Representative Democracy and State Building in the Progressive Era

McDonagh, Eileen

doi:10.2307/1964346

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Although much of the groundwork for the building of the new American state at the national level was laid during the Progressive Era (Carpenter 2001; Kolko 1963; Link and McCormick 1983; McDonagh 1992; Sklar 1998; Skocpol 1992; Skowronek 1982; Wiebe 1967), with few exceptions (Hays 1964; Huthmarcher 1962), little scholarly attention has focused on the seemingly contradictory devolution of institutional power to citizens at the subnational level that resulted from the adoption of direct democracy reforms. Most notably, scholars have yet to adequately explain why nearly half the state legislatures decided to divest themselves of their monopoly control over lawmaking during this era, a development that appears to run against the expansive tide of institutionalization that centralized and consolidated governing authorities.…”

Section: Adopting Direct Democracy: Temporality and Case Selection Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States

Smith

Fridkin

2008

Am Polit Sci Rev

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and Won-ho Park for their timely feedback and methodological acumen. We also appreciate the faculty and graduate students at the University of Iowa who provided constructive comments as part of the Bose Lecture Series. Larry Kenny, Lee Ann Banazak, and Jocelyn Crowley generously shared with us their historical data. We extend our sincere thanks, too, to Karen Orren and her fellow APSR editors, and the three reviewers who provided us with invaluable insights. Finally, Smith wants to thank Richard White and the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the American West at Stanford University for generous institutional support.

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Section: Adopting Direct Democracy: Temporality and Case Selection Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States

Smith

Fridkin

2008

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Thus in order to understand the historical background of the UCR system, it is essential to look at the profound changes in the governmental system in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars have shown that there was a significant expansion and centralization of power of the federal government in the late‐eighteenth and early‐nineteenth centuries in American history [McDonagh 1992, Orloff 1988, Skocpol 1992, Skowronek 1982]. The extension of the authority and resources of the federal government was also accompanied by the development of a more rationalized managerial outlook to public administration tied to the Progressive era credo of scientific governance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Whole Extent of the Evil”: Origin of Crime Statistics in the United States, 1880–1930

Ghatak¹

2008

J Historical Sociology

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This article traces the origin and the development of crime statistics in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Due to the federal nature of the polity and decentralization of state power, the historical process of "governmentalization" of the state in the US differed markedly from other Western European nations. The path to the establishment of a national archive of crime statistics in the US was especially tortuous, and its trajectory was shaped by strategic alliances as well as conflicts between various institutional actors involved in the process.

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“…For an analysis of the effects of policy congruence upon state-building processes see McDonagh (1992). For an analysis of the effects of policy congruence upon state-building processes see McDonagh (1992).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constituency Influence on House Roll-Call Votes in the Progressive Era, 1913-1915

McDonagh¹

1993

Legislative Studies Quarterly

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Comparative Legislative Research Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Legislative Studies Quarterly. This research reviews techniques for measuring constituency opinion in policy congruence analyses. It introduces a new use of referenda votes for investigation of state-national policy linkages in the Progressive Era. Findings demonstrate the importance of constituency opinion and of regional and partisan influences in nationalizing major legislation in three policy areas: labor, woman suffrage, and prohibition. Analysis of historical congruency patterns also illustrates the complex interrelationships between democratic processes and policy outcomes, parallelling contemporary concerns.The theory and practice of representative government, encompassing normative, semantic, and empirical components of the political system, is a cornerstone of democratic theory (Fiorina 1974, 1).' Researchers often depict its operation in terms of the representative bond diagrammed in Figure 1. Though Eulau (1987) surely is correct in saying that empirical congruence is not the same thing as representation,2 nevertheless assessment of how constituents' policy preferences match their representatives' roll-call voting remains an important concern (Converse and Pierce 1986, 564; Uslaner and Weber 1979, 1983; Davidson 1969, 111; Kingdon 1981, 30-31). Fundamental to this model, therefore, is measurement of the link between elected officials' decisions and constituents' preferences (Mayhew 1974; Alford and Brady 1989; Pitkin 1972; Eulau 1987).Roll-call votes are readily available behavioral cues of legislators' policy positions and have lawmaking consequences. There is no constituency counterpart to this measure that can be used in studying policy congruence. Constituency opinion, generally thought to be ill-defined and vague, therefore poses serious measurement obstacles (Clausen 1973, 119). By necessity, political scientists have been inventive, devising many ways to assess grassroot issue opinions. I will briefly review five of the most important techniques and then illustrate how one of them, referenda votes, lends itself to new uses for research on state-national policy congruence. Measuring Constituency Opinion Demographic VariablesMany studies use demographic variables as surrogate measures of constituency opinion, though not without two major attendant problems (). First, there is no way to determine how accurately district demographic characteristics reflect district opinion without measures of the latter. Second, the technique makes it impossible to investigate the relative effects of demographic characteristics and of constituency opinion.Early seminal wor...

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Representative Democracy and State Building in the Progressive Era

Cited by 24 publications

References 51 publications

Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States

Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States

“The Whole Extent of the Evil”: Origin of Crime Statistics in the United States, 1880–1930

Constituency Influence on House Roll-Call Votes in the Progressive Era, 1913-1915

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