Abstract
American political development (APD) is a distinctive field of research that should not be conflated with, or flattened into a caricature of, historical research that uses historical data to make flawed causal inferences. It is a problem-driven inquiry into the dynamics of American politics, a substantive and theoretical exploration of how American politics has changed over time. APD research uses diverse types of data from a wide range of sources and employs multiple methodologies and analytical approaches, as appropriate. Because APD is a substantive and theoretical inquiry and not a method per se, there is no a priori reason to think that design-based causal inference cannot play a valuable role in studies of America’s political development, just as advanced quantitative methods have. However, while APD research does often seek to explain outcomes and establish causal relationships, that is not its only goal, and its orientation toward causality, causes, and theory tends to differ from much of the work in the causal inference tradition. This essay endeavors to clear up some of the confusion by offering the author’s perspective on what APD does well and how it does it. It also suggests how experimental research and APD research might be brought into more fruitful intellectual exchange and concludes with some thoughts on the value of methodological and intellectual pluralism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Caughey and Chatfield (2019) evocatively describe that path as the route through which APD becomes the “mere handmaiden of causal inference, serving merely as a historical storehouse of natural experiments and a source of evidence in support of identification assumptions.”
To be clear, Wawro and Katznelson (2019) ascribe that view to “some advocates of stricter causal inference standards”, presumably including those who also exhibit “a distorting tendency to claim too much about the superiority of some rigorous causal approaches”. Similarly, Gordon and Simpson note that “some of the more zealous advocates of the PO (potential outcomes) framework may view historical research as beside the point”. Wawro and Katznelson “happily” report, however, that “this extreme view is not characteristic”.
Note that a number of political historians and political sociologists, experts in their own fields and methods, also self-identify as APD scholars. As they should! My aim here is to discuss the place of APD within political science, but I do not mean to exclude scholars in other disciplines who have made, and will continue to make, important contributions to our understanding of America’s political development. Indeed, the rich diversity of approaches, methods, and perspectives scholars bring to the study of APD is one of its greatest strengths, as I discuss below.
As Bateman and Teele (2019) write, “The value of causal inference is enormous; but identifying a cause is only a subset of the more common practice of making a case, and not all cases rest on a dispositive identification of a causal effect.”
For more on the relationship between APD and qualitative methods, see Galvin (2016b).
That said, a fair amount of APD research also is concerned with the interplay between structure and agency, using historical investigations to develop insights into the dynamics of strategic action and decision-making, modes of political entrepreneurship, and patterns of behavior under certain conditions. See, for example, Carpenter (2001), Sheingate (2003) and Galvin (2010). For more on concept development, hypothesis formulation, and theory-building in APD research, see the next section below.
Wawro and Katznelson (2019) call for more “productive dialogue” between APD and CI-focused scholars. Specifically, they exhort APD scholars to “confront the challenges posed by heightened concerns about identification head-on”, “engage with such work on its own terms”, “respond with careful, reasoned arguments as to why certain approaches are, or are not, suitable for the analyses they conduct”, and help “develop more explicit guidelines for designing historical studies and assessing their causal claims.” Interested APD scholars definitely should do this. But dialogue is a two-way street, and surely we should also encourage a “spirit of exploration” among “causalists” as well—urging our more CI-focused colleagues to engage with different kinds of research on its own terms, identify the value it brings to our common pursuits, nurture methodological and intellectual pluralism, and take pride in the great diversity of approaches to inquiry and explanation that have long characterized the discipline of political science.
References
Azari, J. R. (2014). Delivering the people’s message: The changing politics of the presidential mandate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Azari, J. R., & Smith, J. K. (2012). Unwritten rules: Informal institutions in established democracies. Perspectives on Politics, 10(01), 37–55.
Bateman, D. A. (2018). Disenfranchising democracy: Constructing the electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bateman, D. A., & Teele, D. L. (2019). A developmental approach to historical causal inference. Public Choice.
Bennett, A., & Elman, C. (2006). Qualitative research: Recent developments in case study methods. Annual Review of Political Science, 9, 455–476.
Bensel, R. F. (1984). Sectionalism and American political development, 1880–1980. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Bensel, R. F. (2003). The tension between American political development as a research community and as a disciplinary subfield. Studies in American Political Development, 17(1), 103–106.
Bensel, R. F. (2004). The American ballot box in the mid-nineteenth century. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Berk, G., Galvan, D. C., & Hattam, V. (2013). Political creativity: Reconfiguring institutional order and change. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Binder, S. (2019). How we (should?) study Congress and history. Public Choice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00693-5
Bloch Rubin, R. (2017). Building the bloc: Intraparty organization in the US Congress. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bridges, A. (1987). A city in the republic: Antebellum New York and the origins of machine politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bullock, J. G. (2011). Elite influence on public opinion in an informed electorate. American Political Science Review, 105(3), 496–515.
Bullock, J. G., Gerber, A. S., Hill, S. J., & Huber, G. A. (2015). Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10, 519–578.
Burnham, W. D. (1970). Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Campbell, A. L. (2003). How policies make citizens: Senior political activism and the American welfare state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Carpenter, D. P. (2001). The forging of bureaucratic autonomy: Reputations, networks, and policy innovation in executive agencies, 1862–1928. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Caughey, D. (2018). The unsolid South: Mass politics & national representation in a one-party enclave. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Caughey, D., & Chatfield, S. (2019). Causal inference and American political development: Contrasts and complementarities. Public Choice.
Chatterjee, A., Colbern, A., & Dodds, G. G. (2015). Responses to Daniel J. Galvin’s ‘qualitative methods and American political development’. Clio Newsletter of Politics & History (APSA), 24(2), 4–23.
Chen, A. S. (2007). The party of Lincoln and the politics of state fair employment practices legislation in the north, 1945–1964. American Journal of Sociology, 112(6), 1713–1774.
Chen, A. S. (2009). The fifth freedom: Jobs, politics, and civil rights in the United States, 1941–1972. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007). Framing public opinion in competitive democracies. American Political Science Review, 101(4), 637–655.
Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2010). Dynamic public opinion: Communication effects over time. American Political Science Review, 104(4), 663–680.
Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2012). Counterframing effects. The Journal of Politics, 75(1), 1–16.
Clemens, E. S. (1997). The people’s lobby: Organizational innovation and the rise of interest group politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clemens, E. S., & Cook, J. M. (1999). Politics and institutionalism: Explaining durability and change. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 441–466.
Clinton, J. D. (2019). Causal inference, agenda setting, and roll calls. Public Choice.
Collier, D. (2011). Understanding process tracing. PS: Political Science & Politics, 44(4), 823–830.
Corder, J. K., & Wolbrecht, C. (2016). Counting women’s ballots: Female voters from suffrage through the New Deal. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Crowe, J. (2012). Building the judiciary: Law, courts, and the politics of institutional development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (2011). Experimentation in political science. In J. N. Druckman, D. P. Green, J. H. Kuklinski, & A. Lupia (Eds.), Handbook of experimental political science (pp. 3–14). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Druckman, J. N., Peterson, E., & Slothuus, R. (2013). How elite partisan polarization affects public opinion formation. American Political Science Review, 107(1), 57–79.
Engel, S. M. (2011). American politicians confront the court: Opposition politics and changing responses to judicial power. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Falleti, T. G., & Lynch, J. F. (2009). Context and causal mechanisms in political analysis. Comparative Political Studies, 42(9), 1143–1166.
Feinstein, B. D., & Schickler, E. (2008). Platforms and partners: The civil rights realignment reconsidered. Studies in American Political Development, 22(1), 1–31.
Francis, M. M. (2014). Civil rights and the making of the modern American state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frymer, P. (1999). Uneasy alliances: Race and party competition in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Frymer, P. (2008). Black and blue: African Americans, the labor movement, and the decline of the Democratic party. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gailmard, S. (2019). Game theory and the study of American political development. Public Choice.
Galvin, D. J. (2010). Presidential party building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Galvin, D. J. (2012). The transformation of political institutions: Investments in institutional resources and gradual change in the National Party Committees. Studies in American Political Development, 26(1), 50–70.
Galvin, D. J. (2013). Presidential partisanship reconsidered: Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and the rise of polarized politics. Political Research Quarterly, 66(1), 46–60.
Galvin, D. J. (2014). Qualitative methods and American political development. Clio Newsletter of Politics & History (APSA), 24(1).
Galvin, D. J. (2016a). Deterring wage theft: Alt-labor, state politics, and the policy determinants of minimum wage compliance. Perspectives on Politics, 14(2), 324–350.
Galvin, D. J. (2016b). Qualitative methods and American political development. In R. Valelly, S. Mettler, & R. C. Lieberman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of American political development (Vol. 207). New York: Oxford University Press.
Galvin, D. J. (2019a). From labor law to employment law: The changing politics of workers’ rights. Studies in American Political Development, 33(1), 50–86.
Galvin, D. J. (2019b). Labor’s legacy: The construction of subnational work regulation. Working paper (WP-19-01), Institute for Policy Research Working Paper Series (Northwestern University).
Gerring, J. (2003). APD from a methodological point of view. Studies in American Political Development, 17(1), 82–102.
Gerring, J. (2006). Case study research: Principles and practices. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gerring, J., & McDermott, R. (2007). An experimental template for case study research. American Journal of Political Science, 51(3), 688–701.
Gibson, E. L. (2012). Boundary control: Subnational authoritarianism in federal democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goertz, G., & Mahoney, J. (2012). A tale of two cultures: Qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gordon, S. C., & Simpson, H. K. (2019). Causes, theories, and the past in political science. Public Choice.
Greenstone, J. D. (1969). Labor in American politics. New York: Knopf.
Grose, C. R., & Wood, A. K. (2019). Randomized experiments by government institutions and American political development. Public Choice.
Hacker, J. S. (2002). The divided welfare state: The battle over public and private social benefits in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hacker, J. S. (2004). Privatizing risk without privatizing the welfare state: The hidden politics of social policy retrenchment in the United States. American Political Science Review, 98(2), 243–260
Hall, P. A. (2014). Politics as a process structured in space and time. In T. F. Orfeo Fioretos & A. Sheingate (Eds.), Oxford handbook of historical institutionalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, A. (2019). Applying regression discontinuity designs to American political development. Public Choice.
Hertel-Fernandez, A. (2019). State capture: How conservative activists, big businesses, and wealthy donors reshaped the American states, and the nation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2018). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146.
James, S. C. (2000). Presidents, parties, and the state. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jenkins, J. A., & Patashnik, E. M. (2012). Living legislation: Durability, change, and the politics of American lawmaking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jenkins, J. A., & Stewart, C. (2019). Causal inference and American political development: The case of the Gag rule. Public Choice.
Katznelson, I. (1981). City trenches: Urban politics and the patterning of class in the United States. New York: Pantheon Books.
Kelly, A. S. (2014). The political development of scientific capacity in the United States. Studies in American Political Development, 28(01), 1–25.
Kersh, R. (2005). The growth of American political development: The view from the classroom. Perspectives on Politics, 3(2), 335–345.
King, D. S., & Smith, R. M. (2005). Racial orders in American political development. American Political Science Review, 99(1), 75–92.
Lapinski, J. S. (2013). The substance of representation: Congress, American political development, and lawmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lieberman, R. C. (1998). Shifting the color line: Race and the American welfare state. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lieberman, R. C. (2002). Ideas, institutions, and political order: Explaining political change. American Political Science Review, 96(04), 697–712.
Lowi, T. J. (1964). American business, public policy, case-studies, and political theory. World Politics, 16(04), 677–715.
Lowndes, J. E., Novkov, J., & Warren, D. T. (2008). Race and American political development. London: Routledge.
Mahoney, J. (2004). Comparative-historical methodology. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 81–101.
Mahoney, J. (2012). The logic of process tracing tests in the social sciences. Sociological Methods & Research, 41(4), 570–597.
McConnaughy, C. M. (2013). The woman suffrage movement in America: A reassessment. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McConnaughy, C. M. (2019). The inferential opportunity of specificity: How institutional and historical detail can enable causal explanations and inference in American political development. Public Choice.
Mettler, S. (1998). Dividing citizens: Gender and federalism in New Deal public policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mettler, S. (2005). Soldiers to citizens: The G.I. bill and the making of the greatest generation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mettler, S., & SoRelle, M. (2014). Policy feedback theory. In P.S.a.C.M. Weible (Ed.), Theories of the policy process (pp. 151–181). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Mettler, S., & Soss, J. (2004). The consequences of public policy for democratic citizenship: Bridging policy studies and mass politics. Perspectives on Politics, 2(1), 55–73.
Mickey, R. W. (2015). Paths out of dixie: The democratization of authoritarian enclaves in America’s Deep South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Milkis, S. M. (1993). The president and the parties: The transformation of the American party system since the New Deal. New York: Oxford University Press.
Milkis, S. M., & Tichenor, D. J. (2019). Rivalry and reform: Presidents, social movements, and the transformation of American politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Mill, J. S. (1870). A system of logic, ratiocinative and inductive; being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Morgan, K. J. (2016). Comparative politics and American political development. In R. Valelly, S. Mettler, & R. C. Lieberman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of American political development (Vol. 207). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mullinix, K. J., Leeper, T. J., Druckman, J. N., & Freese, J. (2015). The generalizability of survey experiments. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2(2), 109–138.
Mutz, D. C. (2011). Population-based survey experiments. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ogorzalek, T. K. (2018). The cities on the hill: How urban insitutions transform national politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Orren, K. (1991). Belated feudalism: Labor, the law, and liberal development in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orren, K., & Skowronek, S. (1994). Beyond the iconography of order: Notes for a ‘new institutionalism’. In L. C. Dodd & C. Jillson (Eds.), The dynamics of American politics: Approaches and interpretations (pp. 311–330). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Orren, K., & Skowronek, S. (1996). Institutions and intercurrence: Theory building in the fullness of time. Nomos, 38, 111–146.
Orren, K., & Skowronek, S. (2002). The study of American political development. In I. Katznelson & H. V. Milner (Eds.), Political science: The state of the discipline (pp. 722–754). New York: Norton.
Orren, K., & Skowronek, S. (2004). The search for American political development. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Patashnik, E. M. (2008). Reforms at risk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pierson, P. (1993). When effect becomes cause: Policy feedback and political change. World Politics, 45(4), 595–628.
Pierson, P. (2000). Not just what, but when: Timing and sequence in political processes. Studies in American Political Development, 14(1), 72–92.
Pierson, P. (2004). Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pierson, P. (2007). The costs of marginalization: Qualitative methods in the study of American politics. Comparative Political Studies, 40(2), 145–169.
Rocco, P., & Thurston, C. (2014). From metaphors to measures: Observable indicators of gradual institutional change. Journal of Public Policy, 34(1), 35–62.
Rose, D. (2018). Citizens by degree: Higher education policy and the changing gender dynamics of American citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sanders, E. (1999). Roots of reform: Farmers, workers, and the American state, 1877–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schickler, E. (2001). Disjointed pluralism: Institutional innovation and the development of the U.S. Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schickler, E. (2016). Racial realignment: The transformation of American liberalism, 1932–1965. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Seawright, J. (2016). Multi-method social science: Combining qualitative and quantitative tools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shapiro, I. (2014). Methods are like people: If you focus only on what they can’t do, you will always be disappointed. In D. L. Teele (Ed.), Field experiments and their critics: Essays on the uses and abuses of experimentation in the social sciences. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Shefter, M. (1994). Political parties and the state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sheingate, A. D. (2001). The rise of the agricultural welfare state: Institutions and interest group power in the United States, France, and Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sheingate, A. D. (2003). Political entrepreneurship, institutional change, and American political development. Studies in American Political Development, 17(2), 185–203.
Sheingate, A. D. (2010). Rethinking rules: Creativity and constraint in the U.S. house of representatives. In J. Mahoney & K. Thelen (Eds.), Explaining institutional change: Ambiguity, agency, and power in historical institutionalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sheingate, A. D. (2014). Institutional dynamics and American political development. Annual Review of Political Science, 17(1), 461–477.
Sheingate, A. D. (2019). How institutions unravel: Policy regimes and the process of decay. Working paper.
Shogan, C. J. (2007). The moral rhetoric of American presidents. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Skowronek, S. (1982). Building a New American state: The expansion of national administrative capacities, 1877–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Skowronek, S. (1997). The politics presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Skowronek, S. (2003). What’s wrong with APD? Studies in American Political Development, 17(1), 107–110.
Skowronek, S., & Glassman, M. (2007). Formative acts: American politics in the making. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Smith, R. M. (1993). Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The multiple traditions in America. American Political Science Review, 87(3), 549–566.
Smith, R. M. (1997). Civic ideals: Conflicting visions of citizenship in US history. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Smith, R. M. (2003). Substance and methods in APD research. Studies in American Political Development, 17(1), 111–115.
Springer, M. J. (2014). How the states shaped the nation: American electoral institutions and voter turnout, 1920–2000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Staszak, S. L. (2015). No day in court: Access to justice and the politics of judicial retrenchment. New York: Oxford University Press.
Steinmo, S. (2016). Historical institutionalism and experimental methods. In O. Fioretos, T. Falleti, & A. Sheingate (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical institutionalism (pp. 3–30). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Teles, S. M. (2008). The rise of the conservative legal movement: The battle for control of the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Thurston, C. N. (2015). Policy feedback in the public-private welfare state: Advocacy groups and access to government homeownership programs, 1934–1954. Studies in American Political Development, 29(2), 250–267.
Thurston, C. N. (2018). At the boundaries of homeownership: Credit, discrimination, and the American state. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Valelly, R. M. (2004). The two reconstructions: The struggle for Black enfranchisement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Valelly, R. M., Mettler, S., & Lieberman, R. C. (Eds.). (2016). The Oxford handbook of American political development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Waldner, D. (2012). Process tracing and causal mechanisms. In H. Kincaid (Ed.), The oxford handbook of philosophy of social science (pp. 65–84). New York: Oxford University Press.
Wawro, G. J., & Katznelson, I. (2014). Designing historical social scientific inquiry: How parameter heterogeneity can bridge the methodological divide between quantitative and qualitative approaches. American Journal of Political Science, 58(2), 526–546.
Wawro, G. J., & Katznelson, I. (2019). American political development and new challenges of causal inference. Public Choice.
Weaver, V. M. (2007). Frontlash: Race and the development of punitive crime policy. Studies in American Political Development, 21(2), 230–265.
Weir, M., Orloff, A. S., & Skocpol, T. (1988). The politics of social policy in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Weir, M., & Skocpol, T. (1985). State structures and the possibilities for ‘Keynesian’responses to the great depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States. In T. Skocpol, P. Evans, & D. Rueschemeyer (Eds.), Bringing the state back in. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whittington, K. E. (1999). Constitutional construction: Divided powers and constitutional meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zackin, E. J. (2013). Looking for rights in all the wrong places: Why state constitutions contain America’s positive rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Galvin, D.J. Let’s not conflate APD with political history, and other reflections on “Causal Inference and American Political Development”. Public Choice 185, 485–500 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00695-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00695-3