doctoral candidate in political science at Yale University, and a Robert M. Leylan Fellow in Social Sciences at Yale University.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, health care reform became a hot issue, paving the way for one of the most important yet ill-fated social policy initiatives in American history: Bill Clinton's 1993 proposal for comprehensive coverage under "managed competition." Here Jacob Hacker not only investigates for the first time how managed competition became the president's reform framework, but also illuminates how issues and policies emerge. He follows Clinton's policy ideas from their initial formulation by policy experts through their endorsement by medical industry leaders and politicians to their inclusion--in a new and unexpected form--in the proposal itself. Throughout he explores key questions: Why did health reform become a national issue in the 1990s? Why did Clinton choose managed competition over more familiar options during the 1992 presidential campaign? What effect did this have on the fate of his proposal?
Drawing on records of the President's task force, interviews with a wide range of key policy players, and many other sources, Hacker locates his analysis within the context of current political theories on agenda setting. He concludes that Clinton chose managed competition partly because advocates inside and outside the campaign convinced him that it represented a unique middle road to health care reform. This conviction, Hacker maintains, blinded the president and his allies to the political risks of the approach and hindered the development of an effective strategy for enacting it. "Mr. Hacker brings commendable clarity to a subject that has usually encouraged jargon and convolution."---David Greenberg, The New York Times Book Review "Hacker's assessment is measured and balanced.... This book will be read by two audiences: those who are interested in health policy per se and those who are interested in the policymaking process. It is equally instructive for both."---Mary E. Guy, American Political Science Review "As an intellectual history, his narrative is unrivaled.... Hacker's book raises many provocative questions ... and it is for that reason that it is immensely valuable."---Flint J. Wainess, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law "[Hacker] is particularly adept at showing how top policymakers used the media to sell ideas, not just to the public, but to each other.... A fascinating portrait."---Julian E. Zelizer, Reviews in American History
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Governing the American State
Congress and the New Federalism, 1877-1929
by Kimberley S. Johnson
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Kimberley S. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.
The modern, centralized American state was supposedly born in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Kimberley S. Johnson argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Cooperative federalism was not born in a Big Bang, but instead emerged out of power struggles within the nation's major political institutions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Examining the fifty-two years from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Depression, Johnson shows that the "first New Federalism" was created during this era from dozens of policy initiatives enacted by a modernizing Congress. The expansion of national power took the shape of policy instruments that reflected the constraints imposed by the national courts and the Constitution, but that also satisfied emergent policy coalitions of interest groups, local actors, bureaucrats, and members of Congress.
Thus, argues Johnson, the New Deal was not a decisive break with the past, but rather a superstructure built on a foundation that emerged during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Her evidence draws on an analysis of 131 national programs enacted between 1877 and 1930, a statistical analysis of these programs, and detailed case studies of three of them: the Federal Highway Act of 1916, the Food and Drug Act of 1906, and the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. As this book shows, federalism has played a vital but often underappreciated role in shaping the modern American state. "Kimberly S. Johnson offers a welcome reminder to historians of the modern United States: New Deal policy making was not a seamless transition to more centralized policy making in Washington. Rather, it was based on a federalist heritage of power sharing among the states and the national government that stretched back to the nineteenth century. In an era when many Americans view government as the problem, this book reminds us that the current state of affairs emerged from a complex, nuanced mixture of constitutional forces, interest group pressures, and congressional developments."---William R. Childs, Journal of American History "Not only is Johnson's thesis and argument intriguing and fresh in its approach, so too are her methods of analysis. . . . Johnson has provided a valuable analysis and corrective to the American political development accounts of national-state intergovernmental relations. She has also added a convincing case for the role of Congress in structuring the first New Federalism."---Cindy Simon Rosenthal, APSA Booknotes "This book makes a clear contribution to the literatures on American political development and on federalism. I am thoroughly convinced by the author's assertion that the institution of federalism was critical to the development of a wide variety of important policies, and to the development of administrative capacity."-Bertram Johnson, Middlebury College "In Governing the American State, Kimberley Johnson challenges the received view that the modern system of intergovernmental relations emerged only after the earlier, more fragmented system of Dual Federalism collapsed, because it was unable to handle the crisis of the Great Depression. She establishes that changes in the U.S. federal system emerged not simply from major exogenous shocks to the political system, but also from considerations and processes that are endogenous to 'politics-as-usual' in the United States."-Martin Shefter, Cornell University, author of Political Parties and the State
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Social Policy in the United States
Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective
by Theda Skocpol
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Theda Skocpol is Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. Among her many works are Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States and States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China.
Health care, welfare, Social Security, employment programs--all are part of ongoing national debates about the future of social policy in the United States. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Theda Skocpol shows how historical understanding, centered on governmental institutions and political alliances, can illuminate the limits and possibilities of American social policymaking both past and present. Skocpol dispels the myth that Americans are inherently hostile to social spending and suggests why President Clinton's health care agenda was so quickly attacked despite the support of most Americans for his goals. "An important, provocative, and often persuasive argument."
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Why Movements Succeed or Fail
Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage
by Lee Ann Banaszak
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Wyoming became the first American state to adopt female suffrage in 1869, a time when no country permitted women to vote. When the last Swiss canton enfranchised women in 1990, few countries barred women from the polls. Why did pro-suffrage activists in the United States and Switzerland have such varying success? Comparing suffrage campaigns in forty-eight American states and twenty-five Swiss cantons, Lee Ann Banaszak argues that movement tactics, beliefs, and values are critical in understanding why political movements succeed or fail. The Swiss suffrage movement's beliefs in consensus politics and local autonomy and their reliance on government parties for information limited their tactical choices, often in surprising ways. In comparison, the American suffrage movement, with its alliances to the abolition, temperance, and progressive movements, overcame beliefs in local autonomy and engaged in a wider array of confrontational tactics in the struggle for the vote.
Drawing on interviews with sixty Swiss suffrage activists, detailed legislative histories, census materials, and original archival materials from both countries, Banaszak blends qualitative historical inquiry with informative statistical analyses of state and cantonal level data. The book expands our understanding of the role of political opportunities and how they interact with the beliefs and values of movements and the societies they seek to change.
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When Movements Matter
The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security
by Edwin Amenta
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Edwin Amenta is professor of sociology and history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Professor Baseball and Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton).
When Movements Matter accounts for the origins of Social Security as we know it. The book tells the overlooked story of the Townsend Plan--a political organization that sought to alleviate poverty and end the Great Depression through a government-provided retirement stipend of $200 a month for every American over the age of sixty.
Both the Townsend Plan, which organized two million older Americans into Townsend clubs, and the wider pension movement failed to win the generous and universal senior citizens' pensions their advocates demanded. But the movement provided the political impetus behind old-age policy in its formative years and pushed America down the track of creating an old-age welfare state.
Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence, historical detail, and arresting images, Edwin Amenta traces the ups and downs of the Townsend Plan and its elderly leader Dr. Francis E. Townsend in the struggle to remake old age. In the process, Amenta advances a new theory of when social movements are influential.
The book challenges the conventional wisdom that U.S. old-age policy was a result mainly of the Depression or farsighted bureaucrats. It also debunks the current view that America immediately embraced Social Security when it was adopted in 1935. And it sheds new light on how social movements that fail to achieve their primary goals can still influence social policy and the way people relate to politics. "Compelling. . . . Grounded in impressive archival research that easily makes it the best book on the Townsend Plan ever published. . . . The book is well-written and the balance between its theoretical and historical components is excellent."---Daniel Béland, Contexts "Amenta's sharp theoretical analysis of the Townsend mobilization and his rigorous excavation of the historical evidence sets a high standard for future research."---Joseph E. Luders, Perspectives on Politics "When Movements Matter is clearly written and is the most detailed history of the Townsend Plan published."---Raymond Richards, Journal of American History "First-class scholarship. . . . When Movements Matter is beautifully written, well argued, and systematically researched. This is state of the art theory and research. . . . If you have any interest in why and how social movements succeed or fail, you must read Amenta."---Nella Van Dyke, Contemporary Sociology "The best history we have of both the Townsend Plan and the pension movement from the Great Depression to 1950. More generally, it is one of the finest accounts to date of any movement of 'challengers' over a long era of economic and political turbulence."---W. Elliot Brownlee, Business History Review "This is the best crafted book I have seen in awhile. It is a delightfully written (and at times even humorous) account of the rise and fall of the Townsend Movement.... I recommend this book strongly to all people interested in understanding the dynamics of social movements and not only those interested in movement consequences."---Sarah A. Soule, Mobilization "This is historical sociology at its best, written by one of the field's best practitioners."-Edward Berkowitz, George Washington University
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The Unsolid South
Mass Politics and National Representation in a One-Party Enclave
by Devin Caughey
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2019 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award Political Organizations and Parties Section of the American Political Science Association" Devin Caughey is the Silverman (1968) Family Career Development Chair and associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During the Jim Crow era, the Democratic Party dominated the American South, presiding over a racially segregated society while also playing an outsized role in national politics. In this compelling book, Devin Caughey provides an entirely new understanding of electoral competition and national representation in this exclusionary one-party enclave. Challenging the notion that the Democratic Party's political monopoly inhibited competition and served only the Southern elite, he demonstrates how Democratic primaries-even as they excluded African Americans-provided forums for ordinary whites to press their interests.
Focusing on politics during and after the New Deal, Caughey shows that congressional primary elections effectively substituted for partisan competition, in part because the spillover from national party conflict helped compensate for the informational deficits of elections without party labels. Caughey draws on a broad range of historical and quantitative evidence, including archival materials, primary election returns, congressional voting records, and hundreds of early public opinion polls that illuminate ideological patterns in the Southern public. Defying the received wisdom, this evidence reveals that members of Congress from the one-party South were no less responsive to their electorates than members from states with true partisan competition.
Reinterpreting a critical period in American history, The Unsolid South reshapes our understanding of the role of parties in democratic theory and sheds critical new light on electoral politics in authoritarian regimes. "[The Unsolid South] contributes significantly to our understanding of several important questions, including how representation can be witnessed in nondemocratic, one-party states; how lawmakers translate constituent preferences into legislative action; and, more broadly, how politics in the American South developed.-Zachary D. Baumann, Political Science Quarterly" "The distinctive politics of the South has long been a specter haunting American politics. No one has brought more clarity or analytical acuity to the study of Southern politics and its central role in the long history of American democracy than Devin Caughey."-Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University "The Unsolid South is fresh, convincing, and written with the utmost skill, intelligence, and knowledge of the historical territory. Caughey takes on a big topic and does it large justice."-David R. Mayhew, author of The Imprint of Congress "By demonstrating the democratic basis of the Southern wing of the 'conservative coalition,' this excellent book mounts a serious challenge to scholars of Southern history and political parties."-Robert Mickey, author of Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944–1972 "In this prodigiously researched, theoretically sophisticated book, Devin Caughey offers a nuanced reinterpretation of politics in the so-called Solid South. Focusing on Southern members of Congress, their rivals, and their constituents, Caughey not only revises the standard portrait of one-party politics in the Jim Crow South, but sheds abundant new light on the ways that Southern politics shaped national policy and political economy."-Bruce J. Schulman, Boston University "V. O. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation has an almost sacred place in the literature on American politics. Caughey's book, with far better data, examines many of the same themes. Most, but not all, of Key's insights are supported by this comprehensive analysis. Confining his attention to the mostly white
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Southern Nation
Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction
by David Bateman
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 32nd D. B. Hardeman Prize, LBJ Foundation" "Winner of the V.O. Key Award, Southern Political Science Association" David A. Bateman is assistant professor of government at Cornell University. Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. His books include Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. John S. Lapinski is the Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor, professor of political science, and faculty director of the Fox Leadership Program and the Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and director of elections at NBC News. His books include The Substance of Representation: Congress, American Political Development, and Lawmaking (Princeton).
How southern members of Congress remade the United States in their own image after the Civil War
No question has loomed larger in the American experience than the role of the South. Southern Nation examines how southern members of Congress shaped national public policy and American institutions from Reconstruction to the New Deal-and along the way remade the region and the nation in their own image.
The central paradox of southern politics was how such a highly diverse region could be transformed into a coherent and unified bloc-a veritable nation within a nation that exercised extraordinary influence in politics. This book shows how this unlikely transformation occurred in Congress, the institutional site where the South's representatives forged a new relationship with the rest of the nation. Drawing on an innovative theory of southern lawmaking, in-depth analyses of key historical sources, and congressional data, Southern Nation traces how southern legislators confronted the dilemma of needing federal investment while opposing interference with the South's racial hierarchy, a problem they navigated with mixed results before choosing to prioritize white supremacy above all else.
Southern Nation reveals how southern members of Congress gradually won for themselves an unparalleled role in policymaking, and left all southerners-whites and blacks-disadvantaged to this day. At first, the successful defense of the South's capacity to govern race relations left southern political leaders locally empowered but marginalized nationally. With changing rules in Congress, however, southern representatives soon became strategically positioned to profoundly influence national affairs.
"Southern Nation is a lively and engaging history of the American South's influence on national politics after Reconstruction. It is also an illuminating analysis of how congressional policies and procedures are exploited to advance factional agendas. Bateman, Katznelson, and Lapinski have written a book that will be of great value to historians, political scientists, and engaged citizens."
-E. J. Dionne Jr., coauthor of One Nation after Trump
"Southern Nation is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis we have of how southern legislators rebuilt their power in Congress between 1880 and 1930 and, in the process, bent the entire country to their will. This revelatory and chilling tale compels us to reckon in new ways with the deep roots of America's political dysfunction."
-Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present
"This book offers a major new interpretation of congressional politics and policymaking from the end of Reconstruction to the New Deal. Readers will be impressed by the sheer encyclopedic scope of the work as well as its profound implications for theories of congressional lawmaking and accounts of American political development."
-Frances Lee, University of Maryland
"This ambitious book shows just how deeply entrenched white subjugation of blacks has been throughout southern political history. Southern Nation will bring new perspectives to younger generations about the see
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Imperiled Innocents
Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America
by Nicola Kay Beisel
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 1998 Distinguished Scholarship Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section of the American Sociological Association" Nicola Beisel is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University.
Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the circulation of contraception, information on the sexual rights of women, and "obscene" art and literature. Much of their rhetoric influences debates on issues surrounding children and sexuality today. Drawing on Victorian accounts of pregnant girls, prostitutes, Free Lovers, and others deemed "immoral," Nicola Beisel argues that rhetoric about the moral corruption of children speaks to an ongoing parental concern: that children will fail to replicate or exceed their parents' social position. The rhetoric of morality, she maintains, is more than symbolic and goes beyond efforts to control mass behavior. For the Victorians, it tapped into the fear that their own children could fall prey to vice and ultimately live in disgrace.
In a rare analysis of Anthony Comstock's crusade with the New York and New England Societies for the Suppression of Vice, Beisel examines how the reformer worked on the anxieties of the upper classes. One tactic was to link moral corruption with the flood of immigrants, which succeeded in New York and Boston, where minorities posed a political threat to the upper classes. Showing how a moral crusade can bring a society's diffuse anxieties to focus on specific sources, Beisel offers a fresh theoretical approach to moral reform movements. "An exemplary work of cultural analysis--as well as a delightful read.... Imperiled Innocents persuasively demonstrates the empirical power of cultural analysis and its significance for at least one core theoretical question in the discipline, the production and reproduction of class.... Beisel has constructed both an elegant work of cultural analysis and a powerful theoretical lens through which to reconsider the moral controversies of our own time."---Elisabeth S. Clemens, American Journal of Sociology "This provocative, clearly written addition to the literature on comparative urban reform illustrates the insights that a historical sociologist can bring to a familiar topic.... Challenging conventional interpretations of comstockery, it sheds new light on the process of upper-class formation and the role of gender and sexuality in reform."---Steven Mintz, Journal of American History "A thoughtfully provocative work of analysis." "Not only is Imperiled Innocents good sociology and good history, it also addresses timely public issues and is a pleasure to read. This is an exemplary work of historical sociology."-William H. Sewell, Jr., University of Chicago
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When Movements Anchor Parties
Electoral Alignments in American History
by Daniel Schlozman
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2016 Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association" Daniel Schlozman is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
Throughout American history, some social movements, such as organized labor and the Christian Right, have forged influential alliances with political parties, while others, such as the antiwar movement, have not. When Movements Anchor Parties provides a bold new interpretation of American electoral history by examining five prominent movements and their relationships with political parties.
Taking readers from the Civil War to today, Daniel Schlozman shows how two powerful alliances-those of organized labor and Democrats in the New Deal, and the Christian Right and Republicans since the 1970s-have defined the basic priorities of parties and shaped the available alternatives in national politics. He traces how they diverged sharply from three other major social movements that failed to establish a place inside political parties-the abolitionists following the Civil War, the Populists in the 1890s, and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond a view of political parties simply as collections of groups vying for preeminence, Schlozman explores how would-be influencers gain influence-or do not. He reveals how movements join with parties only when the alliance is beneficial to parties, and how alliance exacts a high price from movements. Their sweeping visions give way to compromise and partial victories. Yet as Schlozman demonstrates, it is well worth paying the price as movements reorient parties' priorities.
Timely and compelling, When Movements Anchor Parties demonstrates how alliances have transformed American political parties. "Many groups make up party coalitions, but few have the influence and endurance to anchor parties. This exceptionally well-written book explains the complex political networking and alliance building activities that can help movements secure permanence within political parties." "This study deepens what is known about how party coalitions are shaped by the efforts of groups and the entrepreneurs that lead them, making it mandatory reading for any serious scholar of American politics or history."---Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, Perspectives on Politics "This rigorous and stimulating book reveals how the labor and Christian Right movements joined direct action with partisan maneuver-and transformed American politics. When Movements Anchor Parties peers through the rancorous politics of our time to provide a fresh interpretation of how the Democratic and Republican Parties have become so polarized over the past half century. Schlozman has written a thought-provoking study of American democracy."-Sidney M. Milkis, University of Virginia "A brilliant and beautifully crafted scholarly study destined to join the pantheon of classics in American political development. Schlozman theorizes and analyzes how some social movements form durable alliances with parties-labor and the Democrats, conservative evangelicals and the Republicans-and why others fail. When Movements Anchor Parties enriches contemporary debates about polarization, party networks, ideology, and coalition building."-Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution "Scholars increasingly realize that political parties and social movements cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another. When Movements Anchor Parties offers a richly informed and insightful account of two fateful and durable alliances: the labor movement with FDR's Democrats and the Christian Right with Reagan's Republicans. Schlozman's illuminating book highlights the influence of these developments on contemporary American politics."-David Karol, University of Maryland "This is a book of remarkable insight and impressive historical scope. The extensiveness of Schlozman'
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Presidential Party Building
Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush
by Daniel J. Galvin
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Daniel J. Galvin is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University.
Modern presidents are usually depicted as party "predators" who neglect their parties, exploit them for personal advantage, or undercut their organizational capacities. Challenging this view, Presidential Party Building demonstrates that every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to build his party into a more durable political organization while every Democratic president refused to do the same. Yet whether they supported their party or stood in its way, each president contributed to the distinctive organizational trajectories taken by the two parties in the modern era.
Unearthing new archival evidence, Daniel Galvin reveals that Republican presidents responded to their party's minority status by building its capacities to mobilize voters, recruit candidates, train activists, provide campaign services, and raise funds. From Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism" to Richard Nixon's "New Majority" to George W. Bush's hopes for a partisan realignment, Republican presidents saw party building as a means of forging a new political majority in their image. Though they usually met with little success, their efforts made important contributions to the GOP's cumulative organizational development. Democratic presidents, in contrast, were primarily interested in exploiting the majority they inherited, not in building a new one. Until their majority disappeared during Bill Clinton's presidency, Democratic presidents eschewed party building and expressed indifference to the long-term effects of their actions.
Bringing these dynamics into sharp relief, Presidential Party Building offers profound new insights into presidential behavior, party organizational change, and modern American political development. "Galvin's account of all this is disciplined and scholarly, with accordingly focused conclusions."---Charles Homans, Washington Monthly "Conventional wisdom holds that US presidents make the most of the office by either focusing on reelection or building a personal legacy that historians will remember. Presidents are expected to be less interested in building their political parties. Galvin successfully challenges this simplification by demonstrating that Republican presidents since the New Deal consistently and energetically sought to strengthen the organizational capacity of the GOP, using the power of the office to further the goal of making the Republicans the new majority party. . . . The book is an important contribution to the literature on the presidency and offers a fine research design model for qualitative social scientists." "In an exceptionally well-researched and beautifully written book, Daniel Galvin . . . fundamentally alters our understanding of presidents' contributions to the development of political parties. Presidential Party Building will likely become a classic in the field, both for its substantive contributions and for its conceptual and analytical innovations. . . . It will be tremendously illuminating for scholars of the presidency, party politics, American political development, and political organizations."---Jesse H. Rhodes, The Forum "Students of presidential politics since 1960 will encounter important new findings in this book. Daniel Galvin's book explains in careful empirical detail the impact of post-1952 presidents upon their respective political parties. Galvin's method involves comparative case studies based on meticulous research of reliable sources. It is an impressive summary of the actual historical record of president-party interactions."---Steven E. Schier, Political Science Quarterly "Presidential scholars are indebted to Galvin's seminal study not only for the new light it sheds on past presidential party building but also for the way it invites us to think afresh about the future of presidential party building. . . . Whatever the future may hold, however, there can be no d
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Building the Judiciary
Law, Courts, and the Politics of Institutional Development
by Justin Crowe
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Justin Crowe is assistant professor of political science at Williams College.
How did the federal judiciary transcend early limitations to become a powerful institution of American governance? How did the Supreme Court move from political irrelevance to political centrality? Building the Judiciary uncovers the causes and consequences of judicial institution-building in the United States from the commencement of the new government in 1789 through the close of the twentieth century. Explaining why and how the federal judiciary became an independent, autonomous, and powerful political institution, Justin Crowe moves away from the notion that the judiciary is exceptional in the scheme of American politics, illustrating instead how it is subject to the same architectonic politics as other political institutions.
Arguing that judicial institution-building is fundamentally based on a series of contested questions regarding institutional design and delegation, Crowe develops a theory to explain why political actors seek to build the judiciary and the conditions under which they are successful. He both demonstrates how the motivations of institution-builders ranged from substantive policy to partisan and electoral politics to judicial performance, and details how reform was often provoked by substantial changes in the political universe or transformational entrepreneurship by political leaders. Embedding case studies of landmark institution-building episodes within a contextual understanding of each era under consideration, Crowe presents a historically rich narrative that offers analytically grounded explanations for why judicial institution-building was pursued, how it was accomplished, and what--in the broader scheme of American constitutional democracy--it achieved. "Crowe takes the position that, despite the conventional wisdom that the institutional legitimacy of the federal judiciary is a product of its own decisions, the growth of the institutional development and legitimacy of the national courts is a result of continued and strategic decisions made by political actors outside the judiciary. This interesting, important, and timely thesis is supported by the author's use of events through history. Crowe proves to be a master storyteller; the book is excellently researched and written, and the thesis is strongly and articulately supported. . . . Scholars interested in the judiciary, American political development, Congress, and U.S. history will benefit from this thoughtful book." "Building the Judiciary is excellently written and accessible to readers who may have no background in American politics. I highly recommend the book to comparative judicial politics scholars who want to learn about the institutional development of the American federal judiciary."---Maria Popova, Perspectives on Politics "To illustrate the political process of constructing federal judicial institutions, Crowe has composed a book of remarkable architectural elegance."---Stephen M. Engel, Tulsa Law Review "With the arrival of this book, the idea that elected politicians and unelected judges operate in separate spheres finally has to be put aside. A blockbuster work, this magnificent rendition of how Congress has built federal judicial power invites us to recognize the national judiciary as a central actor in American politics, placed there by continuous legislative design."-Rick Valelly, Swarthmore College "Building the Judiciary reveals a fascinating paradox of American political development: the courts are periodically pulled into partisan rancor and interbranch warfare, and yet these episodes have resulted in the building of an autonomous and powerful judiciary. This pathbreaking book is a major contribution to understanding how judges have participated in institutional reforms that have forged a unique American state and is a must read for understanding the politics of judicial statecraft."-Sidney Milkis, University of Virginia "Accurate
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Disjointed Pluralism
Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress
by Eric Schickler
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the Fenno Prize" Eric Schickler is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
From the 1910 overthrow of "Czar" Joseph Cannon to the reforms enacted when Republicans took over the House in 1995, institutional change within the U.S. Congress has been both a product and a shaper of congressional politics. For several decades, scholars have explained this process in terms of a particular collective interest shared by members, be it partisanship, reelection worries, or policy motivations. Eric Schickler makes the case that it is actually interplay among multiple interests that determines institutional change. In the process, he explains how congressional institutions have proved remarkably adaptable and yet consistently frustrating for members and outside observers alike.
Analyzing leadership, committee, and procedural restructuring in four periods (1890-1910, 1919-1932, 1937-1952, and 1970-1989), Schickler argues that coalitions promoting a wide range of member interests drive change in both the House and Senate. He shows that multiple interests determine institutional innovation within a period; that different interests are important in different periods; and, more broadly, that changes in the salient collective interests across time do not follow a simple logical or developmental sequence. Institutional development appears disjointed, as new arrangements are layered on preexisting structures intended to serve competing interests. An epilogue assesses the rise and fall of Newt Gingrich in light of these findings.
Schickler's model of "disjointed pluralism" integrates rational choice theory with historical institutionalist approaches. It both complicates and advances efforts at theoretical synthesis by proposing a fuller, more nuanced understanding of institutional innovation--and thus of American political development and history. "This is a very good read for students of Congress who puzzle over the institution's configuration. . . . An excellent examination of institutional change." "If we know anything about the U.S. Congress it is this: Congress is a dynamic, ever-changing institution. . . . Alas, for good reasons our theories of congressional organization tend to the static and our empirical analyses tend to the cross-sectional. Eric Schickler's fine book joins a growing set of efforts to understand how and why Congress changes."---Garry Young, Political Science Quarterly "This book is essential reading for those interested in internal legislative politics, and an important contribution to the more general literature on American politics."---Keith E. Whittington, Congress and the Presidency "This is an excellent piece of work, which will be influential. Both rational choice and developmental theorists and congressional scholars will read it. This book will be required reading for all Americanists in political science. It should win several prizes for its thoughtfulness, appropriateness, and careful, knowledgeable use of history."-David Brady, Stanford University "This is an ambitious piece of work on an important topic. I am impressed with the exhaustive search for sources and the splendid, integrated account of so much of Congress's institutional development. It is a remarkable achievement."-Steven S. Smith, University of Minnesota
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The Transformation of American Politics
Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism
by Paul Pierson
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Paul Pierson holds the Avice Saint Chair of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.
The contemporary American political landscape has been marked by two paradoxical transformations: the emergence after 1960 of an increasingly activist state, and the rise of an assertive and politically powerful conservatism that strongly opposes activist government. Leading young scholars take up these issues in The Transformation of American Politics. Arguing that even conservative administrations have become more deeply involved in managing our economy and social choices, they examine why our political system nevertheless has grown divided as never before over the extent to which government should involve itself in our lives.
The contributors show how these two closely linked trends have influenced the reform and running of political institutions, patterns of civic engagement, and capacities for partisan mobilization--and fueled ever-heightening conflicts over the contours and reach of public policy. These transformations not only redefined who participates in American politics and how they do so, but altered the substance of political conflicts and the capacities of rival interests to succeed. Representing both an important analysis of American politics and an innovative contribution to the study of long-term political change, this pioneering volume reveals how partisan discourse and the relationship between citizens and their government have been redrawn and complicated by increased government programs.
The contributors are Andrea Louise Campbell, Jacob S. Hacker, Nolan McCarty, Suzanne Mettler, Paul Pierson, Theda Skocpol, Mark A. Smith, Steven M. Teles, and Julian E. Zelizer. "This smart collection of essays, unlike most such compilations, is as coherent as the title advertises."---Andrew Hartman, Michigan Historical Review "I would recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the geological history of our planet. . . . The book is written in an easy and understandable language." "This excellent volume is recommended for all scholars of conservatism and anyone who studies the American national government, particularly American political development scholars interested in state building and transformation."---Richard J. Meagher, The Americas "This book offers a remarkably wide-ranging analysis of the politics of conservatism from some of the best and brightest. This book stands out for charting the impact of political conservatism on voting and elections and its reshaping of voluntary associations, pressure groups, and government institutions and policy."-Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Minnesota "The Transformation of American Politics has so much going for it. The contributors to this volume are well-known experts in their fields. There are obvious and important connections among the chapters, adding to the coherence of the whole. The volume effectively shows how historical perspectives can shed light not just on eras long ago but on contemporary debates. It's a winner."-Christopher Howard, author of The Welfare State Nobody Knows
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Three Worlds of Relief
Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal
by Cybelle Fox
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Co-Winner of the 2014 Barrington Moore Book Award, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2013 Distinguished Book Award, Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2013 Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award, International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association" "Co-Winner of the 2013 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2012 Award for Best Book in Latino Politics, Latino Caucus of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2012 C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems" Cybelle Fox is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the coauthor of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings.
Three Worlds of Relief examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by comparing how blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants were treated by welfare policies during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Taking readers from the turn of the twentieth century to the dark days of the Depression, Cybelle Fox finds that, despite rampant nativism, European immigrants received generous access to social welfare programs. The communities in which they lived invested heavily in relief. Social workers protected them from snooping immigration agents, and ensured that noncitizenship and illegal status did not prevent them from receiving the assistance they needed. But that same helping hand was not extended to Mexicans and blacks. Fox reveals, for example, how blacks were relegated to racist and degrading public assistance programs, while Mexicans who asked for assistance were deported with the help of the very social workers they turned to for aid.
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Fox paints a riveting portrait of how race, labor, and politics combined to create three starkly different worlds of relief. She debunks the myth that white America's immigrant ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike immigrants and minorities today. Three Worlds of Relief challenges us to reconsider not only the historical record but also the implications of our past on contemporary debates about race, immigration, and the American welfare state. "Thoroughly researched and well written, the book enhances the literature on immigration and ethnicity." "Three Worlds of Relief covers new territory in social welfare history and will interest academics and students in the field. Of particular importance to the social work profession is the author's attention to the role that social workers played in advocating both for progressive legislation and practice, except in the West and Southwest."---Marguerite G. Rosenthal, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare "Three Worlds of Relief reminds us that welfare policies must be measured by their implementation and effects as well as their intent. State and local authorities have the power to accentuate or to mute ethnic and racial biases in ways that undermine or enhance the mission of dispensing benefits impartially. Students, scholars, and practitioners concerned with the problem of inequality in the welfare state will find this book illuminating."---Lara Vapnek, Journal of Children and Poverty "Fox's scholarship provides a detailed and rich portrait of how racism and race-based nativism, in conjunction with political and economic interests, shaped the design and implementation of U.S. welfare policies. . . . [T]his book is necessary reading for advanced scholars of U.S. social policy, welfare, poverty, and race and immigration and is highly recommended for graduate courses on these topics as well as historical and comparative methods."---Ellen Reese and Michael Walker, American Journal of Sociology "Fox has set a scholarly agenda for a new social history of
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The Substance of Representation
Congress, American Political Development, and Lawmaking
by John S. Lapinski
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
John S. Lapinski is associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and the deputy director of elections at NBC News. He is the coeditor of The Macropolitics of Congress (Princeton).
Lawmaking is crucial to American democracy because it completely defines and regulates the public life of the nation. Yet despite its importance, political scientists spend very little time studying the direct impact that the politics surrounding a particular issue has on lawmaking. The Substance of Representation draws on a vast range of historical and empirical data to better understand how lawmaking works across different policy areas. Specifically, John Lapinski introduces a theoretically grounded method for parsing policy issues into categories, and he shows how policymaking varies in predictable ways based on the specific issue area being addressed.
Lapinski examines the ways in which key factors that influence policymaking matter for certain types of policy issues, and he includes an exhaustive look at how elite political polarization shifts across these areas. He considers how Congress behaves according to the policy issue at hand, and how particular areas--such as war, sovereignty issues, and immigration reform--change legislative performance. Relying on records of all Congressional votes since Reconstruction and analyzing voting patterns across policy areas from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries, Lapinski provides a comprehensive historical perspective on lawmaking in order to shed light on current practices.
Giving a clear picture of Congressional behavior in the policymaking process over time, The Substance of Representation provides insights into the critical role of American lawmaking. "Lapinski develops a new tool kit to measure and analyze an expansive set of legislation and lawmakers' policy preferences from 1877 to 2010. His key contribution to the study of the American national legislature is his coding approach and the data development, which develops a deeper understanding of lawmaking. Through these, Lapinski offers findings about polarization, elite leadership in Congress, and the influence and impact of members of Congress and their policy preferences across different areas. This work will certainly contribute to developing a new discussion within the legislative studies field and give future political scientists new possibilities of expanding the research in the area." "He offers an astutely crafted schema that seems to this observer to avoid the trap of time boundedness and enables the APD enterprise to more systematically track the evolution of policy."---Ross K. Baker, Congress & The Presidency "Students of Congress think they are studying what government does when they examine roll call votes. In this powerful and original contribution to legislative and policy studies and American political development, John Lapinski shows otherwise. The substance of policy-what sorts of laws members of Congress are voting on-makes an enormous difference for theory, method, American political history, and our conclusions about how Congress works."-Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University "I salute John Lapinski for this innovative work on American lawmaking. The book offers deft history, a good measure of the significance of laws, and a helpful categorization of laws by substantive area. In a welcome move, it annexes Congress to the study of American political development."-David Mayhew, author of Partisan Balance "The Substance of Representation is a provocative book. Lapinski urges scholars to incorporate the substance of policy into models of lawmaking and shows us with impressive historical sweep how this can be fruitfully done."-Sarah Binder, George Washington University "This important book will force scholars to adopt a higher standard of analysis when discussing policymaking in the American system. It challenges the power and accuracy of a widely used measure of ideolog
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Paths Out of Dixie
The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972
by Robert Mickey
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2016 J. David Greenstone Book Prize, Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2017 V.O. Key Award, Southern Political Science Association" Robert Mickey is associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan.
The transformation of the American South--from authoritarian to democratic rule--is the most important political development since World War II. It has re-sorted voters into parties, remapped presidential elections, and helped polarize Congress. Most important, it is the final step in America's democratization. Paths Out of Dixie illuminates this sea change by analyzing the democratization experiences of Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
Robert Mickey argues that Southern states, from the 1890s until the early 1970s, constituted pockets of authoritarian rule trapped within and sustained by a federal democracy. These enclaves--devoted to cheap agricultural labor and white supremacy--were established by conservative Democrats to protect their careers and clients. From the abolition of the whites-only Democratic primary in 1944 until the national party reforms of the early 1970s, enclaves were battered and destroyed by a series of democratization pressures from inside and outside their borders. Drawing on archival research, Mickey traces how Deep South rulers--dissimilar in their internal conflict and political institutions--varied in their responses to these challenges. Ultimately, enclaves differed in their degree of violence, incorporation of African Americans, and reconciliation of Democrats with the national party. These diverse paths generated political and economic legacies that continue to reverberate today.
Focusing on enclave rulers, their governance challenges, and the monumental achievements of their adversaries, Paths Out of Dixie shows how the struggles of the recent past have reshaped the South and, in so doing, America's political development. "Paths Out of Dixie is the rare gem of American politics destined to be a touchstone across political science subfields."---Jason Brownlee, Journal of Politics "Mickey's work rests on an exhaustive treasure of archival research that displays a stunning commitment to the best traditions of American political development scholarship. Paths Out of Dixie is a worthy and indeed more rigorous successor to Key's (1949) Southern Politics."---Kimberley Johnson, Journal of Politics "Mickey's work should be valued by students of the modern American South. Like recent historians who are arguably the new gold standards for studying this subject, he reveals fresh ways of understanding political change in the Deep South."---Anthony B. Newkirk, Arkansas Review "In this remarkable book, Mickey focuses on Southern politics after the great public reversal of black disenfranchisement-and boldly compares that politics to authoritarianism. He grounds his compelling claims and narratives in an exceptionally confident handling of evidence, resulting in a major milestone in American political science. This vivid and profoundly illuminating book is certain to change views not just of Southern politics, but of the country we have been-and the national democracy we have become."-Rick Valelly, Swarthmore College "This is an impressive account of political change in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, from one-party authoritarian regimes in the 1890s to democracies in the 1970s. Mickey's analyses of the constellation of forces in each state are powerful. Paths out of Dixie will be a revelation to political scientists."-Amy Bridges, University of California, San Diego "This is one of the most significant books on this critical region to appear in decades. Mickey situates this work in the comparative democratization literature and analyzes political accommodation to civil rights from the perspective of elites and parties. There is nothing else quite like it."-Elizabeth Sanders,
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Bound by Our Constitution
Women, Workers, and the Minimum Wage
by Vivien Hart
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
What difference does a written constitution make to public policy? How have women workers fared in a nation bound by constitutional principles, compared with those not covered by formal, written guarantees of fair procedure or equitable outcome? To investigate these questions, Vivien Hart traces the evolution of minimum wage policies in the United States and Britain from their common origins in women's politics around 1900 to their divergent outcomes in our day. She argues, contrary to common wisdom, that the advantage has been with the American constitutional system rather than the British.
Basing her analysis on primary research, Hart reconstructs legal strategies and policy decisions that revolved around the recognition of women as workers and the public definition of gender roles. Contrasting seismic shifts and expansion in American minimum wage policy with indifference and eventual abolition in Britain, she challenges preconceptions about the constraints of American constitutionalism versus British flexibility. Though constitutional requirements did block and frustrate women's attempts to gain fair wages, they also, as Hart demonstrates, created a terrain in the United States for principled debate about women, work, and the state, and a momentum for public policy, unparalleled in Britain. Hart's book should be of interest to policy, labor, women's, and legal historians, to political scientists, and to students of gender issues, law, and social policy.
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Forged Consensus
Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921-1953
by David M. Hart
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
David M. Hart is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
In this thought-provoking book, David Hart challenges the creation myth of post--World War II federal science and technology policy. According to this myth, the postwar policy sprang full-blown from the mind of Vannevar Bush in the form of Science, the Endless Frontier (1945). Hart puts Bush's efforts in a larger historical and political context, demonstrating in the process that Bush was but one of many contributors to this complex policy and not necessarily the most successful one. Herbert Hoover, Karl Compton, Thurman Arnold, Henry Wallace, Robert Taft, and Curtis LeMay--along with more familiar figures like Bush--are among those whose endeavors he traces.
Hart places these policy entrepreneurs in the broad scheme of American political development, connecting each one's vision of the state in this apparently esoteric policy area to the central issues, events, and figures of mid-century America and to key theoretical debates. Hart's work reveals the wide range of ideas, often in conflict with one another, that underlay what later observers interpreted as a "postwar consensus." In Hart's view, these visions--and the interests and institutions that shape their translation into public policy--form the enduring basis of American politics in this important area. Policymakers today are still grappling with the legacies of the forged consensus. "A provocative new book. . . . It is a book to read, reread, ponder, and argue about, a major work on political language."
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Political Organizations
by James Q. Wilson
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
James Q. Wilson is the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of many books and has served on numerous national commissions concerned with public policy.
A major work by one of America's eminent political scientists, Political Organizations has had a profound impact on how we view the influence of interest groups on policymaking. James Wilson wrote this book to counter two ideas: that popular interests will automatically generate political organizations and that such organizations will faithfully mirror the opinions and interests of their members. Moreover, he demonstrated that the way in which political organizations (including parties, business groups, labor unions, and civil rights associations) are created and maintained has a profound impact on the opinions they represent and the tactics they use. Now available for the first time in paperback, this book has broadened its scope to include recently developed organizations as it addresses many of today's concerns over the power of such groups as special-interest lobbies.
In 1973, when this book was first published, the press and public were fascinated by the social movements of the 1960s, thinking that the antiwar and civil rights movements might sweep aside old-fashioned interest-group lobbies. Wilson argued, however, that such movements would inevitably be supplanted by new organizations, ones with goals and tactics that might direct the course of action away from some of the movements' founding principles. In light of the current popular distress with special-interest groups and their supposed death-grip on Congress, Wilson again attempts to modify a widely held view. He shows that although lobbies have multiplied in number and kind, they remain considerably constrained by the difficulty they have in maintaining themselves.
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Parting at the Crossroads
The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada
by Antonia Maioni
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Antonia Maioni is Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University.
As almost all newspaper or magazine readers know, Canada figured prominently in the turbulent U.S. debates over health care reform in the early Clinton presidency. Furthermore, future news analysts and policymakers will undoubtedly again use Canada to cite the "good" and the "bad" aspects of single-payer national health insurance. Beyond the debate about the desirability of Canadian-style health care reforms, Antonia Maioni sees another question: Why did the United States and Canada, alike in so many ways, part "at the crossroads" to produce such different systems of health insurance? She answers this previously neglected query so interestingly that her book will hold the attention of anyone concerned with health care in either country or both.
The author explores the development of health insurance in the United States and Canada, from the emergence of health care as a political issue in the 1930s to the passage of federal health insurance legislation in the 1960s. Focusing on how political institutions influence policy development, she shows that Canada's federal structure and its parliamentary institutions encouraged a social-democratic third party that became pivotal in demonstrating the feasibility of universal, public health insurance. Meanwhile, the constraints of the U.S. political system forced health care reformers to temper their own ideas to appeal to a wide coalition within the Democratic party. Even readers previously unfamiliar with Canadian politics will find in this book important clues about the "realm of the possible" in the uncertain future of U.S. health care.
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Still a House Divided
Race and Politics in Obama's America
by Desmond King
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012" Desmond S. King is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford. His many books include The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation. Rogers M. Smith is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His many books include Stories of Peoplehood.
Why race remains the central political issue in America today
Why have American policies failed to reduce the racial inequalities still pervasive throughout the nation? Has President Barack Obama defined new political approaches to race that might spur unity and progress? Still a House Divided examines the enduring divisions of American racial politics and how these conflicts have been shaped by distinct political alliances and their competing race policies. Combining deep historical knowledge with a detailed exploration of such issues as housing, employment, criminal justice, multiracial census categories, immigration, voting in majority-minority districts, and school vouchers, Desmond King and Rogers Smith assess the significance of President Obama's election to the White House and the prospects for achieving constructive racial policies for America's future.
Offering a fresh perspective on the networks of governing institutions, political groups, and political actors that influence the structure of American racial politics, King and Smith identify three distinct periods of opposing racial policy coalitions in American history. The authors investigate how today's alliances pit color-blind and race-conscious approaches against one another, contributing to political polarization and distorted policymaking. Contending that President Obama has so far inadequately confronted partisan divisions over race, the authors call for all sides to recognize the need for a balance of policy measures if America is to ever cease being a nation divided.
Presenting a powerful account of American political alliances and their contending racial agendas, Still a House Divided sheds light on a policy path vital to the country's future. "[King and Smith] accurately survey the history and the evolution of American thinking on race."---Richard D. Kahlenberg, New Republic "Still a House Divided is quite an achievement. . . . This is an outstanding work." "Essential reading for scholars of race, politics and policy. It provides a rich and textured analysis that is accessible and theoretically driven. . . . The individual sections are master classes in each policy era and will help guide individual scholars with interests in those eras. With that, the book is an instant classic by two scholars who routinely produce work of this quality."---Mark Sawyer, Ethnic and Racial Studies "Hopefully, there will be an intellectually synergistic effect from the publication of Still a House Divided. As American politics scholars in these camps move forward, they might be able to see some working in the middle and refine their scholarship."---Katherine Tate, Political Science Quarterly "Presenting a powerful account of American political alliances and their contending racial agendas, Still a House Divided sheds light on a policy path vital to the country's future." "Still a House Divided deftly lays to rest the idea of postracialism in American politics and, through the concept of rival racial-policy coalitions, reveals the modern potency of the dispute between color-blind and race-conscious camps. King and Smith make a compelling case that competing visions over the role of race continue to define the core of American political life, and their bold and meticulously researched book offers new and much-needed leverage on a frustratingly durable problem."-Lawrence D. Bobo, Harvard University "This is an important book by two very insightful scholars. King and Smith take on issues, both historical and current, necessary to understanding and intervening in the raci
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The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
by Thomas J. Sugrue
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 1998 Bancroft Prize in American History" "Winner of the 1997 Philip Taft Prize in Labor History" "Winner of the 1996 President's Book Award, Social Science History Association" "Winner of the 1997 Best Book in North American Urban History Award, Urban History Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1997" Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton) and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
The reasons behind Detroit's persistent racialized poverty after World War II
Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.
This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit's bankruptcy. "Praise for Princeton's previous edition:"[Sugrue's] disciplined historical engagement with a complex, often inglorious, past offers a compelling model for understanding how race and the Rust Belt converged to create the current impasse."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "A splendid book that does no less than transform our understanding of United States history after 1940."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[A] first-rate account . . . . With insight and elegance, Sugrue describes the street-by-street warfare to maintain housing values against the perceived encroachment of blacks trying desperately to escape the underbuilt and overcrowded slums."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "Perhaps by offering a clearer picture of how the urban crisis began, Sugrue brings us a bit closer to finding a way to end it."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[T]he most interesting, informative, and provocative book on modern Detroit."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "Superbly researched and engagingly written."" "Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[A] devastating critique of the currently fashionable 'culture of poverty' thesis. Must reading for anyone concerned about the current urban crisis.""---Jacqueline Jones, Lingua Franca
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Reforms at Risk
What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted
by Eric M. Patashnik
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2009 Louis Brownlow Book Award, National Academy of Public Administration" Eric M. Patashnik is associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. His books include Putting Trust in the US Budget: Federal Trust Funds and the Politics of Commitment.
Reforms at Risk is the first book to closely examine what happens to sweeping and seemingly successful policy reforms after they are passed. Most books focus on the politics of reform adoption, yet as Eric Patashnik shows here, the political struggle does not end when major reforms become enacted. Why do certain highly praised policy reforms endure while others are quietly reversed or eroded away?
Patashnik peers into some of the most critical arenas of domestic-policy reform--including taxes, agricultural subsidies, airline deregulation, emissions trading, welfare state reform, and reform of government procurement--to identify the factors that enable reform measures to survive. He argues that the reforms that stick destroy an existing policy subsystem and reconfigure the political dynamic. Patashnik demonstrates that sustainable reforms create positive policy feedbacks, transform institutions, and often unleash the ''creative destructiveness'' of market forces.
Reforms at Risk debunks the argument that reforms inevitably fail because Congress is prey to special interests, and the book provides a more realistic portrait of the possibilities and limits of positive change in American government. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wants to ensure that hard-fought reform victories survive. "Tremendous effort is invested by political scientists in an attempt to understanding the conditions that produce significant policy change. In this important book, Patashnik considers the fate of major policy changes."---S.Q. Kelly, Choice "Eric M. Patashnik's excellent book . . . is an important book, for obvious reasons--as the Obama Administration settles in to a long, hard slog of reform across the broad swath of government activity, it will need to understand not only how to get reforms passed, but how to make sure they're carried out."---Elaine Kamarck, Democracy "[Patashnik] produces not only a helpful primer for policy entrepreneurs on how to design reforms with self-reinforcing features, but also a fine-grained scholarly analysis of the limits of previous work on policymaking. It is an instant classic that will be widely read by practitioners and scholars alike. . . . Eric Patashnik has written a fascinating and enormously important book that tells us how policy designs help shape the long-term sustainability of general-interest reforms. . . . It is a brilliant book that confirms Patashnik's place among the top scholars examining the interaction between political science and public policy."---Andrea Louise Campbell, Journal of Policy History "This is a very fine book--an example of American political science at its best, which is to say, very good indeed. . . . Fine scholarship informs and leaves the reader arguing with it throughout; by these two measures this is fine scholarship."---Michael Moran, Governance "As the Obama administration and Congressional leaders address these and other challenges, they would do well to read Eric Patashnik's new book, Reforms at Risk. It is a book that adds to our base of knowledge and also provides insights that can be used to improve public policy."---John Hoornbeek, Journal of Politics "[I]n contrast to portions of the political science literature that try to portray post-reform politics as a matter of cycles, or coalitions, or institutional design, Patashnik provides a more complex and, to me, more realistic account of the political dynamics, including the importance of timing, historical circumstance, and learning from experience."---J. Samuel Fitch, Policy Sciences "Important reforms may be enacted, but what happ
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The Litigation State
Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the U.S.
by Sean Farhang
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2011 C. Herman Pritchett Award, Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2011 Gladys M. Kammerer Award, American Political Science Association" Sean Farhang is assistant professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Of the 1.65 million lawsuits enforcing federal laws over the past decade, 3 percent were prosecuted by the federal government, while 97 percent were litigated by private parties. When and why did private plaintiff-driven litigation become a dominant model for enforcing federal regulation? The Litigation State shows how government legislation created the nation's reliance upon private litigation, and investigates why Congress would choose to mobilize, through statutory design, private lawsuits to implement federal statutes. Sean Farhang argues that Congress deliberately cultivates such private lawsuits partly as a means of enforcing its will over the resistance of opposing presidents.
Farhang reveals that private lawsuits, functioning as an enforcement resource, are a profoundly important component of American state capacity. He demonstrates how the distinctive institutional structure of the American state--particularly conflict between Congress and the president over control of the bureaucracy--encourages Congress to incentivize private lawsuits. Congress thereby achieves regulatory aims through a decentralized army of private lawyers, rather than by well-staffed bureaucracies under the president's influence. The historical development of ideological polarization between Congress and the president since the late 1960s has been a powerful cause of the explosion of private lawsuits enforcing federal law over the same period.
Using data from many policy areas spanning the twentieth century, and historical analysis focused on civil rights, The Litigation State investigates how American political institutions shape the strategic design of legislation to mobilize private lawsuits for policy implementation. "Farhang is at the forefront of a new generation of scholars who have begun to broaden the parameters of the American state and its reach into society. Drawing upon an impressive range of methods, sources, and theory, Farhang shows us how Congress and the administration extended the reach of regulation by inducing private litigants and the legal profession to cocreate a vast regulatory regime. A shrewd reading of the new mode of state-building."-Dan Carpenter, Harvard University "This book is a major advance in the understanding of American government. Farhang demonstrates that America's distinctive reliance on adversarial legalism to enforce civil rights does not reflect a power grab by lawyers and judges. Instead, it stems from deliberate Congressional choices, in the face of political polarization, to use private litigation to protect individual rights."-Robert A. Kagan, University of California, Berkeley "Private enforcement of statutory provisions is an enormously significant aspect of our political system and economy, yet researchers have largely ignored this issue. This seminal and important book exhaustively analyzes the theory behind private enforcement and persuasively sets out the history of its intentional creation as a tool of regulation."-Frank Cross, University of Texas, Austin "This is an expertly executed, rigorous, and innovative book about American political development. With a commanding, multidisciplinary approach, Farhang develops the concepts of state fragmentation and capacity, and brings a sophisticated understanding of ideology to the discussion."-John Skrentny, University of California, San Diego "This is an exceptionally well-crafted, clearly argued, and illuminating book on the growing use of private litigation as a regulatory tool. Farhang's crisply framed analysis crosses subfields of American politics and shows how Democrats and Republicans collaborated to tur
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Electing the Senate
Indirect Democracy before the Seventeenth Amendment
by Wendy J. Schiller
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Wendy J. Schiller is associate professor of political science and public policy at Brown University. Charles Stewart III is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
How U.S. senators were chosen prior to the Seventeenth Amendment-and the consequences of Constitutional reform
From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were not directly elected by the people-instead the Constitution mandated that they be chosen by state legislators. This radically changed in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the public a direct vote. Electing the Senate investigates the electoral connections among constituents, state legislators, political parties, and U.S. senators during the age of indirect elections. Wendy Schiller and Charles Stewart find that even though parties controlled the partisan affiliation of the winning candidate for Senate, they had much less control over the universe of candidates who competed for votes in Senate elections and the parties did not always succeed in resolving internal conflict among their rank and file. Party politics, money, and personal ambition dominated the election process, in a system originally designed to insulate the Senate from public pressure.
Electing the Senate uses an original data set of all the roll call votes cast by state legislators for U.S. senators from 1871 to 1913 and all state legislators who served during this time. Newspaper and biographical accounts uncover vivid stories of the political maneuvering, corruption, and partisanship-played out by elite political actors, from elected officials, to party machine bosses, to wealthy business owners-that dominated the indirect Senate elections process. Electing the Senate raises important questions about the effectiveness of Constitutional reforms, such as the Seventeenth Amendment, that promised to produce a more responsive and accountable government. "Schiller and Stewart develop a database of breathtaking proportions to provide insight into the politics of indirect election of senators, and the consequences of direct and indirect election on electoral responsiveness. Rather than a dusty account of a long-forgotten reform, this book has implications for understanding the modern Senate." "With the Seventeenth Amendment back in the news, Schiller and Stewart reexamine how state legislatures elected U.S. senators, to determine whether indirect elections were as unsavory and ineffective as charged, and whether popular elections have worked as well as reformers predicted. Their findings may surprise those on both sides of the ongoing debate."-Donald A. Ritchie, author of The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction "This eye-opening book examines some of the most important questions in the development of representative government in the United States. It explores the often disastrous consequences of the original Constitutional scheme, the ways in which party politics and corruption can overtake deliberative processes, the unfulfilled promises of reformers, and the institutional conditions that foster government responsiveness and accountability. Everyone interested in American politics must read this book."-Steven S. Smith, Washington University in St. Louis "This is a fine book by two of the most accomplished and able scholars studying the U.S. Congress. Their findings will undoubtedly become the definitive work on how the indirect election of U.S. senators by individual state legislatures influenced the upper chamber of Congress and American politics."-Richard Bensel, Cornell University "The U.S. Senate is front and center in determining policy in America, and given its importance, it is critical to understand the relationship of its members to constituents. Based on a careful and massive collection of original data, this excellent book provides a clear picture of indirect Senate elections and their consequences." -John Lapinski, U
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Shaping Race Policy
The United States in Comparative Perspective
by Robert Lieberman
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"Winner of the 2006 Best Book on Public Policy Award, Race, Ethnicity and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association" Robert C. Lieberman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the author of Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.
Shaping Race Policy investigates one of the most serious policy challenges facing the United States today: the stubborn persistence of racial inequality in the post-civil rights era. Unlike other books on the topic, it is comparative, examining American developments alongside parallel histories of race policy in Great Britain and France.
Focusing on on two key policy areas, welfare and employment, the book asks why America has had such uneven success at incorporating African Americans and other minorities into the full benefits of citizenship. Robert Lieberman explores the historical roots of racial incorporation in these policy areas over the course of the twentieth century and explains both the relative success of antidiscrimination policy and the failure of the American welfare state to address racial inequality. He chronicles the rise and resilience of affirmative action, including commentary on the recent University of Michigan affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court. He also shows how nominally color-blind policies can have racially biased effects, and challenges the common wisdom that color-blind policies are morally and politically superior and that race-conscious policies are merely second best.
Shaping Race Policy has two innovative features that distinguish it from other works in the area. First, it is comparative, examining American developments alongside parallel histories of race policy in Great Britain and France. Second, its argument merges ideas and institutions, which are usually considered separate and competing factors, into a comprehensive and integrated explanatory approach. The book highlights the importance of two factors--America's distinctive political institutions and the characteristic American tension between race consciousness and color blindness--in accounting for the curious pattern of success and failure in American race policy. "Lieberman's book is well worth reading-and debating. . . . [T]his book sets its sights on a big, interesting question and tackles it. . . . It is a book that should open up significant space for debate and for future research."---Erik Bleich, Ethics and International Affairs "This is a deep, wide, valuable book that demonstrably advances research in racial politics, comparative public policy, and the social science analysis of political history. That is an impressive achievement for one volume."---Jennifer L. Hochschild, Ethnic and Racial Studies "How have and will we resolve the fundamental tension between our race consciousness and our color-blind ideals? Robert Lieberman breaks new and important ground in resolving this basic American dilemma, focusing on how shifting coalitions and tensions between ideas and institutions have produced varying welfare and discrimination policies, all richly informed by comparisons with French and British experience. The result helps us understand not only how we got to the current crossroads but also where we must aspire to head. We must all hope that the nation will learn the lessons Lieberman teaches."-Anthony W. Marx, President, Amherst College "Shaping Race Policy advances existing scholarly discussion by bringing together issues normally only addressed by either country specialists or policy specialists. The book integrates these literatures and in the process provides a fresh account of how race-mediated through political institutions, patterns of group-state linkages and cultural patterns-has fashioned different political trajectories. Thoroughly researched, theoretically elegant, and persuasive, it is an outstanding exercise in comparative politics."-Desmond King, Nu
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Fighting for the Speakership
The House and the Rise of Party Government
by Jeffery A. Jenkins
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
"One of Choice's Editors' Picks for 2013" Jeffery A. Jenkins is associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. Charles Stewart III is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful partisan figure in the contemporary U.S. Congress. How this came to be, and how the majority party in the House has made control of the speakership a routine matter, is far from straightforward. Fighting for the Speakership provides a comprehensive history of how Speakers have been elected in the U.S. House since 1789, arguing that the organizational politics of these elections were critical to the construction of mass political parties in America and laid the groundwork for the role they play in setting the agenda of Congress today.
Jeffery Jenkins and Charles Stewart show how the speakership began as a relatively weak office, and how votes for Speaker prior to the Civil War often favored regional interests over party loyalty. While struggle, contention, and deadlock over House organization were common in the antebellum era, such instability vanished with the outbreak of war, as the majority party became an "organizational cartel" capable of controlling with certainty the selection of the Speaker and other key House officers. This organizational cartel has survived Gilded Age partisan strife, Progressive Era challenge, and conservative coalition politics to guide speakership elections through the present day. Fighting for the Speakership reveals how struggles over House organization prior to the Civil War were among the most consequential turning points in American political history. "An excellent look at the history of majority party leadership in the House." "[T]his is, overall, a sound and illuminating analysis."---R. Scott Burnet, Historian "The Speaker of the House is the third-highest constitutional office in the United States. Yet political scientists and historians have largely ignored how the House chooses the holder of this exalted position. No longer-Jenkins and Stewart have convincingly placed the contest for the speakership at the center of the historical development of Congress."-Nolan McCarty, Princeton University "The development of an 'organizational cartel' has been central to the evolution of political parties in the U.S. House. The parties control access to committee and leadership slots. Whether this has allowed parties to control policy is a separate and contingent matter. Jenkins and Stewart press this theoretical distinction and offer much else in this excellent and authoritative work of congressional history."-David Mayhew, Yale University "This is an ambitious and impressive piece of scholarship with extraordinary historical sweep. Urging scholars to move beyond the study of the majority party's procedural control of the agenda, Jenkins and Stewart grapple with the organizational evolution of the House and the starring role ultimately played in that institutional drama by the majority party caucus. This is a must-read for students of Congress and America's political development."-Sarah Binder, George Washington University and the Brookings Institution "Fighting for the Speakership makes a new and important contribution to our knowledge of the role of speakership contests in the development of party organization in the House of Representatives. Most previous scholarship begins with the observation that majority parties firmly control the House's top organizational positions. Jenkins and Stewart show that this was not always the case."-Steven S. Smith, author of Party Influence in Congress
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Uneasy Alliances
Race and Party Competition in America
by Paul Frymer
Part of the Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparati series
Paul Frymer is associate professor of politics at Princeton University. He is the author of Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton).
Uneasy Alliances is a powerful challenge to how we think about the relationship between race, political parties, and American democracy. While scholars frequently claim that the need to win elections makes government officials responsive to any and all voters, Paul Frymer shows that not all groups are treated equally; politicians spend most of their time and resources on white swing voters--to the detriment of the African American community. As both parties try to attract white swing voters by distancing themselves from blacks, black voters are often ignored and left with unappealing alternatives. African Americans are thus the leading example of a "captured minority."
Frymer argues that our two-party system bears much of the blame for this state of affairs. Often overlooked in current discussions of racial politics, the party system represents a genuine form of institutional racism. Frymer shows that this is no accident, for the party system was set up in part to keep African American concerns off the political agenda. Today, the party system continues to restrict the political opportunities of African American voters, as was shown most recently when Bill Clinton took pains to distance himself from African Americans in order to capture conservative votes and win the presidency. Frymer compares the position of black voters with other social groups--gays and lesbians and the Christian right, for example--who have recently found themselves similarly "captured." Rigorously argued and researched, Uneasy Alliances is a powerful challenge to how we think about the relationship between black voters, political parties, and American democracy.
In a new afterword, Frymer examines the impact of Barack Obama's election on the delicate relationship between race and party politics in America. "The vast literature on American political parties has been immensely enriched and enhanced by this pioneering work on race and parties. . . .This is a highly recommended work."---Hanes Walton, Jr., Political Science Quarterly "In a work that effectively challenges cherished notions of how the political system functions, Paul Frymer . . . shows the centrality of race in the American political process. In addition, he makes a strong theoretical contribution to our analysis of the functioning of political parties in democratic regimes. Uneasy Alliances will be a valuable resource for scholars and students alike, for both its substantive arguments and its theoretical achievements."---Howard L. Reiter, American Political Science Review "Frymer makes a strong case that Democratic presidential candidates have distanced themselves from black voters and issues. . . . The villain in the tale is the United States electoral structure, the two-party, winner-take-all system."---Sandra Featherman, Journal of Politics "Frymer argues that the failure to seriously address white racism's impact on the party system causes us to misunderstand how and why African Americans are and remain at the margins for reasons not related to their abilities and potential impact on the American political system." "Uneasy Alliances provides an excellent overview of the politics of race and sectional conflict that led to the development of the party system. It is an important contribution to the literature on party politics and African-American politics more broadly."-Carol M. Swain, Princeton University "This is a bold, provocative book. . . . Scholars and activists will soon be talking about Frymer's argument and figuring out whether they agree or disagree. It's that kind of a book-hard to ignore."-Richard M. Valelly, Swarthmore College