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American Political Development as a Problem-Driven Enterprise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Daniel J. Galvin Open the ORCID record for Daniel J. Galvin [Opens in a new window]  and
Chloe N. Thurston Open the ORCID record for Chloe N. Thurston [Opens in a new window]
Daniel J. Galvin*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Chloe N. Thurston*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
*
Corresponding author: Daniel J. Galvin, Email: galvin@northwestern.edu and Chloe N. Thurston, Email: thurston@northwestern.edu
Corresponding author: Daniel J. Galvin, Email: galvin@northwestern.edu and Chloe N. Thurston, Email: thurston@northwestern.edu
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Abstract

We argue that American political development's (APD's) relentless preoccupation with the substantive problems that shape and animate American politics and how they emerge and develop over time has been a key source of the subfield's durability. We elaborate on three main payoffs to conceptualizing APD as a problem-driven enterprise: (1) it highlights APD's main comparative advantage within the American politics subfield, noting the tremendous agility APD's substantive breadth lends the enterprise; (2) it resolves the methodological debate, granting simply that the question chooses the method rather than the other way around; and (3) it reorients the critique: simply because a subfield considers itself to be problem-oriented does not mean that it is identifying the right problems to study.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , October 2022 , pp. 156 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

We detect a note of despair in the editors’ call for essays for this issue. The despair centers around the supposed inability of American political development (APD) perspectives developed in the “penumbra of the postwar U.S.” to travel in ways that help us grapple with contemporary concerns.Footnote 1 Of course, any healthy research agenda must provide space for reconsidering and/or recalibrating its earlier theoretical assumptions and methodological commitments. Yet rather than despair, our read on recent APD work is far more optimistic.

In our view, the field has been quite responsive to contemporary democratic challenges, both in relation to other subfields of American politics and on its own terms. While the momentous events of the past five years may have caught other disciplines, subfields, and analytic approaches to the study of American politics off guard, APD scholars have been well-positioned to address them, deftly using well-honed conceptual frameworks and analytical tools to make sense of a changing world. They have used historical and comparative analysis and pattern identification to better understand present challenges to democracy;Footnote 2 conducted penetrating analyses of the deep institutional and ideational tensions at the root of contemporary governing crises;Footnote 3 examined how powerful interest groups can cultivate and politicize group social identities and structure the policy debate in ways that advantage their interests and augment their political power;Footnote 4 and excavated recurrent and enduring struggles over multiracial democracy in ways that link to recent and ongoing political movements, divisions, and events.Footnote 5

Despite regular handwringing within the subfield, APD continued to churn out high-quality research addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time, from rising income inequalityFootnote 6 to right-wing populismFootnote 7 to changing gender dynamicsFootnote 8 to partisan polarization and ideological realignmentFootnote 9 to the growth of the carceral stateFootnote 10 to the rise of right-wing power brokersFootnote 11 to the construction of racial and class-based segregation in U.S. citiesFootnote 12 to the transformation of political campaignsFootnote 13 to fundamental and ongoing fights about voting rights.Footnote 14

Why, then, the sense of despair? If APD's successes in addressing pressing questions have been overlooked, perhaps it is because debates about methods and concepts obscure a more foundational issue: the underlying assumption that we are all in agreement about what APD is. Are we? Is APD held together by some methodological commitment (qualitative, historical, or temporal work)? By a focus on the state or society, or on shifts in, or clashes over, governing authority? By an effort to pin down change and to describe its drivers? Is APD simply political history? And where do “modern tools of social science” (to use the language of historical political economy) fit into APD?

For almost as long as it has been written about as a coherent subfield, APD scholars have expressed concerns over the definition, purpose, and future of the field.Footnote 15 In truth, much of this debate has been methodological, having to do with the “fit” of qualitative and historically oriented research in an American politics subfield that has tended to sideline such approaches.

What these periodic methodological and theoretical debates have overlooked, in other words, is precisely what has made APD such a durable and indispensable part of the American politics canon and such an attractive and welcoming home for so many scholars for over four decades: its relentless preoccupation with the substantive problems that shape and animate American politics—such as those listed above—and how they emerge and develop over time.

APD's dogged focus on substantive problems and their underlying temporal dynamics has lent the field an unusual degree of resilience and adaptability as the discipline has undergone multiple methodological and analytical “revolutions” in recent decades. While other analytic approaches and research traditions have risen and fallen in popularity, APD researchers have continued to do what they do best: probe the origins and development of major political problems; explain the timing, content, and form of substantively important outcomes; and use history to shed light on our present discontents.

We do not intend to dismiss the editors’ anxieties. To the contrary: emphasizing the problem-driven core of the APD enterprise may help to respond to the concerns raised. Beyond circumventing the endless soul-searching debates, we see three main payoffs to conceptualizing APD as a problem-driven enterprise: (1) it highlights APD's main comparative advantage within the American politics subfield, noting the tremendous agility APD's substantive breadth lends the enterprise; (2) it resolves the methodological debate, granting simply that the question chooses the method rather than the other way around; and (3) it reorients the critique: just because a subfield considers itself to be problem-oriented does not mean that it is identifying the right problems to study. We address each of these in turn.

First, quite unlike other subfields, APD does not privilege a fixed set of substantive topics or institutional arenas. While other corners of the American politics subfield can be more easily identified by their topic (e.g., elections, immigration, public opinion) or institutional arena (e.g., Congress, presidency, state politics), APD spans the whole of American politics and government. It is a substantive inquiry that “covers the full range of politics in the United States.”Footnote 16 Indeed, many APD scholars are known as generalists, and many self-identify as scholars of cross-cutting topics (e.g., political economy, social policy, racial inequality). This scope and breadth enables scholars working in the APD tradition to track problems as they emerge and unfold, keep abreast of new developments, and identify new puzzles worthy of investigation. This is particularly important because for the most part, real-world problems do not conveniently operate within the disciplinary silos political scientists have created to study their fields.

Second, defining APD as a problem-driven enterprise offers an alternative to thinking about APD in terms of its methods. Scholars working in the APD tradition have long been committed to the proposition that there are multiple ways to advance knowledge and understanding. Consequently, APD scholarship has always been methodologically pluralistic: the question chooses the method rather than the other way around. Rather than addressing every new question with the same cookie cutter approach, problem-focused APD research tackles problems as they arise and selects the most appropriate method for addressing the question at hand. A crucial consequence of this pluralistic outlook is that APD is not constrained by causal orthodoxy. While many APD researchers do pursue causal explanation, they equally value concept development, pattern identification, and the discovery of significant new findings.Footnote 17 This methodological open-mindedness has proven to be an asset, lending APD resiliency within a discipline that is otherwise in a state of perpetual turmoil and discord over methods. New methods and analytical tools come and go, but problem-driven, substantively oriented, historically informed, and theoretically minded research in the APD mold seems here to stay.

Finally, viewing APD as fundamentally concerned with the substantive problems that shape and animate American politics productively reorients our concerns and criticism. Where APD may fall short is in attention to certain problems, not in theoretical or methodological sophistication. How do we ensure that the field is staying alert to new problems? That we are addressing the right ones? For too long, the field neglected important topics that have only recently gained attention. The study of the welfare state, for example, long privileged top-down, elite-driven perspectives while neglecting bottom-up perspectives.Footnote 18 Concerns about the changing quality of democratic governance have until recently neglected the long process and mechanisms of state-level democratic subversion.Footnote 19 Scholars have similarly long neglected the study of race-class subjugated communities and the coercive, repressive, and predatory governing practices to which their citizens are subjected, as well as the political lives of those residing therein.Footnote 20 Indeed, while we know more than before about the power of billionaires, plutocrats, and demagogues to deepen social divisions, exacerbate labor market distortions, and fortify their positions, we still have much to learn about the political dynamics at the other end of the spectrum—at the very bottom of the income scale—where marginalized workers have been challenging, with growing effectiveness, the legitimacy of the economic and political systems that so many Americans take for granted.Footnote 21

In short, to the extent that APD is seen as caught off guard by recent developments, we think the critique is likely overstated and misdirected. Overstated because, as we have shown, the subfield has done a fine job of redirecting its attention to new developments of contemporary concern. And misdirected because rather than asking whether we are using the right frameworks or methods, we should be asking ourselves whether we are asking the right questions and identifying the right problems.

It is reasonable and necessary to be concerned with how to position the field over the long term. But theoretical and analytical approaches should follow from problems that are identified for study—rather than determine what gets studied in the first place. Conceptualizing APD as a problem-driven enterprise—zeroing in on what APD has done well over the last forty years—improves our ability to do this by prioritizing the substantive questions that have lent APD its greatest resiliency and strength.

References

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2 Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (New York: St. Martin's, 2020); Lieberman, Robert, Mettler, Suzanne, Pepinsky, Thomas B., Roberts, Kenneth M., and Valelly, Richard, “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis,” Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 2 (2019): 470–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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