Carol Nackenoff

Statebuilding from the Margins: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal

The period between the Civil War and the New Deal was particularly rich and formative for political development. Beyond the sweeping changes and national reforms for which the era is known, Statebuilding from the Margins examines often-overlooked cases of political engagement that expanded the capacities and agendas of the developing American state. With particular attention to gendered, classed, and racialized dimensions of civic action, the chapters explore points in history where the boundaries between public and private spheres shifted, including the legal formulation of black citizenship and monogamy in the postbellum years; the racial politics of Georgias adoption of prohibition; the rise of public waste management; the incorporation of domestic animal and wildlife management into the welfare state; the creation of public juvenile courts; and the involvement of womens groups in the creation of U.S. housing policy. In many of these cases, private citizens or organizations initiated political action by framing their concerns as problems in which the state should take direct interest to benefit and improve society. Statebuilding from the Margins depicts a republic in progress, accruing policy agendas and the institutional ability to carry them out in a nonlinear fashion, often prompted and powered by the creative techniques of policy entrepreneurs and organizations that worked alongside and outside formal boundaries to get results. These Progressive Era initiatives established models for the way states could create, intervene in, and regulate new policy areas-innovations that remain relevant for growth and change in contemporary American governance. Contributors: James Greer, Carol Nackenoff, Julie Novkov, Susan Pearson, Kimberly Smith, Marek D. Steedman, Patricia Strach, Kathleen Sullivan, Ann-Marie Szymanski.

Locke, Alger, and Atomistic Individualism Fifty Years Later: Revisiting Louis Hartz's Liberal Tradition in America

Louis Hartz asked some very important questions in The Liberal Tradition in America. One that seems especially relevant in the aftermath of invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to which I will point only briefly, concerns America’s relationship with the rest of the world. Hartz wrote that America’s “messianism is the polar counterpart of its isolationism,” and that it had “hampered insight abroad and heightened anxiety at home.” He contended that America had difficulty communicating with the rest of the world because the American liberal creed, even in its Alger form, “is obviously not a theory which other peoples can easily appropriate or understand,” and that absence of the experience of social revolution in America’s history lies at the heart of our inability to un

Civic Membership, Family Status, and the Chinese in America, 1870s–1920s

Chinese women and children, or their advocates, brought many legal challenges to decrees denying them entry into the United States or seeking to deport them. Relying on more than 150 reported habeas corpus cases decided in West Coast federal courts between 1875 and 1924, we examine how courts helped to structure the rise of the administrative state through controversies involving the boundaries of citizenship, legal residency, and familial status. Cases involving those particularly vulnerable individuals whose statuses were conditioned upon their familial bonds helped to shape the meaning and scope of civic membership. Amid political conflict within institutions of the American state and increasing pressure to curtail immigration, the courts gradually ceded primary decision-making authority to administrative agents, legalizing the administrative state. However, courts continued to supervise what kinds of decisions administrators could make, what kinds of procedures administrators had to use, and what kinds of evidence had to be considered in order to render legitimate the exercise of administrative discretion. Chinese women and children seeking recognition of their citizenship or permanent residency posed what were perceived as moral and civic dangers to the family and the state. This rendered their direct rights claims less enforceable as administrators’ authority to determine status expanded.

Women, Power, and Political Change by Bonnie G. Mani

The 16 women chosen for inclusion in this volume, a subset of women represented in the National Women’s Hall of Fame at Seneca Falls, New York, are women Mani identifies as “change agents” who facilitated political and social change. The Hall of Fame seeks to honor American women “whose contributions to the arts, athletics, business, education, government, the humanities, philanthropy and science, have been of the greatest value . . .” Public nominations are solicited on the website and judged by panels of judges constituted annually. The author seeks representation from each possible century because she locates her project amid the scholarship on the evolution of American women’s roles. Mani argues there is a need “to develop a profile of effective policy entrepreneurs and to develop strategies for facilitating change in the future” (5). Women’s status improved over time because these women entrepreneurs voiced their discontent and worked for change. Mani concludes that “women do not have to hold elected office to facilitate policy change, but that it is difficult and time consuming if they do not” (268). Mani’s purpose is not simply to be a biographer; she wants to know what shapes change agents. One must look to the analytical work as the author seeks to compare lives and reform trajectories if we are to better assess this volume. Mani identifies “variables” she traces through each entry, or more descriptively, a template that she applies to each woman. This includes birth and death; family background; education; work experience; social and political context; political goals and objectives; and gender, by which she means not only did gender affect the woman’s life and work but also whether the woman displayed feminine or masculine characteristics. Some of these variables are coded as binaries (including feminine or masculine characteristics). She makes a point of treating birth order in the family as a predictor of activism, relying on the popular press for authority. Somewhat more interestingly, she considers number of children these women had as it aided or impeded their activism. Family background and wealth are noted as facilitating political participation. The entry on Alice Paul is among the richer and more dynamic entries. Eight figures at the back of the volume are designed to summarize facts and findings.

Contested Terrain: Understanding The Persistence Of Racial Inequality In America

Michael Goldfield. The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: The New Press, 1997. Jennifer Hochschild. Facing Up to the American Dream. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Robert C. Lieberman. Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Keith Reeves. Voting Hopes or Fears? Oxford University Press, 1997. Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines. Reaching Beyond Race. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse.

Investigating the persistence and place of the formulas of Horatio Alger in American politics, The Fictional Republic reassesses the Alger story in its Gilded Age context. Carol Nackenoff argues that Alger was a keen observer of the dislocations and economic pitfalls of the rapidly industrializing nation, and devised a set of symbols that addressed anxieties about power and identity. As classes were increasingly divided by wealth, life chances, residence space, and culture, Alger maintained that Americans could still belong to one estate. The story of the youth who faces threats to his virtue, power, independence, and identity stands as an allegory of the American Republic. Nackenoff examines how the Alger formula continued to shape political discourse in Reagans America and beyond.