Daniel Carpenter is Allie S. Freed Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of the prizewinning books Reputation and Power and The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. At Harvard, he has led the creation of the Digital Archive of Antislavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions and the Digital Archive of Native American Petitions.
A tour de force of prodigious research and muscular analysis.
Carpenter persuasively demonstrates that petitions were critical to
the process of democratization in nineteenth-century North America.
Along the way, he sheds new light on a wide range of issues and
episodes, many of which have previously escaped the notice of
historians and political scientists. The book, quite simply, is
eye-opening.
*Alexander Keyssar, author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral
College?*
Democracy by Petition presents a magisterial view of an evolving
political practice in which individuals and groups across North
America seized the right to petition higher authorities for aid,
redress, protection, or access. With riveting examples and
clarifying analyses, Daniel Carpenter illuminates how Native
Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, Mexicans, French
Canadians, women of all backgrounds, and many more became agents of
political change, sharpening the possibility for real democracy by
means of an antiquated though often effective tool: the paper
prayer. A monumental achievement of political history, this book is
crucial reading for anyone seeking to learn how democratic
practices are forged through unexpected and ‘emergent’
politics.
*Tiya Miles, author of The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of
Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits*
In this landmark book, Daniel Carpenter demonstrates the essential
role that petitioning has played in the politics of
democratization. Drawing upon a massive data collection effort and
deep archival research, Carpenter offers a new way of thinking
about how the dialogue between government and citizens shapes
political development.
*Eric Schickler, author of Racial Realignment: The
Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965*
An astonishing piece of scholarship, such as comes along once in a
generation. Democracy by Petition urges us to reconsider what
democracy is, how it extends beyond electoral politics, and how
governance in North America actually works.
*Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The
United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age,
1865–1896*
Daniel Carpenter illuminates petitions as active agents of
democratization, harnessed by diverse and divergent groups across
North America—including Indigenous nations who refused removal and
Black abolitionists who refused containment by an emergent ‘settler
republic.’ As Democracy by Petition reveals, these efforts
refashioned the petition itself from a humble plea into an
instrument of political power.
*Lisa Brooks, author of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King
Philip’s War*
Possibly the most original work on democracy in 2021…Offers lessons
that transcend the American experience, because it allows us to
think about democracy and democratization as something far more
diverse than the package of the Western Consensus.
*Democracy Paradox*
Daniel Carpenter’s Democracy by Petition is an extraordinary tour
de force. In this extensively researched book, Carpenter places
petitions at the forefront of the development of democracy in North
America. He demonstrates how groups as distinct as French Canadians
in Lower Canada, Indigenous nations throughout the continent as
well as African Americans and women used petitions to seek redress
and promote political change. Carpenter's book reshapes our
understanding of the emergence of democracy in North America. It
foregrounds the role of a largely overlooked set of diverse civil
society actors and their novel political strategies in prompting
democratic development.
*Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award Selection Committee*
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