phenomenon of bureaucratic entrepreneurship of the order reported by Carpenter
may itself be time-bound, particularly marking the struggles for legitimacy of
Xedgling agencies.
But there are, surely, resounding cases of institution building and expansion in
which elite leadership is to be expected. One is monetary policy, in whichWnancial
elites and their governmental allies pioneered the creation of central banks and
stable national currencies (although the structure and powers of the resulting
agencies did not follow elite designs in critical areas: Livingston 1986 ;Broz 1997 ;
Sanders 1999 ). Another is military policy, where (as Skowronek’s case study of the
campaign for a national, professionalized army underlines)expansionof bureau-
cratic resources has been, in the United States, almost entirely under presidential
leadership; on the other hand, major attempts atrationalizationof military and
intelligence bureaucracies (through reorganization and new mandates) has come
from Congress. As the 9 / 11 episode revealed, presidents have been more interested
in assuring that the defense and intelligence agencies support their policy
preferences than in assuring that these agencies eVectively serve the national
security interest (Zegart 2000 , 2005 ).
Skowronek’s early HI work centered on the critical policies that initiated the rise
of a modern administrative state. John Gerring, also a pioneer of HI, and of the
establishment of a distinctWeld of qualitative methods that gained popularity in
the wake of HI’s emergence, shifted the focus to political party ideologies and their
development over two centuries (Gerring 2001 ). As critical intermediary institu-
tions linking leaders and their societal constituent groups, parties have been
ambiguous institutions in HI. The early work of Skocpol and Finegold ( 1990 ,
1995 ) treated them as extensions of political elites—recalling Maurice Duverger’s
( 1954 ) labeling of major US parties as ‘‘cadre’’ organizations, founded by and
elaborated around competing national politicalWgures.
Gerring follows this perspective, too, centering his narrative (and impressively
rigorous counting of patterns of discourse in party platforms and oYcial
pronouncements) on the expressed ideas of party elites (mainly nominees for,
and holders of, the presidency). The ideas that constitute the public philosophies,
and guide the policy foci of diVerent party regimes—in two distinct periods for the
Whig/Republicans and three for the JeVersonian/Democrats—are assumed to arise
with elites, and thenWnd favor with the masses. This is the usual assumption of
scholarship focused on elites and ideas, though constructivists would argue for a
broader and more socially interactive ideational provenance.
An alternative, but still elite-centered way to look at party institutions in APD is
found in Richard Bensel’s thick and empirically buttressed account of the rise and
maintenance of the post-Civil War ‘‘party-state’’ constructed by leaders of the
victorious Republican Party. The identifying contours of that party ideological
superstructure (Bensel would say ‘‘facade’’) do not diVer signiWcantly from
Gerring’s account, but where Gerring sees a coherent national party ideology
historical institutionalism 47