The People’s Branch: The U.S. Congress and the Democratic State

Abstract

The institutional history of the United States Congress has lagged in recent decades as historians of American political development have focused on the history of administration and defined the state in terms of the autonomy of bureaucratic government institutions. In this article, I argue that the history of both Congress and the American state would benefit from analyzing Congress as an institution of the democratic state—an ongoing historical project in which the American people and their representatives in Congress have shaped American democracy and the creation, evolution, and administration of the American state.