Political Organizations

Fall 2005

Prof. McGee Young

Marquette University

 

Office: Wehr Physics, 407

Office Hours: M,W 9-11, T,TH 11-12:00 or by appointment

Phone: 288-3296

Homepage: www.marquette.edu/polisci/Young.htm

Email: mcgee.young@marquette.edu

AIM: marqprofyoung

 

 

 

E.E. Schattschneider wrote that organization “is the mobilization of bias.”  In politics, organization is essential for the expression of grievances, the articulation of needs, and advocacy for pet causes.  In the United States, citizens have pooled their resources in a variety of different ways to compel public officials to respond to their needs.  For example, political parties were among the first vehicles for mass political participation.  Parties emerged in the 1830s and connected the disparate communities that dotted the American countryside to their state and national governments.  Churches also provided citizens with opportunities to organize outside of traditional political institutions.  Religious leaders backed the abolition of slavery, temperance and prohibition, civil rights, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts.  Other citizens drew from common economic experiences, like farmers, manufacturers, and workers.  Sometimes they created new political parties, other times they formed their own lobbying associations.  In all, America has had a thriving spirit of associationalism, which has profoundly affected our political development.  At least half of the amendments to the Constitution since the Bill of Rights have their roots in organized advocacy by groups of citizens.  At the state and local level, organized groups have been no less important.

 

What questions do we need to ask about political organizations?  For starters we should ask why they form.  Are they natural, inevitable phenomena?  Or do some organizations form more easily and maintain themselves longer than others?  Second, we want to know how political organizations change the way people are governed.  Ultimately, we will want to know more about the laws they help to pass or the institutions they help to create.  Some, like Constitutional amendments, have substantial ramifications.  Others, like local ordinances have effects that are more confined.  But for most citizens, politics is local and the effects of political organization are felt most profoundly at the local level.

 

We will spend the bulk of this semester examining political organizations that have been active at the subnational level.  Our readings will take us from the industrial center of Milwaukee to racially charged Birmingham, to the coal mining regions of the Appalachians.  We will consider how the different levels of government interact with each other and how political organizations find strength in different types of conflicts.  Ultimately, this class is about the resilience of American democracy.  It is about how citizens can unite to bring the promises of the American creed to bear on the reality of their lives.

 

Assignments

Your grade in this course will be based on how well you complete the following assignments.

1)      Six short review essays 600-800 words each – 20%

2)      Midterm Exam – 20%

3)      Final Exam – 30%

4)      Research Paper on a state or local political organization, 10-12 pages – 20%

5)      Class attendance and participation – 10%

 

Rules and Regulations

Attendance and participation are mandatory.  Exceptions will be granted only upon prior written approval.  I expect you to complete course readings before class and be able to discuss their import.  Cheating and plagiarism are violations of university policy and will be dealt with severely.  There is often a gray area when completing academic work when it comes to attributing your ideas.  Please err on the side of over-attribution.  If you have a conversation with your friends that sparks an idea, make a note to that effect.  More importantly, if you get an idea or information from a published source, you must acknowledge it.  As a rule, you should refrain from quoting directly unless you are quoting a person’s spoken words or a couple of written words that precisely capture a particular meaning (for example, Stephen Skowronek described nineteenth-century American government as a “state of courts and parties”). 

     Note well that when you are conducting research for a paper or an assignment, you should keep in mind that you will need to cite what you refer to or draw from.  Write down the page numbers from which you get your information so you don’t have to go back later and look it up.

 

 

Schedule

 

Monday 8/29  - Introduction

Wednesday – No Class

 

Monday 9/5 – No Class

Wednesday 9/7 – David Thelen, The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900

 

Monday 9/12 – Milwaukee History

Wednesday 9/14

 

Monday 9/19 But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, p. 1-85

  • Recommended: Desmond  King and Rogers Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development” American Political Science Review 99(1) February 2005: 75-92

Wednesday 9/21, But for Birmingham, p. 85-152

  • Recommended: Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988 (Kansas, 1989)

 

Monday 9/26 But for Birmingham, p. 153-216

  • Recommended: Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements (1977)

Wednesday 9/28 But for Birmingham, p. 217-340.

  • Recommended: Daniel Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: race in the conservative counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1996)

 

Monday 10/3 Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, p. 36-60, skim p. 3-36, 60-65

  • Recommended: Robert Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change” American Political Science Review (December 2002), p. 697-712.

Wednesday 10/5 Political Process, p. 65-145

  • Recommended: Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, “Dynamics of Contention” Social Movement Studies (April 2003), p. 99-102.

 

Monday 10/10 – Political Process, p. 146-234

  • Recommended: Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Wednesday 10/12 – Midterm

  • Recommended: A good night’s sleep!

 

Monday 10/17 John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence & Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley – p. 3-25, skim p. 26-32.

  • Recommended: Peter Bacharach and Morton Baratz, “The Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review, 56 (1962), 947-952

Wednesday 10/19 – Power and Powerlessness, p. 33-44, skim p. 47-83.

  • Recommended: Taylor Dark, “Organized Labor and the Congressional Democrats,” Political Science Quarterly” (Spring 1996).

 

Monday 10/24 Power and Powerlessness, p. 84-121.

  • Recommended: Paul Frymer, “Race, Labor, and the Twentieth Century American State,” Politics and Society, December 2004, p. 475-509

Wednesday 10/26 – Power and Powerlessness, p. 165-201, skim p. 252-261.

  • Recommended: Kim Voss, "Disposition Is Not Action: The Rise and Demise of the Knights of Labor," Studies in American Political Development 6 (Fall 1992): 272-321.

 

Monday 10/31 Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, p. 3-73

  • Recommended: Elisabeth Clemens, The People’s Lobby (Chicago, 1997)

Wednesday 11/2 – Diminished Democracy, p. 74-126

  • Recommended: Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Consumption in Postwar America (Knopf, 2003).

 

Monday 11/7 – Diminished Democracy, p. 127-220

  • Recommended: Elizabeth Theiss-Morse and John R. Hibbing, “Citizenship and Civic Engagement” Annual Review of Political Science (2005): 227-249.

Wednesday 11/9 – Diminished Democracy, p. 221-294

  • Recommended: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, “Abandoning the Middle: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Limits of Democratic Control” Perspectives on Politics March 2005, p. 33-53

 

Monday 11/14 Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” Journal of Democracy (1995); John Mark Hansen, “The Political Economy of Group Membership” American Political Science Review (1985)

  • Recommended: David Lowery and Virginia Gray, “A Neopluralist Perspective on Research on Organized Interests” Political Research Quarterly (2004).

Wednesday 11/16 Technology and the new politics of organization, Readings TBA

Friday 11/18 – Papers Due

 

Monday 11/21 Technology and the new politics of organization, Readings TBA

Wednesday 11/23 – No Class, Thanksgiving Holiday

 

Monday 11/28 – Paper Presentations

Wednesday 11/30 – Paper Presentations

 

Monday 12/5 – Paper Presentations

Wednesday 12/7 – Exam review, wrapup

Catholic Workers of America – Milwaukee

Milwaukee Civil Rights Movement

Environmentalism in Wisconsin

Creating a clean city – public health in Milwaukee

Conservation in Wisconsin

Native Americans in Wisconsin

Milwaukee Socialism

Prohibition movement and reaction in Milwaukee

Milwaukee Anti-war/Peace movement

Milwaukee labor movement

Women’s suffrage in Wisconsin