Institutional Dynamics and American Political Development

Abstract

American political development (APD) endeavors to understand the dynamism and durability of institutions. This focus has much in common with kindred scholarship in political science on the temporal construction of politics, yet the points of connection between APD and other fields are not always clear. As a remedy, this article reviews the various modes of institutional change found in the literature, the causal mechanisms in each, and the metaphors scholars sometimes use to capture processes that are difficult to observe directly. Using these various modes, mechanisms, and metaphors, scholars of APD explore institutional dynamics at different levels of analysis, highlighting the connections between the micropolitics of situated action and broader transformations at the macro level of the polity. The review concludes by showing how the study of APD speaks to issues of power and political economy that are once again central to political science scholarship.