political science

(Wang) #1

purveyors of war-related services, and most prospered as a result of the wartime


state–group cooperation (though, one may ask, at what cost in autonomy and
future eVectiveness?).


6 The Dynamics of State–Society


Interaction in HI
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As Skocpol’s focus on the ‘‘patriotic partnerships’’ developed in wartime suggests


(Skocpol 2003 ; Skocpol, Munson, Karch, and Bayliss 2002 ), social mobilization and
institutional development can be seen as interactive processes. Dissident move-
ments often demand, or indirectly call into being, new or expanded governmental


institutions. They may use independent, non-, or bipartisan strategies, or become
components of existing major parties, and thereby transform the party itself


(Sanders 1999 , 104 ). Once a new policy and its implementing institutions are in
place, group demands and coalitional dynamics are themselves shaped by the


making and interpretation of rules by public oYcials.
Even the decisions of the US Supreme Court, which many earlier scholars treated


as philosopher-kings constructing and disseminating the public philosophies that
guided subsequent policy-making at all levels of government, can, from a more


historical and developmental perspective, be viewed as reactions to social move-
ments and party realignment (Rosenberg 1991 ; Gates 1992 ). In a more nuanced and
interactive way, the doctrinal landmarks of philosophical regimes deWned and


promulgated by the Supreme Court have been described by Ken Kersh ( 2004 )as
theculminationof ‘‘a layered succession of... spirited ideological and political


campaigns’’ in society—a process that is far from linear, but rather (borrowing
a Skowronek–Orren term), one marked by ‘‘intercurrence, disharmony, and


complexity’’ (Kersh 2004 , 18 ).
As we have seen in theWerce ideological and religious combat of early twenty-


Wrst-century US politics, the enshrining of those ‘‘culminating’’ doctrines (like
the liberal dicta on abortion, gay rights, and religion) become themselves the
provocation around which new social movements form.


‘‘Policy begets politics,’’ as Theodore Lowi put it in 1969 , though his focus was on
the societal elaboration of clientele supports for developing state institutions—


powerful groups and second-level institutions (like the congressional committee
and the administrative bureau) that ultimately could ‘‘wag the dog’’ of national


policy elaboration. Disdaining the abandonment of institutions by 1950 s political


50 elizabeth sanders

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