Richard Bensel | Cornell University (original) (raw)
Papers by Richard Bensel
The Journal of Economic History, Mar 1, 1995
Journal of Southern History, May 1, 1986
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediter... more The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediterranean. All the world wondered at it, and talked of it. Salvos of artillery, from forts and shipping in the harbor, saluted its flag. Princes and princesses and merchants paid it homage, and all the people blessed it as a harbinger of hope for their own ultimate freedom. I imagine now the same noble vessel again entering the same haven. The flag of thirty-three stars and thirteen stripes has been hauled down, and in its place a signal is run up, which flaunts the device of a lone star or a palmetto tree. Men ask, “Who is the stranger that thus steals into our waters?” The answer contemptuously given is, “she comes from one of the obscure republics of North America. Let her pass on.” – Senator William H. Seward in the United States Senate, January 12, 1861 Any study of the origins of the American state must address two questions posed by the Civil War: Why did the South secede from the Union? and why did the North resist secession? Both questions, from a political-economy perspective, involve the relationship of the two regions to the American state. For the South, the American nation in 1860 was a confederation of sovereign states.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 13, 2003
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern sta... more The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democratic states in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Through a comparative analysis of these governments, the book argues that new state formations are defined by a metaphysical conception of a “will of the people” through which the new state is ritually granted sovereignty. The book stresses the paradoxical nature of modern foundings, characterized by “mythological imaginations,” or the symbolic acts and rituals upon which a state is enabled to secure political and social order. An extensive study of some of the most important events in modern history, this book offers readers novel interpretations that will disrupt common narratives about modern states and the state of our modern world.
The American Ballot Box is the latest of a series of important books by Richard Bensel, one of th... more The American Ballot Box is the latest of a series of important books by Richard Bensel, one of the leading practitioners of 'American Political Development' (APD), a subfield within the discipline of political science in the United States. Two other leading APD scholars, Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, recently published what amounts to a manifesto in which they defined their subfield as the search for 'connections between politics in the past and politics in the present'. It aspires, Orren and Skowronek argued, to build 'theories of politics that are more attentive than others available to specifically historical processes of change and the political issues that those processes pose' (1). Although within the politics of American political science, APD scholars are methodologically allied to comparativists, the subfield is concerned, as its name implies, only with the past politics of the United States. When they speak and write about their methodology, APD scholars have two negative reference groups in mind. The first are their rational-choice theorist departmental colleagues to whom they feel the need to defend the entire project of historicizing past politics. The second group are historians, who, in the imagination of political scientists, are generally theoretically impoverished and narrow in focus. Political historians in history departments, for most of whom the 'search for patterns'-that is, the identification of what is distinctive and what common about historical phenomena, and the effort to classify and identify linkages and processes of change-is the basic aim of their research, may well raise a quizzical eyebrow at such claims. Notwithstanding the slightly paranoid tendency-elaborated most fully by Orren and Skowrenk-to provide an intellectual 'creation myth' for APD which largely ignores the contribution that historians have made to the study of past politics, political scientists like Bensel have in fact made a substantial contribution to the revival of political history in the last fifteen years or so.
Contemporary Sociology, May 1, 1993
... States as a developing country The principle of periodization itself offers a common standard... more ... States as a developing country The principle of periodization itself offers a common standard satis ... in the physical sciences, so periodization may be to their meaning and designation in history. ... such as the Age of Jackson, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, Prosperity Decade ...
Journal of Southern History, Feb 1, 1996
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Duverger’s classic work on political parties [1963] established a theoretical link between electo... more Duverger’s classic work on political parties [1963] established a theoretical link between electoral rules and the number of viable parties. Systematic empirical evidence for this linkage has been provided by Rae [1967]. The proposition that plurality rules produce two-party competition and majority rules, a multi-party system, has assumed the status of a sociological law.1) This tendency probably operates through the coercive effect of electoral rules on the candidate preferences of individuals.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Choice Reviews Online, Jul 1, 2001
The ªrst of these departures is novel only in the context of local upper-class studies; many anal... more The ªrst of these departures is novel only in the context of local upper-class studies; many analyses of Gilded Age politics focus upon the growing power of conservative businessmen, eager, among other things, to defend their own conception of property rights by stabilizing the currency, reducing public debt, enlisting government aid against rebellious workers, and cutting the best possible deal on tariff legislation. But Beckert's careful tracing of the increasing persuasiveness of this conservative ideology among New York's wealthy businessmen, and of their shifting political strategies, adds substance and nuance to this already well-told story. He shows how the reorientation of New York's economy manifested itself in changing attitudes toward former slaves and slaveholders, and how national and local politics intersected in the midst and aftermath of the Tammany Hall scandals. There is a hint, too, of how the exclusive city clubroom served as a venue for the exertion of national political inºuence. Beckert's second contribution is more novel, but it is also more problematic. Was New York's bourgeoisie more divided before the Civil War than it would become in the Gilded Age? Beckert stresses the chasm of values, identity, and political afªliation between the established mercantile elite and the rising manufacturers of the antebellum era, and the consolidation of all these feelings and actions within the business class of the latter decades of the century. But he also recognizes continuing post-Civil War divisions between older and newer money-the established elite and the arrivistes-that other historians have described as the longer historical pattern of this most dynamic of American cities. To be sure, some (but not all) of the wealthy manufacturers of the early industrial era were bred in the world of artisan republicanism, but whether this fact can account for an upper-class incoherence any more fundamental than those differences between old and new wealth that are evident earlier and later in New York's history is questionable. Historians who want to debate this issue, however, will ªnd Beckert's book indispensable.
Studies in American Political Development, 1987
War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state aut... more War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state authority in the United States. Although the state-centered mobilization of economic resources and manpower that accompanies military conflict is commonly conceded to have had this effect throughout American history, the centralizing influence of the Civil War on the southern Confederate government has not been accorded the precedent-setting importance it deserves. The consolidation of economic and social controls within the central government of the Confederacy was in fact so extensive that it calls into question standard interpretations of southern opposition to the expansion of federal power in both the antebellum and post-Reconstruction periods. Southern reluctance to expand federal power in those periods has been attributed variously to regional sympathy for laissez-faire principles, the “precapitalist” cultural origins of the plantation elite, and a general philosophical orientation hostile to state development.
The Journal of Economic History, Mar 1, 1995
Journal of Southern History, May 1, 1986
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediter... more The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediterranean. All the world wondered at it, and talked of it. Salvos of artillery, from forts and shipping in the harbor, saluted its flag. Princes and princesses and merchants paid it homage, and all the people blessed it as a harbinger of hope for their own ultimate freedom. I imagine now the same noble vessel again entering the same haven. The flag of thirty-three stars and thirteen stripes has been hauled down, and in its place a signal is run up, which flaunts the device of a lone star or a palmetto tree. Men ask, “Who is the stranger that thus steals into our waters?” The answer contemptuously given is, “she comes from one of the obscure republics of North America. Let her pass on.” – Senator William H. Seward in the United States Senate, January 12, 1861 Any study of the origins of the American state must address two questions posed by the Civil War: Why did the South secede from the Union? and why did the North resist secession? Both questions, from a political-economy perspective, involve the relationship of the two regions to the American state. For the South, the American nation in 1860 was a confederation of sovereign states.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 13, 2003
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern sta... more The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democratic states in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Through a comparative analysis of these governments, the book argues that new state formations are defined by a metaphysical conception of a “will of the people” through which the new state is ritually granted sovereignty. The book stresses the paradoxical nature of modern foundings, characterized by “mythological imaginations,” or the symbolic acts and rituals upon which a state is enabled to secure political and social order. An extensive study of some of the most important events in modern history, this book offers readers novel interpretations that will disrupt common narratives about modern states and the state of our modern world.
The American Ballot Box is the latest of a series of important books by Richard Bensel, one of th... more The American Ballot Box is the latest of a series of important books by Richard Bensel, one of the leading practitioners of 'American Political Development' (APD), a subfield within the discipline of political science in the United States. Two other leading APD scholars, Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, recently published what amounts to a manifesto in which they defined their subfield as the search for 'connections between politics in the past and politics in the present'. It aspires, Orren and Skowronek argued, to build 'theories of politics that are more attentive than others available to specifically historical processes of change and the political issues that those processes pose' (1). Although within the politics of American political science, APD scholars are methodologically allied to comparativists, the subfield is concerned, as its name implies, only with the past politics of the United States. When they speak and write about their methodology, APD scholars have two negative reference groups in mind. The first are their rational-choice theorist departmental colleagues to whom they feel the need to defend the entire project of historicizing past politics. The second group are historians, who, in the imagination of political scientists, are generally theoretically impoverished and narrow in focus. Political historians in history departments, for most of whom the 'search for patterns'-that is, the identification of what is distinctive and what common about historical phenomena, and the effort to classify and identify linkages and processes of change-is the basic aim of their research, may well raise a quizzical eyebrow at such claims. Notwithstanding the slightly paranoid tendency-elaborated most fully by Orren and Skowrenk-to provide an intellectual 'creation myth' for APD which largely ignores the contribution that historians have made to the study of past politics, political scientists like Bensel have in fact made a substantial contribution to the revival of political history in the last fifteen years or so.
Contemporary Sociology, May 1, 1993
... States as a developing country The principle of periodization itself offers a common standard... more ... States as a developing country The principle of periodization itself offers a common standard satis ... in the physical sciences, so periodization may be to their meaning and designation in history. ... such as the Age of Jackson, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, Prosperity Decade ...
Journal of Southern History, Feb 1, 1996
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 1991
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2009
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Duverger’s classic work on political parties [1963] established a theoretical link between electo... more Duverger’s classic work on political parties [1963] established a theoretical link between electoral rules and the number of viable parties. Systematic empirical evidence for this linkage has been provided by Rae [1967]. The proposition that plurality rules produce two-party competition and majority rules, a multi-party system, has assumed the status of a sociological law.1) This tendency probably operates through the coercive effect of electoral rules on the candidate preferences of individuals.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2000
Choice Reviews Online, Jul 1, 2001
The ªrst of these departures is novel only in the context of local upper-class studies; many anal... more The ªrst of these departures is novel only in the context of local upper-class studies; many analyses of Gilded Age politics focus upon the growing power of conservative businessmen, eager, among other things, to defend their own conception of property rights by stabilizing the currency, reducing public debt, enlisting government aid against rebellious workers, and cutting the best possible deal on tariff legislation. But Beckert's careful tracing of the increasing persuasiveness of this conservative ideology among New York's wealthy businessmen, and of their shifting political strategies, adds substance and nuance to this already well-told story. He shows how the reorientation of New York's economy manifested itself in changing attitudes toward former slaves and slaveholders, and how national and local politics intersected in the midst and aftermath of the Tammany Hall scandals. There is a hint, too, of how the exclusive city clubroom served as a venue for the exertion of national political inºuence. Beckert's second contribution is more novel, but it is also more problematic. Was New York's bourgeoisie more divided before the Civil War than it would become in the Gilded Age? Beckert stresses the chasm of values, identity, and political afªliation between the established mercantile elite and the rising manufacturers of the antebellum era, and the consolidation of all these feelings and actions within the business class of the latter decades of the century. But he also recognizes continuing post-Civil War divisions between older and newer money-the established elite and the arrivistes-that other historians have described as the longer historical pattern of this most dynamic of American cities. To be sure, some (but not all) of the wealthy manufacturers of the early industrial era were bred in the world of artisan republicanism, but whether this fact can account for an upper-class incoherence any more fundamental than those differences between old and new wealth that are evident earlier and later in New York's history is questionable. Historians who want to debate this issue, however, will ªnd Beckert's book indispensable.
Studies in American Political Development, 1987
War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state aut... more War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state authority in the United States. Although the state-centered mobilization of economic resources and manpower that accompanies military conflict is commonly conceded to have had this effect throughout American history, the centralizing influence of the Civil War on the southern Confederate government has not been accorded the precedent-setting importance it deserves. The consolidation of economic and social controls within the central government of the Confederacy was in fact so extensive that it calls into question standard interpretations of southern opposition to the expansion of federal power in both the antebellum and post-Reconstruction periods. Southern reluctance to expand federal power in those periods has been attributed variously to regional sympathy for laissez-faire principles, the “precapitalist” cultural origins of the plantation elite, and a general philosophical orientation hostile to state development.