Why Institutions Matter (original) (raw)
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Studies in American Political Development, 1997
During the past few years, a new generation of historians have turned their attention to the influence of law, public policy, and public administration in American life in the period between 1787 and 1835. The purpose of this essay is to highlight the contributions of these scholars in the hope that such an inquiry can further the ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue on American political development between historians, political scientists, and historical sociologists. It is not my intention to survey in an exhaustive fashion the existing body of historical writing on governmental institutions in the early republic or to compare this literature with related scholarship on other eras. Rather, I treat the period between 1787 and 1835 as a single epoch and consider its significance as a formative period in the history of American public life. It would be misleading to assume that this new scholarship marks an entirely new departure in American historiography. The history of governmental institutions in the early American republic, after all, has long been a major concern of a distinguished galaxy of historians and political scientists that range from Henry Adams and Leonard D. White to Paul Wallace Gates *Of the many individuals who have helped me sort out the ideas in this essay, I should like particularly to thank
"Why Institutions Matter," Common-place, 9 (October 2008)
Rewriting the history of the early republic Certain kinds of historical writing alter our understanding not only of people, places, and events but also of nations and eras. Sometimes historians introduce new evidence that highlights anomalies in existing explanatory schemes. And sometimes they provide perspective on issues of present-day concern. The emergence in the 1990s of a "new" institutionalism in historical writing on the early American republic did (and continues to do) both. It built on the realization by a small cohort of mostly younger historians that the regnant social and cultural paradigm that had dominated history departments since the 1960s had become unduly confining—a relic, as it were, of a very different age. This shift in historical thinking was energized by a desire to make the history of the United States comprehensible for a generation for whom the passions of the 1960s had been supplanted by a new constellation of concerns. The media, public finance, and the military are but three of many topics that, though of obvious contemporary relevance, were largely ignored by historians of the early republic until quite recently. In turning to such topics, the new-institutional historians have sought to write a history of early America that is more realistic, less sentimental, and more open to international comparisons than the history they remember learning in school or encountered in most of the textbooks taught in introductory college survey courses. These new institutionalists, many of whom now occupy prominent places in the historical profession, are respectful of the enormous body of fine scholarship on social and cultural topics that is the most enduring legacy of their immediate forbears. Yet they quarrel with this scholarship in at least two ways. Their first quarrel concerns their disinclination to characterize the early republic as precapitalistic and stateless. The anomalies in the historical record are simply too great: to envision the early republic as precapitalistic simply does not square with what we now know about the slave trade and land speculation, to name but two of the many inconvenient truths that historians of this period often neglect. And to deny the existence of the early American state—or even to characterize it as "innocuous" or "weak"—trivializes the existence of congeries of federal government institutions in realms as different as banking, communications, and what we today would call intellectual property. Contingency is in; inexorability is out. The second problem with the received wisdom is more of a matter of temperament. To be blunt, new institutionalists have grown impatient with the often-precious text parsing that has come to pass for serious historical analysis among more than a few historians who claim to have taken the linguistic turn. The new institutionalists are more interested in how things worked than in what people believed and are skeptical of historical writing that ignores huge swatches of social reality in a quixotic quest for the authentic and the pure. An old institutionalism flourished in history departments for several decades before the Second World War. Its practitioners treated institutions as more-or-less stable entities with venerable pedigrees and wrote learned and often perceptive books and articles on particular businesses, government agencies, and cultural institutions. The new institutionalism, in contrast, treats institutions as bundles of rules that are constantly evolving and that interact with social and cultural processes in unpredictable and sometimes idiosyncratic ways. Contingency is in; inexorability is out. Old institutionalists searched for origins, which they referred to as "germs"; new institutionalists track outcomes, which they conceive of as "legacies."
Beyond the Valley of the Founders: Democracy in Early America, and After.
The "Common-Place" Politics Issue 2008. Edited, with Edward G. Gray. Originally published in "Common-Place" 9 (Oct. 2008), issue 1, URL -- http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-09/no-01/. Accompanied by "Myths of the Lost Atlantis: A blog series dedicated to Phil Lampi" (posts by guests and myself on scholarly and popular misconceptions about early American politics), URL -- http://www.common-place.org/pasley/?cat=135\. Available here as originally published, in the form of a pdf print-out. CONTENTS Jim Cullen "The Wright Stuff" Stephen Douglas, Frederick Douglass, and the blackened reputation of Abraham Lincoln Amy S. Greenberg "The Politics of Martial Manhood" Or, why falling off a horse was worse than falling off the wagon in 1852 Reeve Huston "What We Talk about When We Talk about Democracy" Reengaging the American democratic tradition Richard S. Newman "Faith in the Ballot" Black shadow politics in the antebellum North Jonathan D. Sassi “Great Questions of National Morality” Lyman Beecher on religion and politics in America Ray Raphael "Instructions" The people's voice in revolutionary America BONUS ARTICLE: Christian G. Fritz "America's Unknown Constitutional World" Richard R. John "Why Institutions Matter" Rewriting the history of the early republic Sean Patrick Adams "The Tao of John Quincy Adams" Or, new institutionalism and the early American republic Max M. Edling "When Johnny Comes Marching Home…from the Bank" War and public finance in America, from the U.S.-Mexican War to the present. Gautham Rao "Sailors’ Health and National Wealth" Marine hospitals in the early republic Jeffrey L. Pasley "Midget on Horseback: American Indians and the history of the American state" Caroline F. Sloat "The Technology of Democracy" The material history of the U.S. ballot Patricia Crain Potent Papers Secret lives of the nineteenth-century ballot Lisa Gitelman "Voting Machines and the Voters They Represent" Technology and democratic intent Laura Rigal "Black Work at the Polling Place" The color line in The County Election ASK THE AUTHOR Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein New-York Knicks Reconsidered Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein on Washington Irving, Aaron Burr, and the lost political and literary world of early New York City
American History: A Very Short Introduction
who has been a pillar of strength in many ways during its completion, and also to our son, Alex, and his wife, Mary, and our daughter, Kate, and her husband, Michael, for their unstinting love and support. I also dedicate the book to our grandsons, Ethan and Jake, hoping it may pique their interest in the field to which their grandfather devoted his career.
The Federalist Papers and Institutional Power in American Political Development
This book argues that The Federalist Papers contain a previously unrecognized theory of institutional power centered on the relationships between and among powers (constitutional authority and duties), organization (structure, size, procedures, and internal resources), and constituency (external social support). The distribution of power among the branches is a function of the relative nature of each institution's powers, organization, and constituency. This theory extends and refines the contribution of the papers to political theory and, particularly, to the study of American political development, which rarely draws upon The Federalist Papers in more than a pro forma fashion. Wirls explicates this model of institutional power and shows how it brings greater coherence to the papers. He relates the Federalist perspective to contemporary institutional analysis and then applies the theory to two periods in American political history.
American History in a Global AGE1
History and Theory, 2011
Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action, men may still exist, but they will not constitute a social body. 2-alexis de tocqueville abStract Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and american history in particular, in today's global age. the essay makes two main points. First, it argues that nationalism, and thus the national histories that sustain national identities, are vital to liberal democratic societies because they ensure the social bonds necessary to enable democratic citizens to sacrifice their immediate interests for the common good. the essay then argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group. rejecting national history on critics' terms would require rejecting the history of all groups. Instead, new methods of studying nations and nationalism have reinforced rather than undermined the legitimacy of national history within the discipline.
Historical Networking and the Institutionalization of History Culture in the Early Republic
This paper examines the purposes of an informal network---including historians, antiquarians, essayists, poets, painters, politicians, and printers---that spurred the rapid growth of historical cultural production after the American Revolution and how it informed the establishment and shape of the new nation's first historical institutions. *This paper was presented at the 2017 SHEAR Conference as part of a panel entitled, "Creating the Past in the Early Republic: Critical Perspectives on the Cultural Production of History and Memory."