Scholarship in American political development focuses on "the causes, nature, and consequences of key transformative periods and central patterns in American political history.
"[3] Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, co-founders of the subfield's flagship journal, define American political development as the study of "durable shifts in governing authority" in the United States.
[4] The subfield emerged within American political science in the 1980s, alongside a general renewal of work in historical institutionalism, as an "insurgent movement" that sought to refocus attention on the study of historical American politics and to use such historical study to recast the study of contemporary political phenomena.
[6] However, scholarship in APD differs from political history in that the former's "primary concerns are analytical, conceptual, and theoretical rather than historical.
[3][8] Some major works in the subfield, as indicated by reading lists for comprehensive exams in graduate schools,[9][10][11] are as follows: