Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T20:26:22.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Stephen Skowronek’s Building a New American State and the Origins of American Political Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Abstract

This roundtable celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Stephen Skowronek’s Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (1982). Skowronek’s book introduced scholars to the emerging field of historical institutionalism, offering an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing government and public policy. Tackling three different policy areas, the book offered a pathbreaking examination of institutional development and a treatment of political actors that moved beyond standard accounts of elites who responded only to societal or corporate demands. Building a New American State demonstrated how politics could be understood only historically, since current conditions were layered over preexisting institutions. Through this book, Skowronek became one of those rare authors able to influence scholarship in several academic fields. The theoretical and substantive insights of his book influenced the first and second generations of scholars who built the field of American Political Development, using historical data to examine how institutions structured politics over long periods of time and how policies reconfigured politics. This roundtable explores how this classic book affected the study of government in the disciplines of political science, history, and sociology. The authors discuss ways each discipline developed a distinct version of American Political Development. The roundtable also explores how the interdisciplinary project of historical institutionalism has evolved since the early 1980s and new directions in which the field might go.

Type
Roundtable: Twenty Years after Building a New American State
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2003 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baskin, Darryl (1983) “Review: ‘Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890–1920’; ‘Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920.’American Political Science Review 77: 1044–45.Google Scholar
Bensel, Richard (1984) Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880–1980. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Benson, Lee (1961) The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brinkley, Alan (1984) “Writing the history of contemporary America: Dilemmas and challenges.” Daedalus 113: 121–41.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean (1970) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Caraley, Demetrios (1964) “The political behavior approach: Methodological advance or new formalism?—A review article.” Political Science Quarterly 79: 96–108.Google Scholar
Chambers, William Nisbet, and Burnham, Walter Dean, eds. (1967) The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. (1977) The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cuff, Robert D. (1983) “Review: ‘Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920.’Journal of American History 70: 168–69.Google Scholar
Derthick, Martha (1979) Policymaking for Social Security. Washington, DC: Brookings.Google Scholar
Easton, David (1969) “The new revolution in political science.” American Political Science Review 63: 1051–61.Google Scholar
Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds. (1985) Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fenno, Richard Jr. (1966) The Power of the Purse: Appropriations in Congress. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis (1970) “The emerging organizational synthesis in modern American history.” Business History Review 44: 279–90.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis (1976) America at Middle Age: A New History of the United States in the Twentieth Century. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis (1983) “Technology, political economy, and professionalization.” Business History Review 57: 471–93.Google Scholar
Greenstone, J. David (1969) Labor in American Politics. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Harbaugh, William (1984) “Review: ‘Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century’; ‘Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920.’American Historical Review 89: 214.Google Scholar
Hays, Samuel P. (1957) The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hays, Samuel P. (1965) “The social analysis of American political history.” Political Science Quarterly 80: 373–94.Google Scholar
Heclo, Hugh (1974) Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Katznelson, Ira (1981) City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Keller, Morton (1977) Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Morton (1983) “(Jerry-) building a new American state.” Reviews in American History 11: 248–52.Google Scholar
Kesselman, Mark (1973) “Order or movement? The literature of political development as ideology.” World Politics 26: 139–54.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. (1949) Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Kleppner, Paul (1970) The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Kramnick, Isaac (1968) Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Leuchtenburg, William E. (1986) “The pertinence of political history: Reflections on the significance of the state in America.” Journal of American History 73: 585–600.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore (1964) At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New York City, 1898–1958. Glencoe: Free Press.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore (1967) “Party, policy, and Constitution in America,” in Chambers, William, Nisbet, William, and Burnham, Walter Dean (eds.) The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development. New York: Oxford University Press: 238–76.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore (1969) The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore (1970) “Decision making vs. policy making: Toward an antidote for technocracy.” Public Administration Review 30: 314–25.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore (1972) “Four systems of policy, politics, and choice.” Public Administration Review 32: 298–310.Google Scholar
Lustig, Jeffrey (1982) Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Manley, John (1965) “The House Committee on Ways and Means: Conflict management in a congressional committee.”American Political Science Review 59: 927–39.Google Scholar
Marmor, Theodore R. (1973) The Politics of Medicare. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David (1974) Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mink, Gwendolyn (1986) Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875–1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington Jr. (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson (1968) “Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 62: 144–68.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson, Gallaher, Miriam, and Rundquist, Barry Spencer (1969) “The growth of the seniority system in the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 62: 787–806.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel T. (1982) “In search of progressivism.” Reviews in American History 10: 113–32.Google Scholar
Rogin, Michael P. (1967) The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rogowski, Ronald (1978) “Rationalist theories of politics: A midterm report.” World Politics 30: 296–323.Google Scholar
Sanders, Elizabeth M. (1981) The Regulation of Natural Gas: Policy and Politics, 1938–1978. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Seidelman, Raymond, with the assistance of Harpham, Edward J. (1985) Disenchanted Realists: Political Scientists and the American Crisis, 1884–1984. New York: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Shefter, Martin (1977) “Party and patronage: Germany, England, and Italy.” Politics and Society 7: 403–51.Google Scholar
Shefter, Martin (1978) “Party bureaucracy and political change in the United States,” in Maisel, Louis and Cooper, Joseph (eds.) Political Parties: Development and Decay. Beverly Hills: Sage: 211–16.Google Scholar
Silbey, Joel H., Bogue, Allan G., and Flanigan, William H., eds. (1978) The History of American Electoral Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen (1982) Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Somit, Albert, and Tanenhaus, Tanenhaus (1967) The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar
Sundquist, James L. (1968) Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years. Washington, DC: Brookings.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles, ed. (1975) The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert H. (1967) The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar