Toward "Total Political History": A Rational-Choice Research Program

Abstract

Political history is at an impasse. As the subjects of history expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, and as the prospects of societal change through political means dimmed in the 1980s, the study of war, diplomacy, and the writings and sayings of statemen--the principal raw materials of the old political history--lost favor with students and young professors alike. The organizing frameworks of politically centered history--Charles Beard's class analysis, Frederick Jackson Turner's stress on sectional splits, Louis Hartz's Lockeian consensus, Lee Benson's ethnoculturalism, and Walter Dean Burnham's critical-elections theory--have come under telling attack.

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