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My purpose here is simple—if not particularly lofty. I intend to characterize in general terms the activities that we engage in when we do social science history research, to describe somewhat abstractly how we conduct inquiry in social science history. This examination of our scholarly activities is provoked by several convictions: First, the philosophy of science—even an epistemology of social science history to the extent that there is one—is by and large not helpful to the conduct of inquiry. Second, the efforts in philosophy (and elsewhere) to conceptualize the conduct of inquiry in philosophy using examples from the physical sciences seem especially inapplicable to social science history. Third, when we do become self-conscious about what we are doing, we concentrate on methods and techniques of data collection and analysis and we create the impression that our scholarly research is fully described by technical decisions and activities.

The conceptual meaning of and the empirical evidence for the nationalization of the American electorate is explored. Two conceptually distinct dimensions of nationalization are identified: nationlization in terms of a convergence in the level of partisan support across geographical subunits of the electorate, and nationalization in terms of a uniformity of response by geographical units to political forces. Empirical estimates for both types of nationalization are derived for the American electorate for the period from 1842 to 1970. Unlike previous scholars, we find no trend toward increasing nationalization of the vote. Possible reasons for this lack of nationalization of the vote are suggested.

This article first reviews the major directions which the spatial analysis of party systems has taken. An easily performed technique for dimensioning parties-in-the-electorate in a social space is then introduced and applied to fourteen Western European and Anglo-American party systems.