Research

Through studying American law enforcement, my research shows how changes in political economy and visions of democratic participation shape local political institutions and violence across the country.

My book project Gold, Coal, and Oysters: The Development of American Police, traces the debate over who can enforce law from the Constitutional Convention, to local city councils, to Congressional debates during the Civil War. Through an original dataset and archival research, I show the pace of police adoption across the United States in the 19th century and its opposition. Despite the fierce oppositon, I argue the sharp rise of police was the product of a haphazard coalition of aspiring imperialists, nativists, and anti-slavery Republicans that coalesced into a national party politics and, eventually, attempted to suture elite divisions post-Civil War.

My article, “Elites and Police: Looking Up in the Study of Police Origins”, which I am revising to resubmit at Studies in American Political Development, argues that police were introduced to manage the social cohesion of elites, rather than only the social lives of the poor. In doing so, local police forces presented a dramatic change for elites whose political contest could shift from the realm of private violence to legal electoral battles.