Abstract: The kinship between American political history and political science has been deeply imprinted in these two disciplines from the beginning. Historiography in Early American has always centerd around politics, and historians cooperated with political scientist to study historical politics. But as the discipline became scientific and professionalized, history and political science gradually separated. The renewed cooperation between the two is attributed to the widespread application of social science methods in both disciplines after World War II. But in the 1970s and 1980s, with the revival of narrative in history, political science also fell into trivial political fragments and moved towards post-behaviorism, history and political science once again parted ways. Despite all the division and integration, history has extensively borrowed the concepts and methods of political science; political science has also found that the development of its own discipline must not lose the help of history. This led to another attempt by the two disciplines to unite with each other after the 1980s and 1990s. New fields such as historical institutionalism and research on American political development emerged from the political science, striving to rediscover history; research directions such as policy history in history also borrowed extensively from political science's theories and methods. The interactive relationship between the two disciplines is a key clue to our understanding of American political history and the development of American historiography as a whole. This article will trace the entire process of the interaction between American political history and political science, and look forward to the possible directions for the development of American political history.

Keywords: political history, political science, American historiography, historical politics

Published on Historiography Bimonthly, Issue 4, 2024.