Lawrence C. Dodd is professor of political science at the University of Florida. He is the co-author of The Dynamics of American Politics, and is series editor for the Westview Press series Transforming American Politics. Calvin Jillson is associate professor of political science and director of the Keller centre for the Study of the First Amendment at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

• Foreword -- Conversations on the Study of American Politics: An Introduction -- Patterns of Political Change and Inquiry -- Patterns and Periodicity in American National Politics -- Pattern Recognition and "Doing" Political History: Art, Science, or Bootless Enterprise? -- Common Ground: History and Theories of American Politics -- Macroanalysis -- American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: Culture or Institutions? -- Liberalism and the Course of American Social Welfare Policy -- Macroeconomic Change and Political Transformation in the United States -- The Origins of Social Policy in the United States: A Polity-Centered Analysis -- Microanalysis -- Rational Choice Theory and the Study of American Politics -- The Social Psychology of Politics -- Contexts, Intermediaries, and Political Behavior -- Group Politics Reexamined: From Pluralism to Political Economy -- Linkage Processes -- Politics as Persuasion -- Beyond the Iconography of Order: Notes for a "New Institutionalism" -- Political Learning and Political Change: Understanding Development Across Time -- Conclusion -- Ideas, Interests, and Institutions