Social Science History

Carpenter, Daniel P., 1967-
The Multiple and Material Legacies of Stephen Skowronek
Social Science History - Volume 27, Number 3, Fall 2003, pp. 465-474

Duke University Press

Daniel P. Carpenter - The Multiple and Material Legacies of Stephen Skowronek - Social Science History 27:3 Social Science History 27.3 (2003) 465-474 The Multiple and Material Legacies of Stephen Skowronek Daniel P. Carpenter Stephen Skowronek's Building a New 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. The reach of Skowronek's effort remains singular and daunting. Building a New American State, I wish to claim, helped to launch not only the turn to political history in the social sciences, but also the turn to institutions in political science. The book's individual narratives also commissioned a fresh engagement with business regulation, the...