The State of American Political Development in History
THE STATE OF AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY Brian Rutledge N a forthcoming historiographical essay about the Progressive Era, I Robert Johnston calls American Political Development (APD) “argua bly the most important strain ofscholarship in American political history over the last quarter century.” He then refers to several recent works by historians which draw on this strain in order to break new ground in investigating the American state and American politics. Two decades before Johnston’s pronouncement, however, historians had yet to embrace APD so readily. In 1992, Ira Katznelson, an influential political scientist with roots in the world of history, wrote an essay exploring the growing importance of the then burgeoning sub-field in political science.2 He observed that APD sprang from the social sciences, not history. “The most interesting, certainly the most audacious, work on American political history is being written by participants in this scholarly program,” he said, “most of whom are not members of history faculties.”3 Katznelson was referring to scholars like Stephen Skowronek, Theda Skocpol, and other social scientists, who, beginning in the early ;98os, set the standards for how to investigate America’s political past. At the time he was writing, most historians had renounced political history for social history, just as many would later give up social history for cultural history, a field that still dominates the profession. Today, Johnston thinks ofhistorians like William Novak and Brian Balogh as part ofAPD ‘Robert Johnston, The Possibilities of Politics: Democracy in America, 1877 to 19,9,” in Eric foner and Lisa McGirr, eds., The New American History, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming).
[Show full text]