Pub Date : 2020-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X20000073
Ruth Bloch Rubin
Despite growing awareness of the American state's active role in the early nineteenth century, scholars have tended to ignore the early republic's public health apparatus. The few studies that do chronicle antebellum health initiatives confine themselves to programs intended to directly reward citizens—and particularly those who contributed politically or economically to the nation's founding and expansion. As this detailed study of the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 makes clear, however, antebellum policymakers saw value in providing medical care to those outside their settler citizenry. Blending liberal, republican, and ascriptive ideas, the vaccination program joined two competing political logics: one emphasizing the humanity of indigenous people and the importance of providing for their welfare, and the other prioritizing the state's interest in an efficient “removal” process. Evidencing far more autonomy and administrative capacity than the average nineteenth-century bureaucracy, the War Department played a pivotal role in petitioning Congress for, and ultimately administering, the vaccination program. Unwilling to cede regulatory power over indigenous health to more proximate local governments or private parties, the War Department preferred its own military manpower—a decision that would profoundly shape the design and reception of subsequent Native health programs.
{"title":"State Preventive Medicine: Public Health, Indian Removal, and the Growth of State Capacity, 1800–1840","authors":"Ruth Bloch Rubin","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X20000073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X20000073","url":null,"abstract":"Despite growing awareness of the American state's active role in the early nineteenth century, scholars have tended to ignore the early republic's public health apparatus. The few studies that do chronicle antebellum health initiatives confine themselves to programs intended to directly reward citizens—and particularly those who contributed politically or economically to the nation's founding and expansion. As this detailed study of the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 makes clear, however, antebellum policymakers saw value in providing medical care to those outside their settler citizenry. Blending liberal, republican, and ascriptive ideas, the vaccination program joined two competing political logics: one emphasizing the humanity of indigenous people and the importance of providing for their welfare, and the other prioritizing the state's interest in an efficient “removal” process. Evidencing far more autonomy and administrative capacity than the average nineteenth-century bureaucracy, the War Department played a pivotal role in petitioning Congress for, and ultimately administering, the vaccination program. Unwilling to cede regulatory power over indigenous health to more proximate local governments or private parties, the War Department preferred its own military manpower—a decision that would profoundly shape the design and reception of subsequent Native health programs.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X20000073","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46588573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X20000048
Sam Lebovic
This article provides an institutional and legal history of passport denial in the United States from World War I to the early Cold War. Identifying the Passport Division as a central institution of the national security state, the article shows that the state was deeply invested in regulating the international movement of people and in monopolizing international connections in a globalizing age. It also analyzes the rise of the Passport Division as an authoritative and autonomous bureaucracy to provide new insight into the institutional development of the national security state. It emphasizes particularly the ways that the executive branch, the Congress, and the Passport Division mutually constituted travel policy as a field of state action in a decades-long process stretching from World War I to the Cold War. It explores the centrality of the reputation of the Passport Division, as personified by its head, Ruth Shipley, in facilitating its rise as an authoritative institution in the field of travel policy. And by analyzing the ways that the Passport Division was able to survive civil libertarian challenges in the 1950s, it explores the surprising longevity of national security bureaucracies.
{"title":"No Right to Leave the Nation: The Politics of Passport Denial and the Rise of the National Security State","authors":"Sam Lebovic","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X20000048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X20000048","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an institutional and legal history of passport denial in the United States from World War I to the early Cold War. Identifying the Passport Division as a central institution of the national security state, the article shows that the state was deeply invested in regulating the international movement of people and in monopolizing international connections in a globalizing age. It also analyzes the rise of the Passport Division as an authoritative and autonomous bureaucracy to provide new insight into the institutional development of the national security state. It emphasizes particularly the ways that the executive branch, the Congress, and the Passport Division mutually constituted travel policy as a field of state action in a decades-long process stretching from World War I to the Cold War. It explores the centrality of the reputation of the Passport Division, as personified by its head, Ruth Shipley, in facilitating its rise as an authoritative institution in the field of travel policy. And by analyzing the ways that the Passport Division was able to survive civil libertarian challenges in the 1950s, it explores the surprising longevity of national security bureaucracies.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X20000048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41601081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-10DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000166
David Karol, Chloe N. Thurston
The parties’ polarization on abortion is a signal development. Yet while the issue has been much discussed, scholars have said less about how it reveals the unstable relationship between legislators’ personal backgrounds and their issue positions. We argue that the importance of personal characteristics may wane as links between parties and interest groups develop. We focus on the case of abortion in the California State Assembly—one of the first legislative bodies to wrestle with the issue in modern times. Drawing from newly collected evidence on legislator and district religion and Assembly voting, we show that divisions on abortion were chiefly religious in the 1960s—with Catholics in both parties opposing reform—but later became highly partisan. This shift was distinct from overall polarization and was not a result of district-level factors or “sorting” of legislators by religion into parties. Instead, growing ties between new movements and parties—feminists for Democrats and the Christian Right for the Republicans—made party affiliation supplant religion as the leading cue for legislators on abortion, impelling many incumbents to revise their positions. Archival and secondary evidence further show that activists sent new cues to legislators about the importance of their positions on these issues. Showing how personal characteristics became outweighed by partisan considerations contributes to understanding of party position change and polarization, as well as processes of representation and abortion politics.
{"title":"From Personal to Partisan: Abortion, Party, and Religion Among California State Legislators","authors":"David Karol, Chloe N. Thurston","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000166","url":null,"abstract":"The parties’ polarization on abortion is a signal development. Yet while the issue has been much discussed, scholars have said less about how it reveals the unstable relationship between legislators’ personal backgrounds and their issue positions. We argue that the importance of personal characteristics may wane as links between parties and interest groups develop. We focus on the case of abortion in the California State Assembly—one of the first legislative bodies to wrestle with the issue in modern times. Drawing from newly collected evidence on legislator and district religion and Assembly voting, we show that divisions on abortion were chiefly religious in the 1960s—with Catholics in both parties opposing reform—but later became highly partisan. This shift was distinct from overall polarization and was not a result of district-level factors or “sorting” of legislators by religion into parties. Instead, growing ties between new movements and parties—feminists for Democrats and the Christian Right for the Republicans—made party affiliation supplant religion as the leading cue for legislators on abortion, impelling many incumbents to revise their positions. Archival and secondary evidence further show that activists sent new cues to legislators about the importance of their positions on these issues. Showing how personal characteristics became outweighed by partisan considerations contributes to understanding of party position change and polarization, as well as processes of representation and abortion politics.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000166","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57354415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x19000142
{"title":"SAP volume 33 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x19000142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x19000142","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0898588x19000142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44733431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000087
Patricia Strach, Kathleen Sullivan, Elizabeth Pérez‐Chiqués
While American political development scholars tend to focus on national or state-level politics, late nineteenth-century cities provided the lion's share of services: clean water, paved and lighted streets, and sanitation. How did cities innovate and build municipal capacity to do these things? We answer this question by looking at municipal responses to the garbage problem. As cities grew and trash piled up in the 1890s, cities explored ways to effectively collect the garbage. A government requires not just resources, but also the ability to marshal those resources. Corruption could provide such abilities. Looking at four corrupt cities—Pittsburgh, Charleston, New Orleans, and St. Louis—we consider whether corruption, and what type of corruption, fostered innovation and capacity. We compare these corrupt cities with a shadow study of the reformist government of Columbus. We found the following: (1) The logic of corruption is the most important factor to explain why municipal governments chose particular garbage strategies. Corrupt regimes chose garbage collection and disposal strategies that would benefit themselves—but these varied depending on what type of corruption dominated a city. (2) Corruption sometimes promoted innovation and capacity, but at other times, corruption hindered them. For better or worse, cities ruled by corruption gained the capacity that these informal regimes held.
{"title":"The Garbage Problem: Corruption, Innovation, and Capacity in Four American Cities, 1890–1940","authors":"Patricia Strach, Kathleen Sullivan, Elizabeth Pérez‐Chiqués","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000087","url":null,"abstract":"While American political development scholars tend to focus on national or state-level politics, late nineteenth-century cities provided the lion's share of services: clean water, paved and lighted streets, and sanitation. How did cities innovate and build municipal capacity to do these things? We answer this question by looking at municipal responses to the garbage problem. As cities grew and trash piled up in the 1890s, cities explored ways to effectively collect the garbage. A government requires not just resources, but also the ability to marshal those resources. Corruption could provide such abilities. Looking at four corrupt cities—Pittsburgh, Charleston, New Orleans, and St. Louis—we consider whether corruption, and what type of corruption, fostered innovation and capacity. We compare these corrupt cities with a shadow study of the reformist government of Columbus. We found the following: (1) The logic of corruption is the most important factor to explain why municipal governments chose particular garbage strategies. Corrupt regimes chose garbage collection and disposal strategies that would benefit themselves—but these varied depending on what type of corruption dominated a city. (2) Corruption sometimes promoted innovation and capacity, but at other times, corruption hindered them. For better or worse, cities ruled by corruption gained the capacity that these informal regimes held.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000087","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42744877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000105
David A. Bateman
This article reconstructs a set of widely disseminated nineteenth-century ideas about the relationship between diversity and democracy and details how these informed state-building and political action. An emerging argument in nineteenth-century discourse held that representative governments in diverse societies would degenerate into anarchy without “amalgamation,” extermination, expulsion, or enslavement: Only in societies where there was sympathy across the entire community, constantly renewed through intercourse among social equals, could free institutions be sustained. This argument gave support for state-builders to regulate diversity either through an imperial politics of “moving people” or by interposing the state in intimate encounters of sexual and social intercourse. The intimate and imperial dimensions of state-building were thereby conceptually linked. This account helps explain important features of nineteenth-century politics, including the frequent criticism of abolitionists that by supporting racial civic or political equality they were encouraging “racial amalgamation.” In responding to this charge, American antislavery discourse contributed to a distinction between political and social equality that would fundamentally shape state-building after the Civil War. The article shows scholars of American political development how our accounts might be revised by situating debates and developments within a transnational perspective.
{"title":"Transatlantic Anxieties: Democracy and Diversity in Nineteenth-Century Discourse","authors":"David A. Bateman","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000105","url":null,"abstract":"This article reconstructs a set of widely disseminated nineteenth-century ideas about the relationship between diversity and democracy and details how these informed state-building and political action. An emerging argument in nineteenth-century discourse held that representative governments in diverse societies would degenerate into anarchy without “amalgamation,” extermination, expulsion, or enslavement: Only in societies where there was sympathy across the entire community, constantly renewed through intercourse among social equals, could free institutions be sustained. This argument gave support for state-builders to regulate diversity either through an imperial politics of “moving people” or by interposing the state in intimate encounters of sexual and social intercourse. The intimate and imperial dimensions of state-building were thereby conceptually linked. This account helps explain important features of nineteenth-century politics, including the frequent criticism of abolitionists that by supporting racial civic or political equality they were encouraging “racial amalgamation.” In responding to this charge, American antislavery discourse contributed to a distinction between political and social equality that would fundamentally shape state-building after the Civil War. The article shows scholars of American political development how our accounts might be revised by situating debates and developments within a transnational perspective.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000105","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41962485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000129
Cybelle Fox
In 1971, Governor Ronald Reagan signed into law a measure barring unauthorized immigrants from public assistance. The following year, New York State legislators passed a bill to do the same, although that bill was vetoed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. This article examines these cases to better understand why states that had long provided welfare to unauthorized immigrants each sought to bar them from public assistance. Common explanations for the curtailment of immigrant social rights often center on partisan politics, popular nativism, demographic context, or issue entrepreneurs. But these studies often wrongly assume that efforts to limit immigrant social rights began in the 1990s. Therefore, they miss how such efforts first emerged in the 1970s, and how these restrictive measures were initially closely bound up in broader debates over race and welfare that followed in the wake of the War on Poverty and the civil rights movement. Where scholars often argue that immigration undermines support for welfare, I show how the turn against welfare helped to undermine immigrant social rights. I also show how differing interpretations of the scope and reach of Supreme Court decisions traditionally seen as victories for welfare and immigrant rights help explain initial variation in policy outcomes in each state.
{"title":"“The Line Must Be Drawn Somewhere”: The Rise of Legal Status Restrictions in State Welfare Policy in the 1970s","authors":"Cybelle Fox","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000129","url":null,"abstract":"In 1971, Governor Ronald Reagan signed into law a measure barring unauthorized immigrants from public assistance. The following year, New York State legislators passed a bill to do the same, although that bill was vetoed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. This article examines these cases to better understand why states that had long provided welfare to unauthorized immigrants each sought to bar them from public assistance. Common explanations for the curtailment of immigrant social rights often center on partisan politics, popular nativism, demographic context, or issue entrepreneurs. But these studies often wrongly assume that efforts to limit immigrant social rights began in the 1990s. Therefore, they miss how such efforts first emerged in the 1970s, and how these restrictive measures were initially closely bound up in broader debates over race and welfare that followed in the wake of the War on Poverty and the civil rights movement. Where scholars often argue that immigration undermines support for welfare, I show how the turn against welfare helped to undermine immigrant social rights. I also show how differing interpretations of the scope and reach of Supreme Court decisions traditionally seen as victories for welfare and immigrant rights help explain initial variation in policy outcomes in each state.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46873281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000117
R. Schneirov
Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that during the Gilded Age urban party machines incorporated working people through the use of patronage, informal provision of personal welfare, and limited concessions, thereby eliminating sustained labor and Socialist Party alternatives and keeping workers’ militancy and assertiveness confined to the workplace. That view is challenged by a historical comparison of the policing of labor disputes in New York and Chicago. In New York, organized workers were eliminated from the governing coalition of the Swallowtail-Kelly regime that succeeded the Tweed Ring, and police routinely used coercion to defeat strikes and intimidate Socialists. In Chicago, however, labor and Socialists were part of the governing coalition of the Carter Harrison regime, and the police took a hands-off stance in many strikes. This article explores the contrast in policing and the balance of social forces in the two cities and seeks to explain the differences by examining the political settlements that concluded Reconstruction, the ethnic makeup of each city's working classes, the different characteristics of each city's labor movement, and labor's ability to mount third-party challenges—all in the context of regional variations. It concludes that historians cannot assume that workers were incorporated into machines in this period.
{"title":"Urban Regimes and the Policing of Strikes in Two Gilded Age Cities: New York and Chicago","authors":"R. Schneirov","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000117","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that during the Gilded Age urban party machines incorporated working people through the use of patronage, informal provision of personal welfare, and limited concessions, thereby eliminating sustained labor and Socialist Party alternatives and keeping workers’ militancy and assertiveness confined to the workplace. That view is challenged by a historical comparison of the policing of labor disputes in New York and Chicago. In New York, organized workers were eliminated from the governing coalition of the Swallowtail-Kelly regime that succeeded the Tweed Ring, and police routinely used coercion to defeat strikes and intimidate Socialists. In Chicago, however, labor and Socialists were part of the governing coalition of the Carter Harrison regime, and the police took a hands-off stance in many strikes. This article explores the contrast in policing and the balance of social forces in the two cities and seeks to explain the differences by examining the political settlements that concluded Reconstruction, the ethnic makeup of each city's working classes, the different characteristics of each city's labor movement, and labor's ability to mount third-party challenges—all in the context of regional variations. It concludes that historians cannot assume that workers were incorporated into machines in this period.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000117","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43287490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0898588x19000130
Ursula Hackett, Desmond King
{"title":"The Reinvention of Vouchers for a Color-Blind Era: A Racial Orders Account—CORRIGENDUM","authors":"Ursula Hackett, Desmond King","doi":"10.1017/s0898588x19000130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0898588x19000130","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0898588x19000130","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42687125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X19000099
Bartholomew H. Sparrow
Democracy in America has greatly influenced not only how political scientists think of democratic government, political equality, and liberalism in general, but also how we think of the United States as a whole. This article questions Tocqueville's interpretations of Americans’ habits and beliefs, given how little time Tocqueville actually spent in the South and the near West and given that he all but ignored the founding of Virginia and the other colonies not settled by the Puritans and for religious reasons. Contrary to Tocqueville's emphasis on the Puritan “point of departure,” I use historical evidence from the U.S. Census, state constitutions, and historical scholarship on slave ownership, tenant farming, political participation, and the American colonies and the early United States to show the existence of hierarchy among white Americans, rather than the ubiquitous social and political equality among European Americans described by Tocqueville. His writings actually indicate an awareness of another American culture in the South and near West—one that disregards education, condones coarse manners, tolerates aggressive behavior, and exhibits unrestrained greed—but Tocqueville does not integrate these observations into his larger conclusions about Americans’ mœurs and institutions. Because of the existence of these important, non-Puritan habits, the political institutions Tocqueville sees as facilitating democracy in America and hopes to apply to France and Europe may not have the effects he believes they will have.
{"title":"The Other Point of Departure: Tocqueville, the South, Equality, and the Lessons of Democracy","authors":"Bartholomew H. Sparrow","doi":"10.1017/S0898588X19000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000099","url":null,"abstract":"Democracy in America has greatly influenced not only how political scientists think of democratic government, political equality, and liberalism in general, but also how we think of the United States as a whole. This article questions Tocqueville's interpretations of Americans’ habits and beliefs, given how little time Tocqueville actually spent in the South and the near West and given that he all but ignored the founding of Virginia and the other colonies not settled by the Puritans and for religious reasons. Contrary to Tocqueville's emphasis on the Puritan “point of departure,” I use historical evidence from the U.S. Census, state constitutions, and historical scholarship on slave ownership, tenant farming, political participation, and the American colonies and the early United States to show the existence of hierarchy among white Americans, rather than the ubiquitous social and political equality among European Americans described by Tocqueville. His writings actually indicate an awareness of another American culture in the South and near West—one that disregards education, condones coarse manners, tolerates aggressive behavior, and exhibits unrestrained greed—but Tocqueville does not integrate these observations into his larger conclusions about Americans’ mœurs and institutions. Because of the existence of these important, non-Puritan habits, the political institutions Tocqueville sees as facilitating democracy in America and hopes to apply to France and Europe may not have the effects he believes they will have.","PeriodicalId":45195,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Political Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0898588X19000099","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48873541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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