American Political Development Syllabus

    Seminar in
   American Political Development
   Political Science 6431, Spring 2010

Click here for the American Political Development Bibliography

"The past is never dead; it's not even past."
-- William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

"WHEN, after many efforts, a legislator succeeds in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, while, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country, which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, customs and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current after an ineffectual resistance. Like the navigator, he may direct the vessel which bears him along but he can neither change its structure, nor raise the winds, nor lull the waters which swell beneath him … "
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, chapter 8

Professor Dave Robertson
Office: 801 Tower; Phone 314-516-5855, Fax 314- 516-5855; e-mail: daverobertson@umsl.edu

Office Hours: 9:00-12:00 am Thursday; 7-8 pm Monday; and other times can be easily arranged

1. The Course Agenda

What makes American politics so unique? American government is harder to use than governments in other places. American political parties are weaker and interest groups more fragmented than in comparable nations. Many political scientists have tried to understand these patterns by tracing the path of American politics over time. The field of American Political Development focuses on the ways that political culture, ideology, governing structures (executives, legislatures, judiciaries, and subnational governments) and structures of political linkage (political parties and organized interests) shape the development of political conflict and public policy. Such studies emphasize that the decisions of the past establish recognizable paths and affect contemporary political strategy, institutional design, and policy outcomes. This course introduces the subfield of American political development. It combines several features of the "new institutionalism" in the study of politics: longitudinal (that is, across time) comparison, the use of developmental evidence to validate hypotheses, the examination of counterfactuals, the effect of rules and structure on political conflict, and the "state" as an autonomous political force. We will ask how political strategy, political structure, and public policy affect one another. We will examine enduring questions about structure, leadership, culture, gender, race, class and religion.

2. Required Books

Six books are required for the course. These are or will be available at the University of Missouri - St. Louis bookstore.

q Richard Franklin Bensel, The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); ISBN 0-521-77604-x

q James Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); ISBN: 0300105177

q Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); ISBN 0-6921-11715-2

q David Brian Robertson, The Constitution and America's Destiny (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); ISBN: 0521607787

q Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997); ISBN: 0674689372

q Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); ISBN: 0226845303

In addition to these books, a number of articles and documents are also required reading. These will be available through My Gateway.

All royalties from the Robertson book will be dedicated to the political science graduate student fund.

You are encouraged to use the American Political Development Bibliography for additional readings in your area of interest and additional research resources. The American Political Development Website at the Miller Center is a great resource for further information.

You are expected to participate in all seminar sessions and to contribute thoughtful and informed questions and comments to the discussion. If you do so you will receive an "A" for this part of the grade. Remember, this seminar will succeed only to the extent that you participate. Its success depends on you.

Each student should select an area of interest or specialization.. This area of interest could be a government institution (the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Presidency, a federal agency, or the Supreme Court); a linkage institution (the Republican or Democratic party, business or labor groups, newspapers or television), a policy area (tariffs, education, environmental policy), or some cultural force that affects politics (religion or social movements). You need to indicate this interest to me in an email message by February 3. Your papers and research design will deal with the area of interest you select. Your work in your area of interest will connect your substantive interests to the more general material we will cover in seminar discussions. Ph.D. students can take advantage of this opportunity to develop a dissertation topic, or to refine a topic they've already chosen.

There will be two short (6-10 page, typed) analytical papers for the course. One of the papers will critically examine books that are relevant to each student's area of interest or specialization; these are intended to help you beef up your reading list. These books may be selected from the American Political Development Bibliography or some other source. The instructor must approve the student's choice of in advance. You should devote no less than three pages to summarizing the book's argument and evidence; this material should include a summary of the book's key questions, the author's argument for their significance, the evidence (qualitative or quantitative) she uses to answer the question, and the conclusions she reaches. You should devote no less than three pages describing its place in the literature and providing a critical analysis of its strengths and weaknesses; the critical analysis should examine the quality of the questions, the evidence, and the logic of the argument. This paper is due February 24.

For the second paper, you will write an analysis of the political development of the topic that is the focus your research design. First, it should provide a chronology of the political development of the policy or institution. Second, it should provide a list of key readings about your topic. Third, it should identify and define the key researchable questions (questions that begin with "how" or "why") in your area of interest. Some of these questions should derive from applying the larger questions for American political development identified in seminar. You are developing an inventory of questions worth asking in your area of interest, and you need to explain explicitly (1) why these questions are merit research and (2) how in general they can be researched (is the research doable?). The purpose of the assignment is to develop the ability to ask good, answerable questions and to decompose large questions into smaller, manageable questions. It will provide the basis for your research design. This paper is due March 17.

There will be a research design assignment of 12-15 pages. See below for more detail on this assignment. You will not have to turn in a completed research project - only a rigorous plan for such a project. This design is due on May 12.

The research design assignment requires a 12-15 page research proposal based on answers to the following questions. You will not have to turn in a completed research project -- only a rigorous plan for such a project.

Here are the key elements of the research design. Remember, the methods you use should be directly related to the question you are trying to answer. Qualitative methods may be more appropriate than quantitative methods, or the quantitative methods may be more appropriate. You might use rigorous analysis of archival sources, or you might model data. You might use some of both methods. The object is to frame an important, enduring, and open question about politics and write a plan for exploring information, including historical information (that is, information at least ten years old) to answer the question.

1. Topic. What is the central issue that will motivate your research? Explain precisely what topic you will examine. Explain why it matters (it may matter because it is central to scientific theory, because it is a central policy or political issue today, because it was a decisive turning point in political development, or because conventional wisdom about the topic may be wrong). There are many ways to get ideas for topics. Several are included in our readings. You can find others in key journals, such as The American Political Science Review or other general political science journals, or more specialized journals such as Studies in American Political Development. Your topic should be interesting to you.

2. Literature Review. What do we know about this topic? Who has written about it? What are their central arguments and assertions? What are the key concepts? What are the important open questions in the field? (Sources include bibliographies, literature reviews, computer-assisted references, and discussions with faculty).

3. Theoretical Question. Once you have chosen a topic, you have to specify the problem you want to study. You will have to try to isolate one precise question about the topic to answer in a discrete research project. Precisely what question will your research try to answer? This may take the form of a relationship between a dependent variable and several independent variables (that is, Why did something happen the way it did? What caused it? Factor A? Factor B? Some combination?). It also may take the form of the relationship between two non-recurring events.

4. Information. What information will you collect to answer the central theoretical question? Define 3 (a) and 3 (b) precisely. How do I know them when I see them (are they Congressional votes? If so, precisely which ones? Where can I find them?). Specify why historical information is required to answer the question.

5. Techniques. How will you analyze the question? That is, what is your proposed research strategy answering the question? How will you decide that a relationship between (a) and (b) is confirmed or refuted by the evidence? Will you statistically assess the relationship between variables? If so, how? If not, what qualitative methods will you use to rigorously assess their relationship? Will you use a mixture of methods? How will you assess the role of other factors (3 d).

6. Validity and Objectivity. How do you know that your conclusions will be valid? Are there flaws in your method that could cast doubt on your findings about the relationship of (a) and (b)? How do we know that the numbers and documents offer reasonably reliable measures of what you claim they measure? What explicit steps will you take to assure a reader that you are being fair-minded and objective in each step of the process?

8. What timetable will you have for the project? Give a realistic estimate of the time it will take to complete each step above.

Brief Schedule (*) indicates material available for download from My Gateway

Why is history important for understanding people you know?

What can an understanding of history tell us about contemporary politics that we don't already know?

1) What is "positive feedback?" What is "path dependence?" How do these ideas help us understand government and politics? Use the current health care debate as an example.

2) What is Pierson saying in the section on the "complexity and opacity" of politics? Use the health care debate to illustrate these features.

3) Explain the implications of path-dependent arguments for the study of politics, using examples from recent elections or policy debates.

4) What made social scientists more interested in institutional history in the last 30 years?

5) Explain and illustrate the three varieties of historical institutional that Sanders discusses.

6) How has religion affected political change in America? Be sure draw on Morone's first chapter, and use path dependence in your answer.

7) How has religion affected the institution-building in America? Is there evidence of these effects today?

8) How has religion affected the role of outsiders in America? Is there evidence of these effects today?

9) How does the first chapter of the Robertson book illustrate the themes in the Sanders and Pierson readings?

1). What is intercurrence and what difference does it make in studying politics? What is a durable shift in governing authority and what difference does it make in studying politics? Explain fully, using one historical example.

2). What does Skowronek mean by "the institutional logic of political disruption" (p 15)? Explain each of the “recurrent structures of political authority” (table 1). Illustrate with the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama.

3). Explain why timing and sequence matters, using examples (1) from Morone and (2) contemporary politics. Be specific.

4). Use Robertson’s second chapter to explain what parts of the Constitution produced by the Philadelphia Convention were inevitable in mid-May, 1787, before the Convention began. Was federalism inevitable? Why and in what form?

READ: David Brian Robertson, The Constitution and America's Destiny, 64-265

Discussion questions: Sign up for 3

2). What general lessons does James Madison teach us in general about the ability and the problems of achieving political success? Could / should he have done better?

3). Counterfactual: What would have happened had the Constitutional Convention adopted the entire Virginia Plan? What would be the consequences for federalism? What would be the consequences for the relative power of national institutions?

4). In retrospect, what was the biggest miscalculation the framers made about agency in their Constitution?

5). Counterfactual: what would have happened if delegates in Madison’s coalition had left the Convention after the Connecticut compromise?

6). (Chapter 6). If the framers were around today, what aspects of national authority would the framers say that they got right? What three areas of authority would they say they got wrong?

7). In retrospect, what was the biggest miscalculation the framers made about the policy process?

9). Using Pierson and chapter 8, explain how slow moving processes and causal chains set in motion by the critical juncture of the Constitution are necessary to account for some aspect of American politics today.

Discussion questions:
Sign up for 2, making sure that someone is covering each question

1). Was a religious crusade necessary and sufficient to end slavery in the United States? Give both sides.

2). Was it possible to reconcile slavery and free labor without a civil war? How does Morone evaluate the distinctive American combination of broad early suffrage, political instability, and relatively stingy social welfare programs? Explain and evaluate.

3). Explain the conventional story of American exceptionalism, and the reasons that Morone thinks slavery unravels it (181-182). Do political conflicts over race explain more about American political development than conflicts between economic interests? Explain how you might go about answering this question.

4). Give the case for and against this proposition: Andrew Jackson deserves to be ranked in the top three presidents. Keep path dependence in mind.

5). Compare and contrast James Polk and George W. Bush., keeping Skowronek’s categories in mind.

6). Is Lincoln just a lucky politician? Is Lincoln more than just a politician? If so, does it make any difference?

7). How did Lincoln’s presidency change the path of American political development and create a durable change in governing authority (use Pierson and Orren and Skowronek)

8). How would the path of American political development been different if Lincoln had not been assassinated?

READ: Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 129-227
Pierson, Politics in Time, 103-178

1. Explain the significance of “actor-centered functionalism,” and how it would be applied to the design of the U.S. Constitution. Then illustrate each of the 6 limitations of this approach in the case of the U.S. Constitution.

2. How do institutions change (Pierson, 124-166)? Explain the mechanisms for change, including the way they work, and illustrate these mechanisms in the case of the U.S. Constitution.

3. What do you have to keep in mind to design a research project that takes temporal context into account?

4. Give the case for and against this proposition: Andrew Jackson deserves to be ranked in the top three presidents. Keep path dependence in mind.

5. Compare and contrast James Polk and George W. Bush., keeping Skowronek’s categories in mind.

6. Is Lincoln just a lucky politician? Is Lincoln more than just a politician? If so, does it make any difference?

7. How did Lincoln’s presidency change the path of American political development and create a durable change in governing authority (use Pierson and Orren and Skowronek)

8. How would the path of American political development been different if Lincoln had not been assassinated?

1. What is the “state of courts and parties” and who cares? Was it a break with the Constitution or an articulation of it?

2. How does Valelly hope to combine rational choice and historical institutionalism? Is his approach what Pierson had in mind?

3. Using Valelly, explain how party building and jurisprudence building differ. Why is the distinction important? How does this distinction elaborate the state of “courts” and “parties”? is it inherent in the design of the U.S. policy process (The Constitution and America’s Destiny chapter 6)?

4. What caused Reconstruction to be reversible? Does Reconstruction count as “a durable shift in governing authority” (Orren and Skowronek)?

5. Explain this fully: “Economic development within democratic institutions has been rare, because transitions from agrarian to industrial societies almost always generate intense conflict over the distribution of wealth” (Bensel, page 2). Who cares and why?

6. What variables does Bensel choose to measure industrialization? Why does he choose all of these? Are they relevant today? If not, what variables would you use instead?

7. What makes uneven political development a political problem? Under what circumstances would it not be a political problem?

8. What question is Bensel trying to answer in his analysis of state party platforms? Why does this question matter? Compare and contrast the role of federalism and state party diversity in Bensel’s account with that of the founding of the Democratic Party in The Constitution and America’s Destiny (chapter 8).

1. What question is Bensel trying to answer in his analysis of state party platforms? Why does this question matter? Compare and contrast the role of federalism and state party diversity in Bensel’s account with that of the founding of the Democratic Party in The Constitution and America’s Destiny (chapter 8).

2. Explain the conflict over the national market in the U.S. What made it so difficult politically to create a national market in the U.S.? Did the Constitution make this political difficultly worse or better? Give both sides.

3. Summarize and explain the conflict over trade. Should disputes over trade be determined by partisan conflict, or by special commissions that are insulated from politics? Give the case for both sides. How should the commissions be chosen?

4. How accurate is this sentence: “In the late 1800s, the Republicans and the Democrats merely represented competing capitalist elites.” Is this description too simple? How?

5. Does Bensel discount race and cultural factors like religion in his account of U.S. policy development? If so, is he right or wrong to do so? Give specifics.

6. Does Bensel’s analysis strengthen or weaken Skowronek’s claim that the U.S. in the nineteenth century was a state of “courts and parties?” Is the place of presidents in “political time” irrelevant to Bensel’s account?

7. How did the Constitution provide “increasing returns” for the economic policies that Bensel describes? Be sure to specify who got the increasing returns and who did not.

1. Does the case of the gold standard – particularly the Bland-Allison Act -- prove that American government inevitably results in inefficient public policy? Distinguish economic efficiency from political efficiency.

2. Why was the Congress more involved in tariff policy than in creating a national market or governing the gold standard? Why? Is the U.S. Congress entrusted only with policies that are not essential for capital accumulation? What is the significance for American democracy?

3. Explain the “policy foundation” of the Republican coalition of the late 19^th century. Was the Constitutional separation of powers a necessary condition for this policy foundation? Was federalism a necessary condition?

2. How much do all the events described by Bensel depend on circumstances over which no policy makers had control? These events would include the depression of the 1890s and the international capital markets. Familiarize the class with the Gourevitch argument about the 1890s crisis and American politics.

5. Did industrialization in the U.S. inevitably transfer policy authority to the president? To policy experts? Give both sides.

6. Is “reputation” a critically important variable in American political development? Is it less important now, in a nation with deep partisan splits, than in was a generation or two ago? How has “reputation” changed?

7. Did the growth of interest groups in the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s make it easier or more difficult to “make politics”? Give both sides, and make sure to specify, “make politics for whom.” Remember, Skowronek argues that in “secular time,” political room to maneuver has narrowed.

8. How do Carpenter and Skowronek (in the Politics Presidents Make) agree or disagree about the importance of leadership and opportunity in American state building? What kinds of research projects could help resolve the disagreements, if there are any?

1. Were the “purity movements” of Gilded Age and Progressive Era necessary for the expansion of American government? Were the necessary for the expansion of the national government?

2. What does the Prohibition story tell us (if anything) about the capabilities of American state governments? About the capabilities of those governments today?

3. How did Prohibition change social movements in the United States? Take both sides, paying attention to different meanings of the term “modernizing.”

4. How did the U.S. welfare state originate and develop in a way different from comparable nations, according to Skocpol? What are the effects today?

5. Theodore Roosevelt "stands as a reliable signpost of the changing shape of political possibilities" (Skowronek, page 259). Explain what he means and why it matters. Do you agree? Why or why not?

6. How did the fragmented Congress of the early to mid-twentieth century reflect the other developments in American society discussed by Bensel, Skowronek, Morone and Valelly?

7. Does the experience of racial policy in the post-Reconstruction South prove that Reconstruction was a mistake?

8. Was Jim Crow in the South inevitable? If not, what could have been done differently during the Progressive Era to change the outcome?

1. What is the “reification of technique”? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Herbert Hoover's political leadership? Was Hoover a victim?

2. Building on Franklin Roosevelt’s “Call for Federal Responsibility," and American history, define as clearly as possible what the federal government should be (not is) responsible for. Explain why.

3. Explain and critique: “Roosevelt’s political achievement was to extort from modernity a measure of legitimacy for radical change in basic governing commitments; the ‘modern presidency’ emerged as the achievement of those who resisted him” (p. 295)

4. What is the NRA and why is it so important for understanding New Deal policy and politics?

5. Explain and critique: “What we observe is a systematic decoupling of the reconstructive process from the personal will of the reconstructive leader” (p. 315). How does this explain how FDR could suffer defeats and “without completely losing control of the situation”?

6. Give the case for and against this proposition: the “new moral frame” that Morone describes at the end of chapter on the New Deal still endures today, and it affects American public policy today. Specify the effects.

7. Explain Weir’s argument, step-by-step. How does this article illustrate the importance of timing, sequence, and path dependence? How does it deal with the problem of institutional change?

8. Is American federalism inherently conservative? Using Weir and events in recent years, give both sides of this question. In making the case for the inherent conservatism of American federalism, specify the areas in which American federalism is conservative, and define the term conservative.

April 14 (Wednesday): Cold War and the Garrison State
      READ: The Truman Doctrine
                 Friedburg, "American Antistatism and the Founding of the Cold War State" (*)
                 Whittington and Carpenter, "The Evolution of the National Security State" (*)
                 Sparrow, "Limited Wars and the Attenuation of the State" (*)
                 Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 1-58 (*)

1. How was the GI Bill different from post-Civil War veterans’ pensions? Does the enactment of the GI Bill tell us anything about the American policy process in general – or was the GI Bill a special case? Give both sides.

2. How did the GI Bill affect American citizenship? Should public policies shape citizenship? Can the 2010 health care law shape citizenship? Be specific.

3. How does the war on terrorism compare to the Truman Doctrine? Is the war on terrorism a product of the Cold War?

4. Explain Sparrow’s argument about the conduct of “limited wars” in the post-1945 era? Have limited wars do more harm than good, or more good than harm, to American politics today?

5. What is “embedded antistatism”? Is it more a creation of culture or of institutions? Does the Cold War really constitute a new “founding”?

6. Compare and contrast the Sparrow and Friedburg chapters on the following question: Has American military policy since the 1940s strengthened or weakened the national state? Give both sides.

7. Using Whittington and Carpenter, explain how the Cold War has changed the balance of power among American political institutions. Is the U.S. Constitution too outdated for the American foreign policy and military role today?

READ: Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 325-406
            Morone, Hellfire Nation, pp. 378-406
            Valelly, The Two Reconstructions, 149-172
            King and Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development” (*)
            Heclo, "The Sixties' False Dawn" (*)

1. Does the “Red Scare” prove that American democracy will in the long run be incompatible with America’s extensive global role?

2. What was the single most important factor in explaining the enactment of the Civil Rights Act? Could the Civil Rights Act have been delayed? How? What would have been the costs and benefits?

3. Does the case of the first and second Reconstruction prove that everything important in American politics depends on the unelected courts because they have the last say in American politics?

4. Would African-Americans have had more long-run political success by investing more effort in building a biracial coalition in the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party?

GROUP 2: Everyone sign up for one of these questions

1. Are the sexual revolution, feminism and the student movement sufficient to account for the decline of the New Deal coalition? Give both sides.

2. What does Heclo mean by "post-modern" policy making? Is it really a break from the path of American political development? Is it a “fundamental shift” in governing institutions?

3. Is the Vietnam War the worst policy blunder in American history? Give both sides.

4. Was President Johnson a success or a failure? Give both sides, paying due attention to the various political and policy dimensions on which he succeeded or failed.