The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900

Explains the compatibility of economic development and democracy in the United States during industrialization.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

List of tables; List of maps and charts; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Uneven economic development in the United States; 3. Platform demands, party competition and industrialization; 4. Claims on wealth and electoral coalitions; 5. Political construction of the national market; 6. Political administration and defense of the Gold Standard; 7. Tariff protection and the Republican party; 8. Conclusion; Index.

This book synthesizes politics and economics to explain how robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization - a combination rarely found in world history - coexisted in the United States during the late nineteenth century period of industrialization.