American Political Development and Political History

Abstract

This essay traces the long and productive relationship between two genres of historical writing: American political development (or APD) and American political history. It is written primarily for political scientists; a secondary audience is historians who wish to become more familiar with APD. Its focus is on the period before the adoption of the federal Constitution in 1788 and the end of the Second World War in 1945, an epoch that has long been recognized as not only formative, but also distinct from the epoch that it followed and preceded. It is, in addition, an epoch that has spawned a dialogue between APD and political history that had proved to be particularly fruitful.

Compared to what?: Setting American political development in comparative context

“…But these approaches still pose rather stiff challenges for scholars of American political development, who generally seek to explain significant outcomes in American political history, working backwards to uncover the factors that might be responsible for those outcomes (rather than starting with causes and looking for their effects) (Galvin 2020). Nevertheless, APD practitioners are generally concerned with uncovering causal relationships in ways that go beyond merely using historical data or methods or attempting to reconstruct past events persuasively as is often the case among political historians (John 2016;McConnaughy 2020).…”

Social Capital, Civic Labor, and State Capacity in the Early American Republic: Schools, Courts, and Law Enforcement

“…Seeking William Novak called the "myth of the weak state, " scholars have demonstrated the federal government's capacity to exert influence and shape outcomes in various spheres of activity, from foreign policy to inciting reform movements such as sabbatarianism. 1 As Jeffrey Pasley has colorfully written, even if the American state was relatively small, it was a "midget on horseback, " capable of marshaling its resources for significant reach. 2 Despite the attention on the federal state, however, much of American state activity took place at the state and local levels.…”