Please respond to at least one of the following questions. After you have made your own initial post, please also respond to at least one post by a classmate before the end of Tuesday. Please cite specific pages from Milkis to support your analysis (direct quotes are also welcome). 

1. According to Milkis, what was Roosevelt’s motive in his attempt to transform the institution of the presidency and reorganize the executive branch?  Why does Milkis see this as a Third New Deal? 

2. How successful was Roosevelt in this attempted transformation? What was the longer-term impact of this effort?

3. How did Roosevelt connect his efforts to specific traditions in American political culture? Why was it important to frame the New Deal as an updated kind of liberal Americanism? (You can also draw on the speech from Roosevelt here.)

4. How would you relate the analysis provided by Milkis to the Skocpol & Finegold argument?

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Note: Hacker and Pierson spend some time early in their article discussing methodology and related questions. You might find it easier to jump ahead to p. 287 (p. 11 of the PDF) and read their more concrete discussion, and then go back to the earlier part of the article.

Please respond to at least one of the following questions. After you have made your own initial post, please also respond to at least one post by a classmate before the end of Thursday. Please cite specific pages from Hacker and Pierson to support your analysis (direct quotes are also welcome). 

1. How do Hacker and Pierson understand the nature of business power in U.S. politics? Why do they think this power can fluctuate?

2. If business interests were powerful and opposed to social welfare policies, what happened in the 1930s to make these policies possible (in particular Social Security)?  Why did this kind of policy shift have to happen nationally instead of emerging by different states enacting such reforms?

3. How does the piece by Hacker and Pierson offer a challenge to the focus on state capacity and government actors put forward by Skocpol and Finegold (what Hacker and Pierson call “institutionalist” approaches)? Is it possible to combine these perspectives?

4. Does the possibility that business interests were politically weak in the 1930s mean they had no impact on New Deal policies?  Was the New Deal about a shift in class politics with mobilized workers gaining more influence? Are there reasons the political power of business might have a resurgence after the 1930s?