SUPPLEMENTARY SYLLABUS FOR PS 104
In addition to the materials on your seminar syllabus much -- but not all -- of the following
would be found on a standard graduate field syllabus in American politics at one of the top
Ph.D. Programs in political science. Feel free to use this as little or as much as you want.
Textbook Analyses
Edward Greenberg and Benjamin I. Page, The Struggle for Democracy
The best ?liberal” text.
John Di Iulio and James Q. Wilson, American Government
The best ?conservative” text.
Descriptive Overviews
See latest editions of Guide to Congress, Guide to Supreme Court, Guide to the Presidency , all
published by Congressional Quarterly, Inc.
Guaranteed major information overload, but nonetheless worthwhile.
American political science?
Heinz Eulau, ?The behavioral persuasion in politics,” in Eulau, Politics, Self and Society, chap. 1
Classic statement of why political science should be a ?normal” science.
Kenneth A. Shepsle, ?Studying institutions: Some lessons from the rational choice approach,” Journal of
Theoretical Politics 1 (1989): 134-48
An intuitive introduction to the implications of the idea of SIE.
James March and Johan Olsen, Rediscovering institutions: The organizational basis of politics, chap. 1.
Classic overview of why political scientists are back into institutions.
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Terry Moe, ?The new economics of organizations,” American Journal of Political Science 1983: 739-77.
A crisp introduction to the issue.
Louis Hartz, The liberal tradition in America.
A classic and disturbing statement of how American political culture rules out
certain kinds of politics.
Theodore Lowi, The end of liberalism.
A classic and enormously influential indictment of interest-group liberalism.
Congress I: Elections and representation
David Mayhew, Congress: The electoral connection, Intro. and chap. 1.
The first systematic rational choice statement of Congress, strongly
emphasizing the primacy of electoral careers for members of Congress.
Samuel Huntington, ?Congressional responses to the twentieth century,” in David Truman, ed., The
Congress and America's future, pp. 5-31.
Why there is long-run presidential/congressional competition. Dated but
valuable.
Morris Fiorina, ?The case of the vanishing marginals,” American Political Science Review, (1977): 177181, in McCubbins and Sullivan, eds., Congress: Structure and policy, pp. 30-38.
The first article to state the ?incumbency problem.”
Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, ?Constituency influence in Congress,” American Political Science
Review (1963): 45-56.
Still unsurpassed demonstration of how little constituency influence there is. But
see Arnold’s last chapter.
Gary Jacobson, ?Running scared: Elections and congressional politics in the 1980s,” in McCubbins and
Sullivan, eds., Congress: Structure and policy, pp. 39-81.
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Why incumbents act scared even if they seem ?safe,” and what that does to the
business of representation.
Richard Fenno, ?U.S. House members in their constituencies: An exploration,” American Political
Science Review, 71 (1977): 883-917.
Classic statement of representation as an ?activity.” Application of Hannah
Pitkin’s conceptualization of representation.
Walter Dean Burnham, ?Insulation and responsiveness in congressional elections,” Political Science
Quarterly, Fall 1975.
Another statement of the ?incumbency problem.”
Richard Fenno, Home Style
Fuller treatment of the same subject covered in the article.
Congress: Inside the institution
Encyclopedia of the American legislative system : studies of the principal structures, processes, and
policies of congress and the state legislatures since the colonial era , Joel H. Silbey, editor in chief.
Good collection of articles.
Joseph M. Bessette, The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy & American National
Government
A convincing if incomplete claim that Congress is internally more deliberative
than is commonly thought. Ch. 2, on the Founding, is superb.
David Mayhew, Congress: The electoral connection, chap. 2
How every aspect of internal structure is related to Mcs’ electoral needs.
Barry Weingast and William Marshall, ?The industrial organization of Congress,” Journal of Political
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Economy (1988): 132-63.
How committees permit logrolls.
Keith Krehbiel, Information and legislative organization, Intro, chaps. 1 & 2.
How committees solve everyone’s need for sustained application of expertise.
Richard Fenno, ?Congress and committees: A comparative analysis,” in McCubbins and Sullivan, eds.,
Congress: Structure and Policy, pp. 147-78.
Nelson W. Polsby, ?The institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political
Science Review,(1968): 144-68, in McCubbins and Sullivan, eds., Congress: Structure and policy, pp.
179-206.
The first article to call attention to the development of internal structure.
Nelson Polsby, et al, ?The growth of the seniority system in the U.S. House of Representatives,”
American Political Science Review, 63 (1969): 787-807.
More of the same.
H. Douglas Price, ?Careers and committees in Congress: The problem of structural change,” in William
O. Aydelotte, ed., The history of parliamentary behavior.
The origins of seniority in disenfranchisement.
Richard Fenno, Congressmen in committees.
See Krehbiel article on your 104 syllabus to get a sense of why this is an
important book.
Richard Fenno, ?The House Appropriations Committee as a political system,” American Political Science
Review 56 (1962): 310-24.
The article version of his Power of the Purse.
John Manley, ?Willbur D. Mills: A study in congressional influence,” American Political Science
Review, 63 (1969): 442-64.
How congressional leaders get to be congressional leaders.
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Lawrence Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer, eds., Congress reconsidered, all editions.
Good reader; use the latest edition.
James Sundquist, Decline and resurgence of Congress.
Comprehensive description of the evolution of the committee system and of the
origins of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the War
Powers Resolution.
Presidency
Richard Neustadt, Presidential power, chaps. 1-3.
The book: presidential power is the power to persuade. For presidents since
Eisenhower read the latest edition, which also reflects on the lessons of the first
edition.
Terry M. Moe, ?The politicized presidency,” in John Chubb and Paul Peterson, eds., The new direction in
American politics, pp. 235-71.
Why presidents really don’t want ?neutral competence” in the bureaucracy.
Mark Peterson, Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan
Excellent statement of a ?tandem institutions” perspective. Presidential
performance is part of a set of 6 legislative-executive routines for handling the
presidential agenda. Good multivariate analysis reported.
Richard Neustadt, ?Presidency and legislation: The growth of central clearance" American Political
Science Review, 48 (1954): 641-71.
How presidents developed capacities to plan legislation.
Aaron Wildavsky, ?The two presidencies,” in Wildavsky, ed., The presidency, pp. 23-243.
Classic article claiming that presidents are given a free hand in foreign policy but
must bargain in the domestic arena.
Jeffrey Tulis, The rhetorical presidency.
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Why and how Woodrow Wilson created the power to persuade.
Theodore Lowi, The personal presidency
Why and how a weak two-party system results from an increasingly plebiscitary
presidency that is nonetheless bound to fail.
James David Barber, Presidential character.
An attempt to predict presidential behavior on the basis of psychological
typology. Sparked by the experience of the Nixon presidency.
Michael Nelson, The presidency and the political system, 4th ed.
Comprehensive collection of very stimulating articles.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The imperial presidency.
Why Wildavsky’s ?second president” is dangerous.
Charles O. Jones, The Presidency In A Separated System
Superb theory of the different kinds of presidencies. The chapter on the
legislative process is excellent and quite distinctive, generally in line with
Bessette’s view but put more crisply.
Participation
Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman, and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality.
Based on prodigious research. Clear, fascinating, and disturbing. One of the
most important works on American political participation ever to appear.
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Broadly consistent with Rosenstone and Hansen.
Public Opinion
V.O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy.
Dated but still stimulating.
John R. Zaller, The nature and origins of mass opinion.
The best work so far.
Voting
Donald Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes, American Voter, chaps. 2, 5, 10.
Basic statement of the ?Michigan School” of voter research, holding that voters
are ill-informed and relatively a-political.
Philip Converse, ?The nature of belief systems in mass publics,” in David Apter, ed., Ideology and
discontent
Very pointed statement of the ?Michigan School” view and hard to dismiss.
Norman Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik, Changing American voter, chaps. 7-8, 10.
Argues that voters became issue-oriented in the 1960s.
Morris Fiorina, Retrospective voting in American national elections, chaps. 1-2, 10.
Why the ?Michigan School” misunderstands voting.
Sam Popkin, The reasoning voter
A good read; argues that voters behave according to principles of ?lowinformation” rationality and do quite well in making their choices.
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George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine Macdonald, ?A Directional Theory of Issue Voting,” American
Political Science Review 83 (March 1989): 93-122.
A very important up-dating of the spatial model of voting.
Elections
Anthony Downs, ?An economic theory of political action in a democracy,” Journal of Political Economy,
65 (1957): 135-50
Voters as utility maximizers operating in one-dimensional issue space, but also
rationally ignorant and likely to leave many policy issues to organized groups.
Benjamin Page, Choices and echoes in presidential elections, chaps. 2 & 3.
When do presidential candidates have something serious to say?
Thomas Ferguson, ?Elites and elections, or what have they done to you lately,” in
Benjamin Ginsberg and Alan Stone, eds., Do elections matter? pp. 164-8.
More Fergusonism.
V.O. Key, ?A theory of critical elections,” Journal of Politics 17 (1955): 3-18.
How realignment theory got started.
Walter Dean Burnham, Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics, chaps. 1, 2 & 7.
The most ambitious statement of realignment theory next to Sundquist’s.
Seriously explores Schattschneider’s suggestions concerning the ?System of
1896,” described in The Semisovereign People.
Richard L. McCormick, ?The realignment synthesis in American history,” Journal of Interdisciplinary
History, 13 (Summer 1982): 85-106.
Excellent critique of realignment theory, positing importance of policy innovation
and success in cementing voter loyalties.
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Walter Dean Burnham, The current crisis in American politics.
A collection of Burnham’s articles, some non-scholarly. ?Appearance and
Disappearance of the American Voter” is a classic.
William N. Chambers and Walter D. Burnham, eds., The American party systems.
Basic collection of articles, though now a bit dated.
V.O. Key, The responsible electorate.
Key’s last book, the culmination of a lifetime of reflection.
D. Roderick Kiewiet, Macroeconomics and micropolitics.
What do elections say about voters’ view of the economy? Fine discussion of
the different ways voters assessing the economy before they vote. A very clear
appendix on what probit analysis is.
Kay Lehman Schlozman, ed., Elections in America.
Chs. 1-2 and 10 are very important; respectively, they treat the ambiguity of
meanings conveyed by elections, the meanings of elections over time in
American politics, and a simple formal way to understand non-voting.
Parties
E.E. Schattschneider, The semisovereign people, chaps. 1-3.
The romance of parties. Plus the first book to imply the concepts of the agenda
and agenda-setting. Also introduces the fertile concept of the ?socialization of
conflict.”
James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the party system, rev. ed., chaps. 2, 3.
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Combines spatial, heresthetical, and realignment perspectives simply and
clearly.
V.O. Key, Southern politics in state and nation, chaps. 3, 14, 23, 24.
One of the greatest works of American political science: what happens when
you don’t have competitive two-party politics?
Steven Erie, Rainbow’s End.
Excellent historical-analytical account of the urban machine.
Martin Shefter, Political Parties and the State
A collection of Shefter’s classic articles on parties.
William Riker, ?The two-party system and Duverger's Law: An essay on the history of political science,”
American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 753-66.
Can there be a science of parties?
Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House, chs.
5-8.
A full statement of parts of chapter 7 of John Aldrich, Why Parties?
David Mayhew, Placing parties in American politics
Brilliant survey of party organization in the states and the difference that
variations in party organization make to spending and policy innovation. Quite
counter-intuitive.
David Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House.
Masterful account of the development of ?contingent party government.”
Essential for understanding the origins of the House Republican party in the
Gingrich Era.
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Steven Rosenstone, et al, Third Parties in American Politics, 2nd. Ed., revised and expanded (1995)
Contains, among other things, best discussion available of the Perot
phenomenon.
Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution.
Why and how American electoral politics has become subtly racially polarized
and the role of party entrepreneurs in this process. Excellent chapter on the
role of party activists in electoral politics, and a devastating critique of the
realignment approach. The quantitative analysis is pretty muscle-bound but
readable nonetheless.
Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.
A gem that still glitters. Though its applications have been largely in
comparative politics the original work contains a very instructive analysis of the
spatial model of voting and the role of party activists in locating parties in issue
space.
Groups
E.E. Schattschneider, The semisovereign people, chaps. 4-8.
Why pluralism stinks, analytically and normatively.
Mancur Olson, The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups, chaps. 1-2.
Where the collective action problem all began.
David Truman, The governmental process, chaps. 2, 3, 16
Whom Olson and Schattschneider meant to attack. Nonetheless a brilliant
defense and analysis of the group-based character of modern politics. The
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discussion of ?defensive mobilization” is still unsurpassed.
Grant McConnell, Private power and American democracy.
How interest-group liberalism got built. An influential classic.
Earl Latham, The group basis of politics: Notes for a theory, American Political Science Review 46
(1952): 376-97.
Early pluralism.
Jack L. Walker, Jr., Mobilizing Interest Groups in America: Patrons, Professions, and Social Movements
Brilliant restatement of the centrality of groups in American politics.
Jack L. Walker, ?Interests, political parties, and policy formation in American democracy,” in Donald T.
Critchlow and Ellis W. Hawley, eds., Federal social policy: The historical dimension, pp. 141-70.
An early article from Walker’s project of restating group analysis.
Robert H. Salisbury, ?An exchange theory of interest groups,” Midwest Journal of Political Science
(1969): 1-32.
Introduced the concept of the political entrepreneur and how s/he solves
collection problems.
Theodore H. Lowi, ?American business, public policy, case studies, and political theory,” World Politics,
July 1964.
Probably the most important book review essay in the history of American
political science. Argues that policy attributes determine how groups are
involved in the political process.
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James Q. Wilson, Political organizations.
The best book Wilson ever wrote. Brilliant analysis of how and why group
leaders fail to do what group members would want them to do.
John Mark Hansen, Gaining Access.
David Mayhew’s most important student. Ostensibly a case study of the farm
lobby’s interaction with the House Agriculture Committee, it’s actually a
sophisticated meditation on the roles of parties and groups in American politics
and of the conditions under which rational members of Congress rely on groups
over parties to advance their electoral fortunes.
Terry M. Moe, The organization of interests
Reinvestigates the classic Truman/Olson debate on how groups form.
Terry M. Moe, ?Toward a broader view of interest groups,” Journal of Politics
43 (1981):478-89.
Modest but instructive piece on what groups do for their members.
Mark Petracca, ed.The Politics of interests : interest groups transformed.
Excellent contemporary reader.
J. David Greenstone, Labor in American politics.
A theory of (1) group-party alliances (2) when groups dominate parties and viceversa. Dense and difficult, but elegant. Also argues that United States politics
has become broadly social-democratic.
John B. Judis: ?The Pressure Elite: Inside the Narrow World of Advocacy Group Politics,” American
Prospect Spring 1992 [GR]
Things haven’t gotten better even if we think they have. Schattschneider was
right -- the heavenly chorus of pluralism still sings with an upper-class accent.
Kay Lehman Schlozman and John T. Tierney, ?More of the Same: Washington Pressure Group Activity
in a Decade of Change,” Journal of Politics 45 (May 1983): 351-377.
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Ditto.
Business, Labor, and Government
David Vogel, Fluctuating Fortunes.
Why corporations and business associations have agenda-setting influence
when they do.
Cathie Jo Martin, Shifting the Burden.
Excellent case study of business’ role in tax reform, developing a theory of why
presidents try to organize business into the legislative process when they do.
Miriam Golden, ?The Dynamics of Trade Unionism and National Economic Performance,” American
Political Science Review 87 (June 1993): 439-54.
Squarely attacks the consensus that well-developed corporatist policy-making
arrangements promote strong national economic performance and argues that
the critical variable is not corporatist institutions but dynamics of collective
bargaining.
Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States.
Somewhat eccentric but nonetheless the definitive statement in part because of
its methodological sophistication and the care with which Goldfield collected
relevant statistics. Widely read and translated.
Policy Sub-Systems
Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics
Incredibly stimulating analysis of sub-system fragility.
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Robert M. Stein and Kenneth N. Bickers, Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American
Democracy.
Sub-systems may be fragile, and they may not have the impact we tend to think
they have, but they’re still there and they’re still a serious problem.
Woodrow Wilson, ?The study of administration,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 1
The basic statement of the ideal of separating administration and politics.
Political Corruption
Dennis Thompson, ?Mediated Corruption: The Case of the Keating Five,” American Political Science
Review 87 (June 1993): 360-68.
The logics of ex parte intervention in agency decision-making by members of
Congress.
Courts
Herbert McCloskey, The American Supreme Court, 2nd and rev. Ed.
The enduring classic study of how and why Supreme Court justices are political
entrepreneurs.
Lee Epstein and C.K. Rowland, ?Debunking the myth of interest group invincibility in the courts,”
American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 205-217
Judges don’t need help from groups to figure out what to do.
Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?
Bold, infuriating but extremely well-documented claim that groups and
movements are wasting their time if they try to achieve social change via the
judiciary.
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Michael W. McCann, Rights At Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization
Fine case study taking issue with Rosenberg.
Mark Silverstein and Benjamin Ginsberg, ?The Supreme Court and the new politics of judicial power,”
Political Science Quarterly 102 (1987): 371-88.
Alliances between Supreme Court justices and groups.
Karen Orren, ?Standing to sue: Interest group conflict in the federal courts,” American Political Science
Review 70 (1976): 723-41.
Early recognition of the politics of group litigation.
Harold Hongju Koh, The national security constitution, chap. 6.
How the Supreme Court has helped presidents to build Wildavsky’s :second
presidency.”
Rogers M. Smith, ?Political jurisprudence, the "new institutionalism," and the future of public law,”
American Political Science Review 82 (1988): 89-108.
Recent overview of trends in the field of public law.
Jeffrey A. Segal and Albert D. Cover, ?Ideological values and the votes of U.S. Supreme Court justices,”
American Political Science Review 83 (1989): 557-65.
Is there a legal culture or not?
Lawrence Baum, ?Measuring policy change in the U.S. Supreme Court,” American Political Science
Review 82 (1988): 905-12.
The Supreme Court as a policy-maker.
Divided government
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Lloyd N. Cutler, ?To form a government--On the defects of the separation of powers,” Foreign Affairs
(Fall 1980): 126-43.
The article that started the debate on whether we can afford divided
government.
Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by other means, chaps. 1-2, 6.
Pathologies of divided government.
Morris Fiorina, Divided Government, 2nd ed.
Why there’s divided government and why it’s much too early to say that it’s a
problem.
David Mayhew, Divided We Govern.
Sturdy and convincing analysis of why divided government does not block
policy-making along with a theory of policy cycles.
Charles Stewart III, ?Lessons from the post-Civil War era”, in Gary Cox and Samuel Kernell, eds., The
politics of divided government, chap. 9.
Fascinating discussion of how parties lived with and made the most of divided
government in the 19th century.