This essay starts with an observation, proceeds to an exhortation, and
concludes with a set of suggestions.
Congress has been situated on the outside edge of the subfield of
American Political Development (APD) despite the institution's
centrality both to the political history of the United States and to
political science as a discipline. Apart from an important but limited
number of works—including a long-term research enterprise on the
role of sectionalism conducted by Richard Bensel, a study of the
antebellum Senate by Elaine Swift, an assessment of the alliance between
farmers and workers in the half-century after 1877 by Elizabeth Sanders, a
major work on institutional transformations in the House and Senate by
Eric Schickler, and a small number of emergent
inquiries—“scholars in the American Political Development
tradition,” as Keith Whittington has noted, “have never fully
integrated Congress, as they have other important institutions such as the
bureaucracy, the presidency, political parties and the courts.”Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political
Science and History at Columbia University ([email protected]). John S.
Lapinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University
([email protected]). This article reflects the work of the American
Institutions Project located at the Institute for Social and Economic
Research and Policy at Columbia University and the Institution for Social
and Policy Studies at Yale University, the support of the National Science
Foundation (SES 0318280 and SES 03188289), and the conducive environment
for research and writing provided by the Russell Sage Foundation. We
particularly wish to thank Rose Razaghian for her reading and suggestions,
Eldon Porter for his assistance, and the three anonymous readers for this
journal.