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Diplomatic History and Policy History: Finding Common Ground

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Robert J. McMahon
Robert J. McMahon
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Extract

It is difficult to imagine two fields of scholarly inquiry with so much in common and yet so little interaction as diplomatic and policy history. Policy, policy process, policymakers, policy origins, policy intentions, policy consequences—those terms and ones of a similar stripe roll just as easily off the tongues and word processors of diplomatic historians as of self-described policy historians. Moreover, the questions asked and the methods employed by the two groups of scholars bear a striking resemblance. Both fields focus perforce on the state and state-centered actors, concern themselves with elite-level decision making, interrogate fundamental issues of power within societies, and concentrate overwhelmingly on the twentieth century to the relative neglect of earlier periods. Each field occupies as well an embattled position within the larger historical profession, where social and cultural history have predominated since the 1960s.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Directions in Policy History , January 2005 , pp. 93 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. Zelizer, Julian E., “Clio's Lost Tribe: Public Policy History Since 1978,” Journal of Policy History 12 (2000): 373–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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28. Suri, Power and Protest.

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31. Ninkovich, “Paradigms Lost.”

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35. Zelizer, Julian E., Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945–1975 (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar; Hogan, Michael J., A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (New York, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar