Political sociological models of the US New Deal

The U.S. New Deal raises issues of class, race, gender, region, social move ments, and institutional constraint in the context of a societal-wide econo mic and political crisis, and has not surprisingly generated a considerable body of work by political sociologists over the past twenty years. In part icular, the New Deal has served as a major empirical context for developing , testing, or applying broader theoretical models of political change in th e United States. In this sense, it is a paradigmatic example of the "histor ical turn" in the social sciences. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical controversies that have persisted between four competing theoreti cal models of New Deal political change: (a) those emphasizing the importan ce of social movements from below in generating momentum for political refo rm, (b) those highlighting the centrality of business influence on successf ul New Deal reform initiatives, (c) feminist models, and (d) historical ins titutional models. I then turn to a survey of more recent work on some of t he topics that have been the most widely debated in more recent scholarship and pose some questions for future research.