Instructor: Prof. Clayton Nall Meeting Time: Tuesdays 4:15-6:05 Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:30-2:30 Email: nall@stanford.edu Website: http://www.nallresearch.com Overview POLISCI 421R American Political Development, 1865-Present American Political Development (APD) is a subfield dedicated to studying and explaining changes in American political system. As a subfield of American politics, it is concerned with identifying macro-level factors that have transformed fundamental characteristics of American politics, including the party system, regional voting patterns, Congress and the federal bureaucracy, the labor movement, and interest groups. Among other contributions, APD scholarship has highlighted the importance of taking into account the historical contingency of research findings in American politics. Rather than covering only a limited canon written by self-identified APD scholars, this course covers a range of topics bound by a unifying theme: the importance of long-term historical change in American political institutions and its consequences for our study of both institutions and behavior. Most weeks, we ll be reading one major book and a set of shorter works in the same literature. In Part I of the course, we ll be examining the transformation of the United States from a state of courts and parties to one with powerful nonparty interest groups and strong, professionally staffed federal bureaucracies. In the course of studying institutional development, we will find that institutional changes are only sometimes explicable using functionalist arguments. In Part II, we will shift our attention to two major studies on the origins and development of American social policy and its feedback effects on politics. For Part III, we will shift our attention to two research topics selected for their contemporary relevance and recent scholarship, including the development of the national security state and the shifting norms in the measurement of public opinion. Prerequisites This course is intended for graduate students and select undergraduates. Completion of the graduate intro courses in institutions and behavior is recommended but not required. Advanced undergraduates with previous experience in historical and social science research are welcome to enroll in the class after consulting with the instructor. Learning Goals The goal of this course is to equip graduate students to study long-term changes in the American political system, to provide an opportunity for reading-intensive study of the major themes in the APD field, and to provide them with the tools to enrich their research drawing upon themes and methods developed in the APD literature. Students will come away from the course with a 1
clearer understanding of how their research relates to, and is contingent on, American political history. Students planning to take the American field exam or considering writing a dissertation exploring historical themes will find the course particularly valuable. Requirements and Grading The final course grade will be based on three components: 30% Quality of Class Participation 30% Three Response Papers (each worth 10% of grade) 40% Final Paper (Posted to site Dropbox by 5:00 p.m., June 10 th.) During the first week of the course, students will sign up to write three response papers of approximately 500-700 words each. These response papers should be posted to the class email list no later than 8 p.m. the day before our class meeting, and all students should read and be prepared to discuss their classmates contributions the following afternoon. These papers will be graded on the customary check/plus/minus scale. Students will also be expected to write a 20-25 pp. research paper, due June 10 at 5 p.m. This paper should engage with one of the themes covered in the course. I encourage students to use this paper to develop their personal research agenda. The paper need not emulate the methods of historical comparative research and narrative commonly adopted in APD scholarship, but should deal with some topic related to institutional changes in American politics from 1865 to the present. A one-page prospectus outlining the research question and proposed sources of evidence is due at the beginning of class on May 1. Thirty percent of the grade comes from class participation. Weekly attendance and informed participation is critical. Students with Documented Disabilities Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) located within the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). SDRC staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the SDRC as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066). Required Books These readings will be made available at the Campus Bookstore and at the Green Library reserve desk. Several of these books are widely available on the used-book market at a substantial discount from the cover price. Clemens, Elisabeth. 1997. The People s Lobby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 978-0226109930. 2
Coffman, Edward. 2004. The Regulars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN: 978-0674024021 Frymer, Paul. 2007. Black and Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party. Princeton: Princeton UP. ISBN: 978-0691134659 Hacker, Jacob. 2002. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle Over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0521812887 Herbst, Susan. 1995. Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics. ISBN: 978-0226327433 Mayhew, David. 2004. Electoral Realignments. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN-10: 0300093659 Mettler, Suzanne. 1998. Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy. ISBN: 978-0801485466 Schickler, Eric. 2001. Disjointed Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN: 978-0691049267 Skocpol, Theda. 1993. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. ISBN: 9780674717664 Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0521288651 Valelly, Rick. The Two Reconstructions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 978-0226845302 Course Schedule Unless otherwise indicated, assigned books should be read in their entirety. This schedule may be modified during the course period, but the assignments listed below represent an upper bound on the volume of assigned readings. PART I. Evolution of the American Political System Week 1 (April 3) What is American Political Development? Orren and Skowronek, Chapter 1. 3
Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In, in Skocpol and Rueschemeyer, eds. Lieberman, Robert C. 2003. Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order. American Political Science Review 96 (4): 697-712. Gerring, John. 2003. APD from a Methodological Point of View. Studies in American Political Development. 17:82-102. With responses from Bensel, Skowronek, and Smith. Pierson, Politics in Time, Ch. 1, 2, 4. Page, Scott. 2006. Path Dependency. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1: 87-115. Week 2 (April 10) State-Building Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan, Ch. 1-2, 4. Skowronek, Building a New American State Ch. 1-3. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy, Ch. 2-4. James, Presidents, Parties, and the State Ch. 1-2. Daniel Rodgers. 1982. In Search of Progressivism, Reviews in American History 10: 113-32. Week 3 (April 17) Congress Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism. Mayhew, America s Congress. Ch. 1-3 Pierson, Politics in Time, Ch. 5. Reread/skim Ch. 4. Week 4 (April 24) Realignments and the Party System James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Parties in the United States. Ch. 1-2. Mayhew, Electoral Realignments. Merrill, Grofman, and Brunell (2008). Cycles in American National Politics, 1854-2006. American Political Science Review 102 (1): 1-17. Week 5 (May 1) Race and Reconstruction Paper prospectus due at beginning of class. 4
Richard Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement. Jeffrey A. Jenkins, Justin Peck, and Vesla Weaver (2010). Between Reconstructions: Congressional Action on Civil Rights, 1891-1940. Studies in American Political Development 24 (April 2010): 57-89. Rogers Smith and Desmond King, Racial Orders and American Political Development. American Political Science Review. Sean Farhang and Ira Katznelson. 2005. The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal. Studies in American Political Development 19(1): 1-30. Charles Stewart and Barry Weingast. 1992. Stacking the Senate, Changing the Nation: Republican Rotten Boroughs, Statehood Politics, and American Political Development. Studies in American Political Development vol. 6 Week 6 (May 8) Labor Unions and Interest Groups Clemens, The People s Lobby. Eric Foner. (1984). Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? History Workshop Journal. Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States. Ch. 1, 2. Katznelson, City Trenches, Ch. 1-3. Frymer, Black and Blue, Ch. 1-3 II. Social Policy Week 7 (May 15) The Origins of American Social Policy Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. [Required Book] Daniel Rodgers. Atlantic Crossings, Ch. 2, 6, 10. Mettler, Dividing Citizens, Ch. 1-2, 5-6. [Required Book] Week 8 (May 22) Path Dependency and Policy Feedback Paul Pierson. 1993. When Effect Becomes Cause. World Politics 45 (July 1993): 595-628. 5
Jacob Hacker. 2002. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle Over Public and Private Welfare Benefits. [Required Book] Andrea Campbell 2003. How Policies Make Citizens. Ch. 1-2, 5 Joe Soss and Sanford F. Schram. (2002). A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback. American Political Science Review. 101 (1). Eric Patashnik and Julian Zelizer. (2010). When Policy Does Not Remake Politics: The Limits of Policy Feedback. Working Paper. III. Contemporary Topics in APD Week 9 (May 29) American Imperialism and the National Security State Skowronek, Building a New American State. Ch. 4. Moore, Colin. (2011). State Building Through Partnership: Delegation, Public-Private Partnerships, and the Political Development of American Imperialism, 1898-1916. Studies in American Political Development 25 (April). Coffman, The Regulars. Ch. 1-3, 5, 8, 10. [Required Book] Becca Thorpe, The Warfare State: Perpetuating the U.S. Military Economy. Book Manuscript Excerpt (TBD) Week 10 (June 5) The Changing Concept of Public Opinion Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices. Carpenter, Working Paper on Petitions Bensel, Richard. (2003). The American Ballot Box: Law, Identity, and the Polling Place in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Studies in American Political Development. 17 (Spring 2003): 1-27. Blumer, Herbert. (1948). Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling. American Sociological Review. 13(5): 542-549. Taeku Lee, Mobilizing Public Opinion, Ch. 2-3. 6