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Introduction: New Directions in Policy History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Julian E. Zelizer
Julian E. Zelizer
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

The state of policy history is good. This is a dramatic change from only four years ago, when I started an article in this very journal about the evolution of policy history by asserting: “The future of policy history remains unclear.” At the time, my statement reflected the sentiment shared by many fellow policy historians who did not feel that professional opportunities had fully caught up with the intellectual vitality of the subfield.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Directions in Policy History , January 2005 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. Zelizer, Julian E., “Clio's Lost Tribe: Public Policy History Since 1978,” Journal of Policy History, 12 (2000): 369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. In this essay, and other work, I define policy history as a sub-field of political history rather than a separate field.

3. For a history of policy history, see Zelizer, “Clio's Lost Tribe”; Graham, Hugh Davis, “The Stunted Career of Policy History: A Critique and an Agenda,” The Public Historian 15 (1993): 15–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. McGraw, Thomas, Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).Google Scholar

5. Neustadt, Richard E. and May, Ernest R., Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

6. See, for examples, Katz, Michael, The Undeserving Poor: From Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; Balogh, Brian, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945–1975 (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

7. There is no shortage of articles tracing the professional difficulties policy historians encountered within the history profession. See, for example, Gillon, Steven M., “The Future of Political History,” Journal of Policy History 9 (1997): 240–255CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Silbey, Joel H., “The State of American Political History at the Millennium: The Nineteenth Century as a Test Case,” Journal of Policy History 11 (1999): 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Balogh, Brian, “The State of the State among Historians,” Social Science History 27 (Fall 2003): 455–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Zelizer, Julian E., “Beyond the Presidential Synthesis: Reordering Political Time,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Agnew, Jean-Christopher and Rosinweed, Roy (Oxford, 2002), 345–370.Google Scholar

9. Howard, Christopher, The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1997).Google Scholar

10. See, for examples, Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, and Kessler-Harris, Alice, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (New York, 2003).Google Scholar

11. Hacker, Jacob S., The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klein, Jennifer, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton, 2003).Google Scholar

12. Steinmo, Sven, Taxation and Democracy: Sweden, British, and American Approaches to Financing the Modern State (New Haven, 1993).Google Scholar

13. Carpenter, Daniel P., The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Branch Agencies, 1862–1928 (Princeton, 2001).Google Scholar