| The United States has always administered territorial governments and the primary entity entrusted with this authority is the United States Congress. This dissertation, using an American Political Development framework, seeks to uncover the variety of ways in which Congressional decision-making over territorial policy has shifted. The goal is to understand how the United States Congress worked toward establishing and maintaining an American Empire via the use of territorial policy. A variety of causal mechanisms causing are investigated, including the demographic targets of policy, partisan conflicts, changing norms and rules of Congress, pressures from other branches or the states, national security challenges, emerging technology, and the tensions in protecting minority rights.;This dissertation argues that there have been four eras of American territorial policy. During the Experimental Empire (1787-1861), the U.S. Congress awkwardly developed a system for territorial governance by adopting a tiered system that would slowly provide more autonomy to territorial residents. The Continental Empire (1850-1912) saw the desire for admitting states lessen. This was due to a number of factors including a slower pace of settlement in the arid mountain west, less desirable policy targets, such as Mormons in Utah and Catholic Hispanics in New Mexico, and a growing bitter partisanship over most political issues.;The Insular Empire (1898-1959) era emerged with the acquisition of a variety of overseas territories. Most of these new territories were already populated by non-white people, used to non-republican governments, which led Congress to treat them more paternalistically than they had most other territories. Finally, the Informal Empire (1960-current) no longer requires the American political system to acquire new lands, but enforces a cultural, military, economic, and political influence over much of the rest of the world.;This dissertation argues in the end that territorial policy has shifted and reflected various changes in American politics, both internal and external to the U.S. Congress which has operated to create and maintain an American empire throughout the country's history. The primary purpose of this project is to show how this has occurred through the use of territorial policy and how it operated during various periods of time and how and why it shifted. |
