Research Catalog

Title

Formative acts : American politics in the making / edited by Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman.

Publication

Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007.

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Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Skowronek, Stephen
• Glassman, Matthew.

Description

vi, 444 p. : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

"Seventeen essays illuminate critical junctures in American political development - from the social movements for women's suffrage, civil rights, and workers' rights, to Reconstruction, to the regulation of prescription drugs - as vantage points from which to examine how change is enacted. Contributors question not simply how political actors behave but how and to what extent their actions change the American policy itself. At the same time, the transformative act is presented as larger than any one actor or group of actors; often the act of transformation involves many different actors and a panoply of motives." "Three concepts claim center stage: political entrepreneurshipespecially as it directs attention to ambiguity and malleability in the rules of action found in any complex institutional setting; political leadership - specifically the conundrum of democratic leadership; and political agency - particularly the strongly voluntaristic construction of that concept found within American political culture. The authors focus on each of these categories to link the study of political action more effectively to our understanding of the formation and reformation of American government and politics."--book jacket.

Subject

United States > Politics and government

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-427) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Formative acts / Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman -- Part I. The actors --The terrain of the political entrepreneur / Adam Sheingate -- Leadership and American political development / Bruce Miroff -- Agency and popular activism in American political culture / James Block --Part II. Structure and opportunity -- A calculated enchantment of passion : Bryan and the "Cross of gold" in the 1896 Democratic National Convention / Richard Bensel -- Organizing for disorder : civil unrest, police control, and the invention of Washington, D.C. / Daniel Kryder -- Partisan entrepreneurship and policy windows : George Frisbie Hoar and the 1890 Federal Elections Bill / Richard M. Valelly -- Part III. Resetting the terms of government and politics -- Andrew Johnson and the politics of failure / Nicole Mellow and Jeffrey K. Tullis -- Forging a new grammar of equality and difference : Progressive Era suffrage and reform / Eileen McDonagh -- The ground beneath our feet : language, culture, and political change / Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes -- Part IV. At the interface of movements and the state --Presidents and social movements : a logic and preliminary results / Elizabeth Sanders -- Leaders, citizenship movements, and the politics rivalries make / Daniel J. Tichenor --The president in the vanguard : Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights insurgency / Sidney M. Milkis --Part V. Insiders out to change things -- Entrepreneurial defenses of congressional power / Eric Schickler -- Inventing the institutional presidency : entrepreneurship and the rise of the Bureau of the Budget, 1939-49 / Andrew Rudalevige -- Robust action and the strategic use of ambiguity in a bureaucratic cohort : FDA offices and the evolution of new drug regulations, 1950-70 / Daniel P. Carpenter and Colin D. Moore --Retrospective : formative action and second acts / Elisabeth Clemens.

ISBN

• 9780812240122 (alk. paper)
• 081224012X (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2006050032

OCLC

• 78773065
• SCSB-10273765

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library