connections made between American dissidents and European fascists were no
longer sustainable (Brinkley 1982 ).
These path-breaking movement studies exploited primary sources and (in the
case of Michael Schwartz and Doug McAdam) methods indebted to rational choice
and statistical political science, to suggest linkages between past and present
movement struggles. William Gamson’s important meta-analysis of the political
achievements of ‘‘challenging groups’’ from 1800 to 1945 further clariWed
the theoretical insights that could be gained from the historical study of social
movements. These studies by sociologists and historians thus contributed sign-
iWcantly to the revival of interest in history, and in ‘‘poor people’s movements’’
(the title of a 1977 book by sociologists Piven and Cloward) among political
scientists, but their focus was on the emergence of dissident organization and
strategy in the context of political economy,noton the development of political
institutions. It remained to link group struggles ‘‘from below’’ to the dynamics of
institution formation and development.
Sociologists moving into the developing sub-Weld of politics and history made
important contributions to this linkage. Theda Skocpol, a pioneer of politics and
history and of American Political Development (HI’s foremost vehicle in the
United States), turned her attention from political elites to dissident social organ-
izations with her 1992 book,Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of
Social Policy in the United States. Connecting a ‘‘maternalist’’ cultural ethic and the
hard work of women’s local and national movement organizations in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Skocpol traces the modestly successful
eVorts of voteless women to inXuence social policy for women and children (and,
ultimately, to win suVrage). Another political sociologist, Elisabeth Clemens,
published in 1997 The People’s Lobby,an important analysis of the honing of
lobbying skills and strategies by farm, labor, and women’s groups targeting
state legislatures in and after the 1890 s. The emergence of energetic grassroots
organizations, linked in state and national associations that paralleled the structure
of federalism, not only produced an outpouring of new state legislation in the
progressive era, but created the template for the intermediary political institutions
so intimately involved in US politics from that era forward.
In 2003 , Theda Skocpol took another important look at the interaction between
the national state and social organizations in Diminished Democracy, a richly
detailed account of the rise and decline (after about 1950 ) of voluntary civic,
occupational, and fraternal organizations in the post-Civil War United States. In
this book, she lays out not only the extraordinary level of group membership in
(often cross-class) civic organizations, but also their diverse political agendas and
contribution to reform. Then, in a fascinating twist on the presumed direction of
group inXuence to government action, Skocpol describes the numerous instances
in which national oYcials turned to the voluntary groups for assistance in the
First and Second World Wars. The large voluntary associations became important
historical institutionalism 49