Hobson v. Hansen (1967) is best known as the first federal court case to rule against discriminatory use of standardized tests in the context of educational tracking. It was also significant as one of the first desegregation cases after Brown v Board of Education (1954) to use psychological evidence in its ruling. This essay briefly examines the debates over ability testing before Hobson, the contexts of post-desegregation D.C. educational politics that shaped the case, the social scientific evidence presented in the case, and its application to the court’s ruling. It argues that while scholars have correctly acknowledged the court’s mistaken assumptions about testing, the evidence presented of testing bias nevertheless cogently illustrated a broader constellation of discriminatory District practices. A review of the testimony suggests that while the psychological evidence was central to the court’s ruling, the opinion rested less on the resolution of social scientific debates over testing bias than it did on the need to determine the justification of ability testing in the context of District tracking practices. Although sweeping in scope, the decision did little to resolve long running disputes over ability testing. Instead, it only helped inaugurate a more heated and contentious legal environment for educational testing in the coming decades.

Two different theoretical frameworks, the interorganizational and the intraclass, guide empirical research on the origin and function of corporate interlocks. Conclusions from this research often have been used as the basis for more general claims about the structure of power in the American economy. To a great extent, these claims are based on the implicit assumption that a majority of interlocks facilitate one type of interfirm relationship—formal coordination.

This article presents evidence about the continuity of interlocks which have been disrupted accidentally by such events as death and retirement. What happens after an interlock is broken reveals something of the extent and manner in which different types of interlock ties facilitate formal coordination. This in turn provides the basis for assessing the applicability of the interorganizational and intraclass approaches to the phenomenon of interlocking.

Realignment of the American party system is a major focus for students of voting behavior, congressional policy making, and political history (Key, 1955; Burnham, 1970; Clubb, Flannigan, and Zingale, 1980; Kleppner, 1979; Sundquist, 1973; Campbell, 1977; Trilling and Campbell, 1980; Ladd and Hadley, 1978; Brady and Stewart, 1982; Brady, 1985; Sinclair, 1982). The transformation of the party system encompasses significant shifts in electoral support for the major political parties, changes in congressional policy making, and a redirection of national policy making. The rise of new party eras is intriguing because the constitutional structure seeks to minimize such major institutional and policy change. The separation of powers, federalism, and different recruitment patterns for political leaders are structural factors inhibiting major policy change (Brady, 1985). Realignment overcomes these barriers as highly volatile and cross-cutting issues arise. These issues produce linkages between electoral choice, congressional voting, and the broad shape of national policy making.

Stephen Skowronek’s Building aNew American State remains one of the most influential books in political science and history of the past two decades. In political science, Building engendered a set of deep disciplinary transformations that simultaneously sent scholars sprinting into the history books for new cases with which to ply and test theory, goaded them into rethinking what it meant for the United States to possess a “state,” and welcomed them in embracing the study of institutions as a worthwhile endeavor in political science. In history, Skowronek’s book challenged scholars to reconceive the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as a fundamentally distinct period of governance, a peculiar challenge to the institutional forms that had dominated nineteenth-century American politics. Two decades later, historians and political scientists are still laboring to answer Skowronek’s call.

Almost all premodern states and empires used privatized tax collection. Roman history is a good research site for the study of tax farming because it provides ample variation on its extent and effectiveness while controlling for many other factors. Tax farming began in the early Republic, was expanded but became more exploitative in the late Republic, and then was abolished for some types of taxes and was more centrally controlled for others in the Empire. We use a sociological version of agency theory to explain these changes. In addition to well-known causes of the use and effectiveness of tax farming, such as the size of the empire, the level of development of communications technologies, and the type of tax collected, we show that a major determinant in the Roman case was the characteristics of principals, a function of the form of the state. Differences between the Republic and the Empire can be traced to differences between the senate, which ruled in the former, and the emperors, who ruled in the latter. The perils of privatization in the late Republic were mainly caused by characteristics of the principals, especially the fact that the Roman senate was a multiple principal with a “revolving-door” relationship with the agents it was supposed to control, and were exacerbated by direct senatorial investment in tax farms.

Since the time of the two Fredericks—Engels and Le Play—the history of the family has served as a vehicle for social criticism. That is as it should be: The way we relate our current family lives to our understanding of the past defines who we are and who we ought to be. The analysis may unfold as Art: as an effort to recreate the experiences of living in different sorts of families. It may proceed as Science: as an attempt to trace reliably what changed and why. Or it may take the form of Politics: the drive to establish who was responsible for changes in the family and whose interests those changes served. For Lasch, the history of the family is mainly Politics, with a dab of Art. Science—or, as he thinks of it, pseudoscience—is the enemy. Stone writes history chiefly as Art, although he is not adverse to the trappings of Science when they serve his purpose.

Among the various facets of the new public history movement, applied history holds particular interest for social science historians. Public history generally involves the effort to use historical work for nonacademic audiences; it thus embraces historical museum work, aspects of archive preservation, and media presentations for general audiences. All these are admirable goals, not of course novel, but receiving new and explicit attention in a variety of recent programs, and in the Public History Association. Applied history, though part of public history in its broadest sense, has a more specific mission (one must note that some of the presentation training programs in public history are labeled “applied,” a terminological confusion that one hopes can be remedied). Applied historians seek directly to integrate certain kinds of historical research with the process of policy research, in both public and private sectors. Applied historians do this research themselves, most typically on a contract basis from academic sanctuaries but potentially as policy researchers independent of a direct academic base. They are also involved in training graduate students in this research mode, and in several cases have also mounted undergraduate courses or programs in the genre.

Extant literature on vocational reforms gives the impression that they, like other educational reforms, resulted from a consensus between northern industrialists and professional educators (e.g., Bowles and Gintis 1976; Cohen 1968; Cremin 1961; Cuban 1982; Fones-Wolf 1983; Kett 1982; Powers 1992; Tyack 1981 [1974]). If national educational reforms reflected national economic interests, we should expect twentieth-century federal vocational legislation to reflect the interests of an increasingly industrialized national economy. By the same token, regionally specific economic interests should find their reflection primarily in local educational practice. This view rests on the assumption that a “national economy” has existed and that federal policies have not reflected sectional economic interests. In reality, southern sectional interests have shaped a variety of economic and social policies, ranging from post-Reconstruction child labor and compulsory education laws to New Deal policies such as the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, welfare policy, and the 1935 Social Security Act establishing old-age security and unemployment compensation (Alston and Ferrie 1985; Bensei 1984; Lieberman 1995; Quadagno 1988, 1994; Shulman 1991; Skocpol 1995).

1. Was there any such thing as the “System of 1896”—or indeed any other “system” in American political history, for that matter? Professor McCormick’s paper suggests that he would clearly answer this question in the affirmative. For essentially he argues not that no such system existed, but that much too heavy an interpretative burden in my analyses has been placed on 1896 itself. I am sure that, so far as this is concerned, Professor McCormick is right. Yet there do seem undercurrents in this friendly critique of the broader doubt as to whether there is any substantiality at all to the model which I first attempted to sketch out quite a few years ago. On any one of a variety of specific details, I would have to plead, if not guilty, then at least nolo contendere. Yes, I undoubtedly placed too great a burden on 1896 itself, which inevitably should and does create scholarly doubts. Yes, the original sketch which attempted to link elite motivation with underlying power structure and those with electoral politics in and after the 1890s was painted in very vivid colors indeed. This may tell a dramatic story, but it may assume a greater conspiratorial intentionality and future-prediction on the part of elites than was actually there. But once we deal with issues such as these, is there anything left? Professor McCormick, a friendly critic, seems to think there is, but undercurrents of doubt remain.

Among explanations for the escalating cost of higher education in the United States, two economic theories predominate: the revenue theory of cost and cost disease theory. Since its formulation in the 1960s, distinguished economists have concluded that cost disease theory has convincingly been proven to explain cost escalation in higher education. This article examines three historical dimensions of the cost disease in higher education from the 1870s to the 2010s. First, we explain how the scholarship on the cost disease in higher education has developed over the past 50 years. Second, we concurrently analyze the historical data and the reasoning presented by economists in support of the view that cost disease theory explains cost escalation in higher education. This analysis concludes that the scholarship over the last 50 years provides little validation for that explanation. Finally, we present historical research on cost trends in US higher education from 1875 to 1930. This formative period in US higher education witnessed enormous growth in the national economy. Due to the growth in productivity, cost disease theory would expect costs in higher education, a personal services industry, to rise sharply relative both to costs generally and to the national income. But this historical research reveals that the per capita cost of higher education grew very slowly over this period. These findings consist with our analysis of cost disease scholarship. We therefore conclude that there is little validation that cost disease theory explains cost escalation in US higher education from the 1870s to the 2010s, though it may explain some periods within that span.

This paper analyzes admissions to the Colorado Insane Asylum from 1879 to 1900. We estimate and compare admission rates across sex, age, marital, occupation, and immigration status using original admission records in combination with US census data from 1870 to1900. We show the extent to which persons in various status groups, who varied in power and social advantage, differed in their risk of being institutionalized in the context of nineteenth-century Colorado. Our analysis showed that admission or commitment to the Asylum did not entail permanent incarceration, as more than half of those admitted were discharged within six months. Men were admitted at higher rates than women, even after adjusting for age. Marital status also affected the risk of admission; single and divorced persons were admitted at about 1.5 times the rate of their married counterparts. Widows of either sex were even more likely to be admitted to the Asylum, and the risk increased with age. Persons in lower income/lower prestige occupations were more likely to be institutionalized. This included occupations in the domestic and personal service category in the US census, and this was evident for both males and females. Foreign-born men and women were admitted at, respectively, twice and three times the rate of their native counterparts, with particularly elevated rates observed among the Irish. In general, admission to the Colorado Insane Asylum appears to differ only in a slightly greater admission of males when compared to similar contemporaneous institutions in the East, despite the obvious differences in the Colorado population size and urban concentration.

This article examines the interests expressed by white Populists and black Republicans regarding political coalition in Virginia. Virginia is interesting because it is generally considered a failed site for the Populist movement and for interracial organizing under it. Such a coalition was untenable statewide, but economic, social, and historical conditions opened a space for it in a cluster of majority-black counties. The failure of the coalition was not due to incompatible interests but to changing calculations of the outcomes. The interests expressed by white Populists and black Republicans converged and then diverged sharply as the meaning of past interracial coalitions changed for both sides.

Meeting minutes (and similar records) provide a cherished window into the internal workings of important bodies, but scholars usually have little option but to trust their veridicality. However, the production of a record of talk as it happens is a difficult task, especially when talk is animated and turn-taking unregimented. I compare recordings of four National Security Council meetings secretly made by Presidents Kennedy and Nixon with minutes and notes taken by NSC principals and staff members. While minute-taking practices differed in level of detail, all minute-takers engaged in processes of preservation, deletion, and transformation as they sought to distill and disambiguate. Moreover, the need to omit some talk made it possible to suppress certain kinds of content, such as evidence of internal disagreement. The loose relationship between talk and its written incarnation is consequential for lay actors, such as subordinates who rely on minutes for insight into their superiors’ wishes and mindsets; for scholars tempted to read minutes as an accurate account of what transpired; and, potentially, for other sorts of investigators looking to apportion responsibility for misbehavior and bad outcomes.

The ideas and knowledge central to foreign policy are often produced within the context of organizations. How do organizations vet people and ideas for knowledge production? I use original data drawn from archives of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an organization that brought together elites with an interest in foreign policy, to examine the production of post–World War II US foreign policy knowledge. Drawing on literature about how organizations evaluate people and ideas, I assess how the CFR staff selected different foreign policy topics for their Program on Studies from 1955 to 1972. Case studies and multinomial logistic regression provide two forms of evidence: The justifications used by the CFR Program on Studies staff to select ideas and the relationship between recommendations of proposers and idea selection. I compare the effect of positive recommendations from different sources to distinguish between prioritizing quality and prestige and organizational identity on the other. Staff used the identity of the organization as a group of elites with particular expertise as a basis for making everyday decisions regarding which foreign policy knowledge would be codified in the program. In this way, the organization occupied a central position in the production of knowledge. This suggests that scholars of evaluation should attend to organization-level features in addition to individual-level characteristics. I discuss the implications for organizations and intellectual production.

We analyze the evolution of homicide rates in Chile, as a proxy of interpersonal violence, from the 1880s to the 2010s. Homicides rates are the best measure of a country’s personal security, and a key variable of well-being. We found that the homicides rates were high during the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. From the 1930s homicide rates started to decline initially gradually, but then sharply during the 1950s–1960s. During the 1960s–1990s, the country’s homicide rates were low by international standards. However, they have increased during the last two decades. Our regression suggests that increased social spending in the past is associated with reduced homicides in the present, that past and concurrent economic growth also correlates with a reduction in the rate of homicides, and that increased police presence is correlated with a reduction in the rate of homicides. The 1930s–1960s are a key period in the evolution of interpersonal violence. It coincides with the emergence of a welfare state (and increasing social expenditure), declining poverty rates, improvements in health and education, and an increase in suffrage.

This study explores how industry-specific technological, organizational, and managerial features affected the employment of old male manufacturing workers in the early-twentieth-century United States. Industrial characteristics favorably related to the employment of old industrial workers include high labor productivity, less capital- and material-intensive production, short workdays, low intensity of work, high job flexibility, and formalized employment relationships. Results show that aged industrial workers were heavily concentrated in “unfavorable” industries, suggesting that the contemporary argument of “industrial scrap heap” was applicable for most of the manufacturing workers in the early-twentieth-century United States.

In 1908 Señora Teodora Muñoz Viuda de Trejo, with the assistance of a public scribe, wrote to the city government regarding her business selling cakes on the streets of Mexico City. An inspector for the Department of Slaughterhouses and Markets had recently told her that as a vendor of prepared food she could no longer conduct business on the streets. This directive, if carried out, would have dire consequences for Señora Muñoz Viuda de Trejo.In her fourth letter to municipal authorities she wrote, I have mailed three letters and all without a favorable outcome. Today that circumstances compel me, I have made myself vulnerable once again to scorn, but a secret voice tells me to have faith. … Señor Governor, I have been a vendor of cakes since Señor Benito Juárez governed, then Señor Lerdo de Tejada came to power; and I continued making a living without interruption after our current president rose to power. I didn’t meet with any set-backs until three years ago when they took from me three licenses with which I supported myself. … I suffer an ailment of my arms; eight months ago I lost my only daughter who supported me, and she left me with three orphaned children—you see, she was widowed. And so, finding myself in this situation I am obliged to plead to the father of us the poor, that he concede what would be for me a fortune, that I be allowed to sell my cakes, and God will compensate you for this act of nobility. Your humble servant, Teodora Muñoz Viuda de Trejo.(AHCM 1910. 1735: 777)

Population aging in France in the nineteenth century concerned mainly women, as men's life spans increased only after World War I. The article assesses the impact of this gender-differentiated aging process on wealth distribution, using individual data on bequests collected for the period 1800-1939. Over time, more women died without assets. But those who owned assets were richer. As a result, women's aging contributed both to a more unequal wealth distribution and to narrowing the gender gap between asset owners.

Writing for an American audience in the 1930s, Margaret Mitchell was able to dispatch the husband of Scarlett O’Hara with a certain irony. By then measles had become a childhood disease that was seldom fatal. During the nineteenth century, however, measles was not so lightly dismissed. Epidemics in populations with high proportions of susceptible individuals could be dangerous indeed. This article traces the history of measles in South Africa, showing how political and economic changes temporarily produced conditions that led to a devastating epidemic during the Boer War (1899–1902). It then compares the history of measles in South Africa with that in Great Britain and closes with a discussion of the relationship between human and biological causes in the history of the disease.

Throughout his distinguished career, Herbert Gutman has displayed a rare genius for dredging up the most gloriously obscure historical evidence and deriving from it new perspectives on the largest themes. The Black Family is another triumph of this kind: my awe of Professor Gutman’s energy and insight is enhanced by this volume. At the same time, Gutman makes clear that the volume is not demographic in its intent. Since my commentary is to be from a demographic perspective, I will take particular pains to direct this perspective to the purposes Gutman sets forth in The Black Family. These are identified by the author as discerning “what sustained common slave beliefs and behavior,” rather than merely documenting “regularities in behavior,” the latter being Gutman’s characterization of the results of the application of quantitative methods (1976). My task, then, is to examine the links that Gutman establishes between demographic argument and explanation, in his sense, and to assess their adequacy. No demographer, I suspect, would have undertaken the kind of investigation Gutman assays; but demographic skills would have served Gutman’s intentions. I will here try to be severe with this imposing volume, recognizing the importance and aptness of its central thesis, and the audacity of its author’s empirical reach, but questioning the adequacy of his demography to his own ends.