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At the Crossroads: Congress and American Political Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2006

Ira Katznelson  and
John S. Lapinski
Ira Katznelson
Affiliation:
Columbia University (iik1@columbia.edu)>
John S. Lapinski
Affiliation:
Yale University (john.lapinski@yale.edu)
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Extract

This essay starts with an observation, proceeds to an exhortation, and concludes with a set of suggestions.

Congress has been situated on the outside edge of the subfield of American Political Development (APD) despite the institution's centrality both to the political history of the United States and to political science as a discipline. Apart from an important but limited number of works—including a long-term research enterprise on the role of sectionalism conducted by Richard Bensel, a study of the antebellum Senate by Elaine Swift, an assessment of the alliance between farmers and workers in the half-century after 1877 by Elizabeth Sanders, a major work on institutional transformations in the House and Senate by Eric Schickler, and a small number of emergent inquiries—“scholars in the American Political Development tradition,” as Keith Whittington has noted, “have never fully integrated Congress, as they have other important institutions such as the bureaucracy, the presidency, political parties and the courts.”Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University (iik1@columbia.edu). John S. Lapinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University (john.lapinski@yale.edu). This article reflects the work of the American Institutions Project located at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, the support of the National Science Foundation (SES 0318280 and SES 03188289), and the conducive environment for research and writing provided by the Russell Sage Foundation. We particularly wish to thank Rose Razaghian for her reading and suggestions, Eldon Porter for his assistance, and the three anonymous readers for this journal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 2006 , pp. 243 - 260
Copyright
© 2006 American Political Science Association

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