James W. Ceaser is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Theda Skocpol is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. Her previous works include the prize-winning States and Social Revolutions. Jack N. Rakove is William R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. Nancy L. Rosenblum is the Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government emerita at Harvard University and the author of numerous books, including Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America and (with Russell Muirhead) Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos.

• Foreword by Theda N. Skocpol 1. Foundational Concepts and American Political Development by James W. Ceaser 2. Can We Know a Foundational Idea When We See One? by Jack N. Rakove 3. Replacing Foundations with Staging: "Second-Story" Concepts and American Political Development by Nancy L. Rosenblum 4. What If God Was One of Us? The Challenges of Studying Foundational Political Concepts by Rogers M. Smith 5. Foundational Concepts Reconsidered by James W. Ceaser Notes About the Authors Index

James Ceaser has uncovered a profoundly vital aspect of American politics known by political leaders for centuries but ignored by the discipline of political science. His lecture on foundational concepts stimulated a vigorous debate on the ways students of politics should understand the role of ideas. The responses by Jack Rakove, Nancy Rosenblum, and Rogers Smith pose tough questions and Ceaser responds to their challenges in a wonderful exchange. Nature and History in American Political Development opens up an arena in the study of American politics that is new and especially important.