James Q. Wilson
University of California, Los Angeles
Pepperdine University
John J. DiIulio, Jr.
University of Pennsylvania
AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT
Institutions and Policies
ELEVENTH
EDITION
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston
New York
★
BRIEF CONTENTS
P A R T I
The American System
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
The Study of American Government
The Constitution 16
Federalism 48
American Political Culture 75
Civil Liberties 93
Civil Rights 121
2
P A R T I I
Opinions, Interests, and Organizations
7
8
9
10
11
12
Public Opinion 152
Political Participation 172
Political Parties 190
Elections and Campaigns 222
Interest Groups 258
The Media 286
P A R T I I I
Institutions of Government
13
14
15
16
313
Congress 314
The Presidency 361
The Bureaucracy 403
The Judiciary 431
P A R T I V
The Politics of Public Policy
17
18
19
20
21
151
461
The Policy-Making Process 462
Economic Policy 485
Social Welfare 506
Foreign and Military Policy 524
Environmental Policy 555
P A R T V
The Nature of American Democracy
22 Who Governs? To What Ends?
573
574
iii
★
CONTENTS
Preface xiii
About the Authors
P A R T
xvi
I
The American System
★1
1
The Study of American Government
What Is Political Power? 4
What Is Democracy? 6
Is Representative Democracy Best? 7
How Is Political Power Distributed? 9
Is Democracy Driven by Self-Interest? 10
What Explains Political Change? 11
The Nature of Politics 12
★2
The Constitution
16
The Problem of Liberty 17
The Colonial Mind 18
The Real Revolution 19
Weaknesses of the Confederation 21
The Constitutional Convention 22
The Lessons of Experience 22
The Framers 23
The Challenge 25
The Virginia Plan 25
The New Jersey Plan 25
The Compromise 26
The Constitution and Democracy 27
Key Principles 28
Government and Human Nature 29
The Constitution and Liberty 30
The Antifederalist View 31
Need for a Bill of Rights 35
The Constitution and Slavery 35
2
The Motives of the Framers 37
Economic Interests at the Convention 37
Economic Interests and Ratification 38
The Constitution and Equality 39
Constitutional Reform: Modern Views 40
Reducing the Separation of Powers 40
Making the System Less Democratic 42
Who Is Right? 45
★3
Federalism
48
Why Federalism Matters 49
Governmental Structure 51
Federalism: Good or Bad? 52
Increased Political Activity 53
The Founding 54
A Bold, New Plan 54
Elastic Language 55
The Debate on the Meaning of Federalism 56
The Supreme Court Speaks 56
Nullification 58
Dual Federalism 58
State Sovereignty 59
Federal-State Relations 61
Grants-in-Aid 61
Meeting National Needs 63
The Intergovernmental Lobby 64
Categorical Grants Versus Revenue Sharing 65
Rivalry Among the States 66
Federal Aid and Federal Control 66
Mandates 67
Conditions of Aid 68
A Devolution Revolution? 69
Congress and Federalism 71
v
vi
Contents
★4
American Political Culture
The Political Culture 76
The Political System 78
The Economic System 79
Comparing America with Other Nations
The Political System 80
The Economic System 82
The Civic Role of Religion 82
The Sources of Political Culture 83
The Culture War 85
Mistrust of Government 86
Political Tolerance 89
★5
Civil Liberties
80
Civil Rights
P A R T
121
The Black Predicament 122
The Campaign in the Courts 124
“Separate but Equal” 125
Can Separate Schools Be Equal? 125
I I
Opinions, Interests, and
Organizations 151
93
Culture and Civil Liberties 95
Rights in Conflict 95
Cultural Conflicts 96
Applying the Bill of Rights to the States 98
Interpreting and Applying the First Amendment
Speech and National Security 99
What Is Speech? 101
Libel 101
Obscenity 101
Symbolic Speech 103
Who Is a Person? 104
Church and State 106
The Free-Exercise Clause 106
The Establishment Clause 107
Crime and Due Process 109
The Exclusionary Rule 110
Search and Seizure 112
Confessions and Self-Incrimination 114
Relaxing the Exclusionary Rule 114
Terrorism and Civil Liberties 115
Searches Without Warrants 117
★6
Brown v. Board of Education 128
The Campaign in Congress 131
Racial Profiling 135
Women and Equal Rights 136
Sexual Harassment 138
Privacy and Sex 139
Affirmative Action 140
Equality of Results 140
Equality of Opportunity 141
Gays and the Constitution 146
75
★7
98
Public Opinion
152
Public Opinion and Democracy 153
What Is Public Opinion? 154
How Polling Works 155
How Opinions Differ 155
Political Socialization: The Family 156
Religion 157
The Gender Gap 158
Schooling and Information 159
Cleavages in Public Opinion 160
Social Class 161
Race and Ethnicity 161
Region 162
Political Ideology 163
Mass Ideologies: A Typology 164
Liberal and Conservative Elites 165
Political Elites, Public Opinion, and Public
Policy 167
★8
Political Participation
172
A Closer Look at Nonvoting 173
The Rise of the American Electorate 175
From State to Federal Control 175
Voter Turnout 179
Who Participates in Politics? 182
Forms of Participation 182
vii
Contents
The Causes of Participation 183
The Meaning of Participation Rates
★9
Political Parties
185
190
Parties—Here and Abroad 191
Political Culture 194
The Rise and Decline of the Political Party 194
The Founding 194
The Jacksonians 195
The Civil War and Sectionalism 196
The Era of Reform 197
Party Realignments 198
Party Decline 200
The National Party Structure Today 201
National Conventions 203
State and Local Parties 206
The Machine 207
Ideological Parties 208
Solidary Groups 209
Sponsored Parties 209
Personal Following 210
The Two-Party System 210
Minor Parties 213
Nominating a President 215
Are the Delegates Representative of the Voters? 216
Who Votes in Primaries? 217
Who Are the New Delegates? 217
Parties Versus Voters 218
★10
Elections and Campaigns
222
Campaigns, Then and Now 223
Better or Worse? 224
Here and Abroad 226
Presidential Versus Congressional Campaigns
Running for President 227
Getting Elected to Congress 229
Primary Versus General Campaigns 231
Two Kinds of Campaign Issues 233
Television, Debates, and Direct Mail 234
Money 239
The Sources of Campaign Money 239
Campaign Finance Rules 240
A Second Campaign Finance Law 241
New Sources of Money 246
Money and Winning 246
Who Decides the Election? 247
Party 247
Issues, Especially the Economy 249
The Campaign 250
Finding a Winning Coalition 251
The Effects of Elections on Policy 253
★11
Interest Groups
258
Explaining Proliferation 259
The Birth of Interest Groups 260
Kinds of Organizations 263
Institutional Interests 263
Membership Interests 264
Incentives to Join 265
The Influence of the Staff 268
Interest Groups and Social Movements 268
The Environmental Movement 269
The Feminist Movement 269
The Union Movement 270
Funds for Interest Groups 271
Foundation Grants 271
Federal Grants and Contracts 271
Direct Mail 272
The Problem of Bias 272
The Activities of Interest Groups 274
Information 274
Public Support: The Rise of the New Politics
Money and PACs 277
The “Revolving Door” 278
Trouble 279
Regulating Interest Groups 281
226
★12
The Media
286
Journalism in American Political History
The Party Press 288
The Popular Press 289
Magazines of Opinion 291
Electronic Journalism 291
The Internet 293
288
275
viii
Contents
The Structure of the Media 293
Degree of Competition 293
The National Media 294
Rules Governing the Media 296
Confidentiality of Sources 296
Regulating Broadcasting 297
Campaigning 298
Are the National Media Biased? 298
Government and the News 303
Prominence of the President 303
Coverage of Congress 303
Why Do We Have So Many News Leaks? 304
Sensationalism in the Media 305
Government Constraints on Journalists 307
P A R T
I I I
Institutions of Government
★13
Congress
313
314
Congress Versus Parliament 315
The Evolution of Congress 319
Who Is in Congress? 322
Sex and Race 322
Incumbency 324
Party 325
Do Members Represent Their Voters? 327
Representational View 327
Organizational View 328
Attitudinal View 329
A Polarized Congress 329
The Organization of Congress:
Parties and Caucuses 331
Party Organization of the Senate 332
Party Structure in the House 333
The Strength of Party Structures 335
Party Unity 336
Caucuses 337
The Organization of Congress: Committees
The Organization of Congress:
Staffs and Specialized Offices 342
338
Tasks of Staff Members 342
Staff Agencies 342
How a Bill Becomes Law 343
Introducing a Bill 343
Study by Committees 346
Floor Debate—The House 349
Floor Debate—The Senate 350
Methods of Voting 351
Reducing Power and Perks 352
The Post-9/11 Congress 354
★14
The Presidency
361
Presidents and Prime Ministers 362
Divided Government 364
Does Gridlock Matter? 365
Is Policy Gridlock Bad? 366
The Evolution of the Presidency 366
Concerns of the Founders 367
The Electoral College 367
The President’s Term of Office 368
The First Presidents 368
The Jacksonians 369
The Reemergence of Congress 370
The Powers of the President 373
The Office of the President 375
The White House Office 375
The Executive Office of the President 377
The Cabinet 377
Independent Agencies, Commissions,
and Judgeships 378
Who Gets Appointed 379
Presidential Character 381
The Power to Persuade 383
The Three Audiences 383
Popularity and Influence 384
The Decline in Popularity 385
The Power to Say No 388
Veto 388
Executive Privilege 389
Impoundment of Funds 390
Signing Statements 390
Contents
The President’s Program 391
Putting Together a Program 391
Attempts to Reorganize 393
Presidential Transition 395
The Vice President 395
Problems of Succession 396
Impeachment 397
How Powerful Is the President? 398
★15
The Bureaucracy
403
Distinctiveness of the American Bureaucracy 404
Proxy Government 405
The Growth of the Bureaucracy 406
The Appointment of Officials 406
A Service Role 407
A Change in Role 408
The Federal Bureaucracy Today 409
Recruitment and Retention 410
Personal Attributes 415
Do Bureaucrats Sabotage Their Political
Bosses? 416
Culture and Careers 417
Constraints 418
Agency Allies 420
Congressional Oversight 421
The Appropriations Committee and Legislative
Committees 421
The Legislative Veto 422
Congressional Investigations 423
Bureaucratic “Pathologies” 423
Reforming the Bureaucracy 425
★16
The Judiciary
431
The Development of the Federal Courts 433
National Supremacy and Slavery 435
Government and the Economy 437
Government and Political Liberty 438
The Revival of State Sovereignty 440
The Structure of the Federal Courts 440
Selecting Judges 441
The Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts 443
Getting to Court 446
Fee Shifting 447
Standing 447
Class-Action Suits 448
The Supreme Court in Action 449
The Power of the Federal Courts 451
The Power to Make Policy 451
Views of Judicial Activism 452
Legislation and the Courts 453
Checks on Judicial Power 454
Congress and the Courts 454
Public Opinion and the Courts 456
P A R T
I V
The Politics of Public Policy
★17
The Policy-Making Process
461
462
Setting the Agenda 463
The Legitimate Scope of Government Action 464
Action by the States 466
Making a Decision 467
Majoritarian Politics: Distributed Benefits,
Distributed Costs 469
Interest Group Politics: Concentrated Benefits,
Concentrated Costs 469
Client Politics: Concentrated Benefits, Distributed
Costs 470
Entrepreneurial Politics: Distributed Benefits,
Concentrated Costs 471
The Case of Business Regulation 472
Majoritarian Politics 473
Interest Group Politics 474
Client Politics 475
Entrepreneurial Politics 477
Perceptions, Beliefs, Interests, and Values 479
Deregulation 480
The Limits of Ideas 481
ix
x
Contents
★18
Economic Policy
485
How Reliable Are Projections About the Future? 487
The Politics of Economic Prosperity 487
What Politicians Try to Do 489
The Politics of Taxing and Spending 490
Economic Theories and Political Needs 491
Monetarism 491
Keynesianism 491
Planning 491
Supply-Side Tax Cuts 491
Ideology and Theory 492
“Reaganomics” 492
The Machinery of Economic Policy-Making 493
The Fed 494
Congress 495
Globalization 496
Spending Money 496
The Budget 497
Reducing Spending 498
Levying Taxes 499
The Rise of the Income Tax 500
★19
Social Welfare
506
Two Kinds of Welfare Programs 507
Social Welfare in the United States 509
Majoritarian Welfare Programs: Social Security
and Medicare 511
Reforming Majoritarian Welfare Programs 515
Client Welfare Programs: Aid to Families with
Dependent Children 517
Majoritarian Versus Client Politics 518
★20
Foreign and Military Policy
524
Kinds of Foreign Policy 526
The Constitutional and Legal Context 527
Presidential Box Score 527
Evaluating the Power of the President 529
Checks on Presidential Power 531
The Machinery of Foreign Policy 532
Foreign Policy and Public Opinion 534
Backing the President 535
Mass Versus Elite Opinion 536
Cleavages Among Foreign Policy Elites 537
How a Worldview Shapes Foreign Policy 537
Political Polarization 540
The Use of Military Force 541
War in Iraq 542
The Defense Budget 543
Total Spending 543
What Do We Get with Our Money? 545
The Structure of Defense Decision Making 549
Joint Chiefs of Staff 549
The Services 550
The Chain of Command 550
The New Problem of Terrorism 550
★21
Environmental Policy
555
The American Context 557
Entrepreneurial Politics: Global Warming 559
Majoritarian Politics: Pollution from
Automobiles 560
Interest Group Politics: Acid Rain 562
Client Politics: Agricultural Pesticides 564
The Environmental Uncertainties 566
The Results 568
P A R T
V
The Nature of American Democracy
★22
Who Governs? To What Ends?
573
574
Restraints on the Growth of Government 575
Relaxing the Restraints 576
The Old System 577
The New System 577
Consequences of Activist Government 580
The Influence of Structure 582
The Influence of Ideas 583
Contents
Appendixes A1
The Declaration of Independence A1
The Constitution of the United States A4
The Federalist No. 10 A21
The Federalist No. 51 A26
Presidents and Congresses, 1789-2006 A30
Glossary
G1
Notes
N1
Index
I1
Photo Credits
C1
xi
P
A
R
T
The American
System
I
In framing a government
which is to be administered
by men over men, the great
difficulty lies in this: You must
first enable the government to
control the governed; and in
the next place oblige it to
control itself.
★ Federalist No. 51
1
C H A P T E R
1
The Study of
American
Government
What Is Political Power?
What Is Democracy?
Is Representative Democracy Best?
How Is Power Distributed?
Is Democracy Driven by Self-Interest?
What Explains Political Change?
The Nature of Politics
2
★
WHO GOVERNS?
1. How is political power actually distributed in America?
2. What explains major political
change?
★
T O W H AT E N D S ?
1. What value or values matter most in
American democracy?
2. Are trade-offs among political purposes inevitable?
A
fter the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, it took the national government many years to implement just a fraction of the bipartisan homeland security policies and programs that nearly everybody favored (such as deploying
super-high-tech bomb-detection devices at airports and tightening security for cargo
ships, among numerous others). Indeed, a half-decade after the attacks, the failure to act
expeditiously on national directives to reinforce vulnerable-to-attack levees and dams figured in the devastation wrought when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast.
What was behind these historic failures? The answer, you may be surprised to learn,
is the same thing that was behind the government’s historic achievements in reducing
poverty among the elderly, building the interstate highway system, improving public
health, and rebuilding war-torn Europe. The answer is that sometimes things get done
even when disunity reigns and power is divided between the parties.
The answer, in a word, is politics.
Politics exists in part because people normally differ about two things: who should
govern, and the ends toward which they should work.
We want to know the answer to the first question because we believe that those who
rule—their personalities and beliefs, their virtues and vices—will affect what they do to
and for us. Many people think they already know the answer to the question, and they
are prepared to talk and vote on that basis. That is their right, and the opinions they express may be correct. But they may also be wrong. Indeed, many of these opinions must
be wrong because they are in conflict. When asked, “Who governs?” some people will
say “the unions” and some will say “big business”; others will say “the politicians,” “the
people,” or “the special interests.” Still others will say “Wall Street,” “the military,”
“crackpot liberals,” “the media,” “the bureaucrats,” or “white males.” Not all these answers can be correct—at least not all of the time.
The answer to the second question is important because it tells us how government
affects our lives. We want to know not only who governs, but what difference it makes
who governs. In our day-to-day lives we may not think government makes much difference at all. In one sense that is right, because our most pressing personal concerns—
work, play, love, family, health—are essentially private matters on which government
touches but slightly. But in a larger and longer perspective government makes a substantial difference. Consider: in 1935, 96 percent of all American families paid no federal income tax, and for the 4 percent or so who did pay, the average rate was only about
4 percent of their incomes. Today almost all families pay federal payroll taxes, and the
average rate is 21 percent of their incomes. Or consider: in 1960, in many parts of the
country, African Americans could ride only in the backs of buses, had to use washrooms
and drinking fountains that were labeled “colored,” and could not be served in most public restaurants. Such restrictions have been almost eliminated, in large part because of
decisions by the federal government.
3
4
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
It is important to bear in mind that we wish to answer two different questions, and not two versions of
the same question. You cannot always predict what
goals government will establish knowing only who
governs, nor can you always tell who governs by
knowing what activities government undertakes. Most
people holding national political office are middleclass, middle-aged, white Protestant males, but we
cannot then conclude that the government will adopt
only policies that are to the narrow advantage of the
middle class, the middle-aged, whites, Protestants,
or men. If we thought that, we would be at a loss
to explain why the rich are taxed more heavily than
the poor, why the War on Poverty was declared, why
constitutional amendments giving rights to African
Americans and women passed Congress by large
majorities, or why Catholics and Jews have been appointed to so many important governmental posts.
This book is chiefly devoted to answering the
question, Who governs? It is written in the belief that
this question cannot be answered without looking at
how government makes—or fails to make—decisions
about a large variety of concrete issues. Thus in this
book we shall inspect government policies to see
what individuals, groups, and institutions seem to
exert the greatest power in the continuous struggle to
define the purposes of government. We shall see that
power and purpose are inextricably intertwined.
★ What Is Political Power?
By power we mean the ability of one person to get
another person to act in accordance with the first
person’s intentions. Sometimes an exercise of power
is obvious, as when the president tells the air force
that it cannot build a new bomber
or orders soldiers into combat in a
power The ability
foreign land. Some claim it is exerof one person to get
cised in subtle ways that may not
another person to
act in accordance
be evident even to the participants,
with the first
as when the president’s junior
person’s intentions.
speechwriters, reflecting their own
authority The right
evolving views, adopt a new tone
to use power.
when writing for their boss about
controversial social issues like
abortion. The speechwriters may not think they are
using power—after all, they are the president’s subordinates and may rarely see him face-to-face. But if the
president lets their words exit his mouth in public,
they have used power.
Power is found in all human relationships, but we
shall be concerned here only with power as it is used
to affect who will hold government office and how
government will behave. This fails to take into account many important things. If a corporation closes
a factory in a small town where it was the major employer, it is using power in ways that affect deeply the
lives of people. When a university refuses to admit a
student or a medical society refuses to license a
would-be physician, it is also using power. But to explain how all these things happen would be tantamount to explaining how society as a whole, and in
all its particulars, operates. We limit our view here to
government, and chiefly to the American federal government. However, we shall repeatedly pay special attention to how things once thought to be “private”
matters become “public”—that is, how they manage
to become objects of governmental action. Indeed,
one of the most striking transformations of American politics has been the extent to which, in recent
decades, almost every aspect of human life has found
its way onto the governmental agenda. In the 1950s
the federal government would have displayed no interest in a factory closing its doors, a university refusing an applicant, or a profession not accrediting a
member. Now government actions can and do affect
all these things.
People who exercise political power may or may
not have the authority to do so. By authority we
mean the right to use power. The exercise of rightful
power—that is, of authority—is ordinarily easier
than the exercise of power that is not supported by
any persuasive claim of right. We accept decisions, often without question, if they are made by people who
we believe have the right to make them; we may bow
to naked power because we cannot resist it, but by
our recalcitrance or our resentment we put the users
of naked power to greater trouble than the wielders of
authority. In this book we will on occasion speak of
“formal authority.” By this we mean that the right to
exercise power is vested in a governmental office. A
president, a senator, and a federal judge have formal
authority to take certain actions.
What makes power rightful varies from time to
time and from country to country. In the United States
we usually say that a person has political authority if
his or her right to act in a certain way is conferred by
What Is Political Power?
5
Government’s Greatest Achievements: A Top Ten List
Based on a survey of 450 history and political science
professors and an analysis of over 500 public
statutes, here is one list of the government’s top ten
post-1950 achievements.
10. Promoted financial security in retirement
9. Reduced the federal budget deficit
8. Increased access to health care for older
Americans
7. Strengthened the nation’s highway system
6. Ensured safe food and drinking water
5. Reduced workplace discrimination
4. Reduced disease
a law or by a state or national constitution. But what
makes a law or constitution a source of right? That is
the question of legitimacy. In the United States the
Constitution today is widely, if not unanimously, accepted as a source of legitimate authority, but that
was not always the case.
Much of American political history has been a
struggle over what constitutes legitimate authority.
The Constitutional Convention in 1787 was an effort
to see whether a new, more powerful federal government could be made legitimate; the succeeding administrations of George Washington, John Adams,
and Thomas Jefferson were in large measure preoccupied with disputes over the kinds of decisions that
were legitimate for the federal government to make.
The Civil War was a bloody struggle over the legitimacy of the federal union; the New Deal of Franklin
Roosevelt was hotly debated by those who disagreed
over whether it was legitimate for the federal government to intervene deeply in the economy. In our own
day, even many citizens who take the same view on a
hot-button question like gay marriage disagree over
whether it is legitimate to address the issue through
an amendment to the Constitution that bans it nationally or whether the matter ought to be left for
each state to decide.
On one thing, however, virtually all Americans seem
to agree: no exercise of political power by government
3. Promoted equal access to public accommodations
2. Expanded the right to vote
1. Rebuilt Europe after World War II
As you read this book and study American government, ponder what might be on the top ten list for
the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
Source: Adapted from Paul C. Light, “Government’s Greatest Achievements
of the Past Half Century,” Reform Watch Brief #2, Brookings Institution,
Washington, D.C., November 2000. Reprinted by permission of the Brookings Institution.
at any level is legitimate if it is not in some sense democratic. That was hardly always the prevailing view.
In 1787, as the Constitution was
being debated, Alexander Hamillegitimacy Political
ton worried that the new govauthority conferred by
ernment he helped create might
law or by a state or
be too democratic, while George
national constitution.
Mason, who refused to sign the
To enter the United States, foreigners must now
produce a photograph and fingerprints.
6
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
icy are both worthwhile questions. The former question goes beyond the scope of this book, but we will
touch upon the latter question later in the text.
★ What Is Democracy?
An Iraqi woman shows her purple finger indicating
that she has voted in 2005, that country’s first free
election in half a century.
Constitution, worried that it was not democratic
enough. Today, however, almost everyone believes that
democratic government is the only
proper kind. Most people believe
democracy The
that American government is demrule of the many.
ocratic; some believe that other
direct or
institutions of public life—schools,
participatory
universities, corporations, trade
democracy A
government in which
unions, churches—should also be
all or most citizens
run on democratic principles if they
participate directly.
are to be legitimate; and some insist
representative
that promoting democracy abroad
democracy A
ought to be a primary purpose of
government in which
U.S. foreign policy.
leaders make
Whether democracy is the best
decisions by winning
way of governing all institutions
a competitive
and whether promoting democracy
struggle for the
either has been or ought to be a
popular vote.
major objective of U.S. foreign pol-
Democracy is a word with at least two different
meanings. First, the term democracy is used to describe those regimes that come as close as possible to
Aristotle’s definition—the “rule of the many.”1 A government is democratic if all, or most, of its citizens
participate directly in either holding office or making
policy. This is often called direct or participatory
democracy. In Aristotle’s time—Greece in the fourth
century B.C.—such a government was possible.
The Greek city-state, or polis, was quite small, and
within it citizenship was extended to all free adult
male property holders. (Slaves, women, minors, and
those without property were excluded from participation in government.) In more recent times the New
England town meeting approximates the Aristotelian
ideal. In such a meeting the adult citizens of a community gather once or twice a year to vote directly on
all major issues and expenditures of the town. As
towns have become larger and issues more complicated, many town governments have abandoned the
pure town meeting in favor of either the representative town meeting (in which a large number of
elected representatives, perhaps two or three hundred, meet to vote on town affairs) or representative
government (in which a small number of elected city
councilors make decisions).
The second definition of democracy is the principle of governance of most nations that are called
democratic. It was most concisely stated by the economist Joseph Schumpeter: “The democratic method
is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals [that is, leaders]
acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”2 Sometimes this
method is called, approvingly, representative democracy; at other times it is referred to, disapprovingly, as
the elitist theory of democracy. It is justified by one
or both of two arguments: First, it is impractical, owing to limits of time, information, energy, interest,
and expertise, for the people to decide on public
policy, but it is not impractical to expect them to
make reasonable choices among competing leader-
Is Representative Democracy Best?
Can a Democracy Fight a War Against Terrorists?
On September 11, 2001, a date that will forevermore
be referred to as 9/11, war came to the United States
when terrorists crashed four hijacked airliners, filled
with passengers, into the two towers of the World
Trade Center in New York City, into the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., and into some empty land in Pennsylvania. About three thousand people were killed.
How can a democratic nation respond to a war
waged, not by an enemy nation, but by a loose collection of terrorists with cells in many parts of the
world? America’s new war against terrorism is much
more difficult to fight than the one against Nazi Germany and the Japanese warlords in 1941.
● How can we reorganize the military so that it can
respond swiftly and effectively against small targets?
● Is it constitutional to try captured terrorists in military tribunals?
● How much new law enforcement authority should
be given to police and investigative agencies?
● Should America invade nations that support terrorists?
In the years ahead, these questions will raise profound challenges for American democracy.
ship groups. Second, some people (including, as we
shall see in the next chapter, many of the Framers of
the Constitution) believe that direct democracy is
likely to lead to bad decisions, because people often
decide large issues on the basis of fleeting passions
and in response to popular demagogues. This concern about direct democracy persists today, as can be
seen from the statements of leaders who do not like
what voters have decided. For example, in 2000 voters
in Michigan overwhelmingly rejected a referendum
that would have increased public funding for private
schools. Politicians who opposed the defeated referendum spoke approvingly of the “will of the people,”
but politicians who favored it spoke disdainfully of
“mass misunderstanding.”
Americans felt powerfully connected to their fellow
citizens in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
★ Is Representative
Democracy Best?
Whenever the word democracy is used alone in this
book, it will have the meaning Schumpeter gave it. As
we discuss in the next chapter, the men who wrote the
Constitution did not use the word democracy in that
document. They wrote instead of a “republican form
of government,” but by that they meant what we call
“representative democracy.” Whenever we refer to
that form of democracy involving the direct participation of all or most citizens, we shall use the term direct or participatory democracy.
For representative government to work, there must,
of course, be an opportunity for genuine leadership
7
8
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
competition. This requires in turn that individuals
and parties be able to run for office, that communication (through speeches or the press, and in meetings)
be free, and that the voters perceive that a meaningful
choice exists. Many questions still remain to be answered. For instance: How many offices should be
elective and how many appointive? How many candidates or parties can exist before the choices become
hopelessly confused? Where will the money come
from to finance electoral campaigns? There is more
than one answer to such questions. In some European
democracies, for example, very few offices—often just
those in the national or local legislature—are elective,
and much of the money for campaigning for these
offices comes from the government. In the United
States many offices—executive and judicial as well as
legislative—are elective, and most of the money the
candidates use for campaigning comes from industry, labor unions, and private individuals.
Some people have argued that the virtues of direct
or participatory democracy can and should be reclaimed even in a modern, complex society. This can
be done either by allowing individual neighborhoods
in big cities to govern themselves (community control) or by requiring those affected by some government program to participate in its formulation
(citizen participation). In many states a measure of
direct democracy exists when voters can decide on
referendum issues—that is, policy choices that appear on the ballot. The proponents of direct democracy defend it as the only way to ensure that the “will
of the people” prevails.
The Framers of the Constitution did not think
that the “will of the people” was synonymous with
the “common interest” or the “public good.” They
strongly favored representative democracy over direct democracy. They believed that government should
mediate, not mirror, popular views, and that elected
officials should represent, not register, majority sentiments. They supposed that most citizens did not have
the time, information, interest, and expertise to make
reasonable choices among competing policy positions.
They suspected that even highly educated people could
be manipulated by demagogic leaders who played on
their fears and prejudices. They granted that representative democracy often proceeds slowly and prevents sweeping changes in policy, but they cautioned
that a government capable of doing great good quickly
also can do great harm quickly. They agreed that ma-
jority opinion should figure in the enactment of
many or most government policies, but they insisted
that the protection of civil rights and civil liberties—
the right to a fair trial; the freedom of speech, press,
and religion; or the right to vote itself—ought never
to hinge on a popular vote. Above all, they embraced
representative democracy because they saw it as a way
of minimizing the chances that power would be
abused either by a tyrannical popular majority or by
self-serving officeholders.
Clearly, the Framers of the Constitution thought
that representative democracy was best, but were they
right? Any answer must address two related questions:
first, even if the Framers’ assumptions about direct
democracy being impractical and likely to lead to bad
decisions were correct for their time, are they equally
correct in ours?; and, second, should American political history be read more nearly to justify or to jettison the Framers’ faith that representative democracy
would help to protect minority rights and prevent
politicians from using public offices for private gains?
The first question asks whether people today have
more time, information, energy, interest, and expertise, to gather together for collective decision making than they did when the Constitution was adopted.
This question is a bit tricky. For instance, people
today do have unprecedented access to information
about everything including government. Lone individuals, grassroots groups, and lobbying organizations all now use that information in ways that plainly
affect politics. One measure: in the mid-1990s, Congress still received nearly four times more postal or
“snail” mail than electronic or e-mail; but, today, each
year Congress receives ten times more e-mail
(roughly 200 million messages) than regular mail,
and about five times more mail of all kinds than it did
just a decade or so ago.3
However, has direct, high-tech political networking
brought America any closer to direct democracy or increased the citizenry’s engagement in or satisfaction
with government? Not really. Most people, especially
young adults, still do not consume much political
news, whether via the Internet, television, or newspapers. Nor, as we will see in Chapter 8, are most people
very active in political affairs. Many lawmakers’ offices use spam filters to block messages that come
from outside their states or districts, and they pay little attention to computer-generated mass mailings,
print or electronic.4 As was true in the pre-Internet
How Is Political Power Distributed?
era, today few citizens feel close to government or
have great confidence in its leaders.
★ How Is Political Power
Distributed?
The second question asks how political power has actually been distributed in America’s representative
democracy. Scholars differ in their interpretations of
the American political experience. Where some see a
steady march of democracy, others see no such thing;
where some emphasize how voting and other rights
have been steadily expanded, others stress how they
were denied to so many for so long, and so forth.
Short of attempting to reconcile these competing historical interpretations, let us step back now for a moment to our definition of representative democracy
and four competing views about how political power
has been distributed in America.
Representative democracy is defined as any system
of government in which leaders are authorized to make
decisions—and thereby to wield political power—by
winning a competitive struggle for the popular vote.
It is obvious then that very different sets of hands can
control political power, depending on what kinds of
people can become leaders, how the struggle for votes
is carried on, how much freedom to act is given to
those who win the struggle, and what other sorts of
influence (besides the desire for popular approval)
affect the leaders’ actions.
In some cases the leaders will be so sharply constrained by what most people want that the actions of
officeholders will follow the preferences of citizens
very closely. We shall call such cases examples of majoritarian politics. In this case elected officials are the
delegates of the people, acting as the people (or a majority of them) would act were the matter put to a
popular vote. The issues handled in a majoritarian
fashion can be only those that are sufficiently important to command the attention of most citizens, sufficiently clear to elicit an informed opinion from
citizens, and sufficiently feasible to address so that
what citizens want done can in fact be done.
When circumstances do not permit majoritarian
decision-making, then some group of officials will
have to act without knowing (and perhaps without
caring) exactly what people want. Indeed, even on issues that do evoke a clear opinion from a majority of
citizens, the shaping of the details of a policy will reflect the views of those people who are sufficiently
motivated to go to the trouble of becoming active
participants in policy-making. These active participants usually will be a small, and probably an unrepresentative, minority. Thus the actual distribution of
political power, even in a democracy, will depend importantly on the composition of the political elites
who are actually involved in the struggles over policy.
By elite we mean an identifiable group of persons
who possess a disproportionate share of some valued
resource—in this case, political power.
There are at least four different schools of thought
about political elites and how power has actually
been distributed in America’s representative democracy: Marxist, power elite, bureaucratic, and pluralist.
The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883)
was the founder of modern socialist thought. There
are many variants of Marxist ideology. Essentially,
however, the Marxist view is that government, even if
democratic in form, is merely a reflection of underlying economic forces.5 Marxists hold that in modern
societies, two economic classes contend for power—
capitalists (business owners or the “bourgeoise”) and
workers (laborers or the “proletariat”). Whichever class
dominates the economy also controls the government,
which is, they reckon, nothing more than a piece of
machinery designed to express and give legal effect to
underlying class interests. In the United States, Marxists maintain, capitalists (especially “big business” and
today’s “multinational corporations” headquartered
in America) have generally dominated the economy and hence the
elite Persons who
government.
possess a
A second theory, closely related
disproportionate
to the first, was started by C. Wright
share of some valued
Mills, a famous mid-twentiethresource, like money
or power.
century American sociologist. To
him, a coalition of three groups—
Marxist view View
that the government
corporate leaders, top military ofis dominated by
ficers, and a handful of elected
capitalists.
officials—dominates politics and
6 Today, some add to
power elite view
government.
View that the
Mills’s triumvirate major commugovernment is
nications media chiefs, top labor
dominated by a few
union officials, the heads of varitop leaders, most of
ous special-interest groups, and
whom are outside of
others. But the essential power
government.
elite view is the same: American
9
10
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
democracy is actually dominated by a few top leaders,
most of whom are outside of government and enjoy
great advantages in wealth, status, or organizational
position.
The third theory was shaped by the German
scholar, Max Weber (1864–1920), a founder of sociology. To Weber, the dominant social and political
reality of modern times was that all institutions, governmental and nongovernmental, have fallen under
the control of large bureaucracies whose expertise
and competence are essential to the management of
contemporary affairs.7 Capitalists or workers may
come to power (as in the Marxist view), or coalitions
of well-positioned elites may dominate government
and the legislative process (as in the power elite view),
but the government they create and the laws they enact will be dominated in either case by bureaucrats
who staff and operate the government on a daily basis. This bureaucratic view suggests that power is
mainly in the hands, not of American democracy’s
elected representatives, but in those of its appointed
officials, career government workers who, though
they may be virtually invisible to most average citizens
and unknown to most elites, nonetheless exercise vast power by debureaucratic view
ciding how to translate public laws
View that the
into administrative actions. In this
government is
view, government bureaucrats do
dominated by
not merely implement public poliappointed officials.
cies, they effectively “make” them as
pluralist view The
suits their own ideas and interests.
belief that
competition among
Fourth is the pluralist view. It
all affected interests
has no single intellectual parent,
shapes public policy.
but it has many followers in contemporary political science and in
journalism. Pluralists acknowledge that big businesses,
cozy elites, or career bureaucrats may dominate on
some issues, but stress that political resources, such as
money, prestige, expertise, organizational position,
and access to the mass media, are so widely scattered
in American society that no single elite has anything
like a monopoly on them.8 Furthermore, pluralists
point out, in America, there are so many governmental institutions in which power may be exercised—city,
state, and federal governments and, within these, the
offices of mayors, managers, legislators, governors,
presidents, judges, bureaucrats—that no single group,
even if it had many political resources, could dominate most, or even much, of the political process. Instead, many policies are the outcome of a complex
pattern of political haggling, innumerable compromises, and shifting alliances. What government does
is affected to varying degrees not only by competing
groups of elites inside or outside government but by
mass public opinion as well.
Pluralists do not go so far as to argue that political
resources are distributed equally—that would be
tantamount to saying that all decisions are made on a
majoritarian basis. But pluralists do maintain that
political resources nonetheless remain sufficiently divided among such different kinds of elites (business
people, politicians, union leaders, journalists, bureaucrats, professors, environmentalists, lawyers, and
whomever else) that all, or almost all, relevant interests
have a chance to affect the outcome of decisions. Not
only are the elites divided; they are also responsive to
their followers’ interests, and thus they provide representation to almost all citizens affected by a policy.
★ Is Democracy Driven by
Self-Interest?
Of the four views of how political power has been
distributed in the United States, the pluralist view
does the most to reassure one that America has been,
and continues to be, a democracy in more than name
only. But the pluralist view, not less than the other
three, may lead some people to the cynical conclusion
that, whichever view is correct, politics is a self-seeking
enterprise in which everybody is out for personal
gain. Though there is surely plenty of self-interest
among political elites (at least as much as there is
among college or high school students!), it does not
necessarily follow that the resulting policies will be
wholly self-serving. Nor does it follow that democracy itself is driven mainly or solely by people’s baser
motives or selfish desires.
For one thing, a policy may be good or bad independent of the motives of the person who decided it,
just as a product sold on the market may be useful or
useless regardless of the profit-seeking or wage-seeking
motives of those who produced it. For another thing,
the self-interest of individuals is often an incomplete
guide to their actions. People must frequently choose
between two courses of action, neither of which has
an obvious “payoff ” to them. We caution against the
cynical explanation of politics that Americans seem
especially prone to adopt. Alexis de Tocqueville, the
French author of a perceptive account of American
What Explains Political Change?
life and politics in the early nineteenth century, noticed this trait among us.
Americans . . . are fond of explaining almost all
the actions of their lives by the principle of selfinterest rightly understood…. In this respect I
think they frequently fail to do themselves justice; for in the United States as well as elsewhere
people are sometimes seen to give way to those
disinterested and spontaneous impulses that
are natural to man; but the Americans seldom
admit that they yield to emotions of this kind;
they are more anxious to do honor to their philosophy than to themselves.9
The belief that people will usually act on the basis
of their self-interest, narrowly defined, is a theory to
be tested, not an assumption to be made. Sometimes,
as happened in New York City on September 11,
2001, elected officials, government workers, and average citizens behave in ways that plainly transcend
personal or professional self-interest. There are
countless other far less dramatic but still telling examples of people acting publicly in ways that seem
anything but self-interested. To understand why people behave as they do, it is not enough to know their
incomes or their jobs; one must also know something
about their attitudes, their allies, and the temper of
the times. In short, political preferences cannot invariably be predicted simply by knowing economic
or organizational position.
Yet another reason to resist interpreting American
democracy as if it were always and everywhere driven
by narrowly self-interested individuals and groups
is that many of the most important political happenings in U.S. history—the revolutionary movement
of the 1770s and 1780s, the battle for civil rights in the
1950s and 1960s, to name just two—were led against
long odds by people who risked much knowing that
they might not succeed and suspecting that, even if
they did succeed, generations might pass before their
efforts truly benefited anyone. As we shall see, selfinterest figures mightily in politics, but so do ideas
about the common good and public-spirited behavior.
★ What Explains Political
Change?
When we see American democracy from the perspective of the past, we will find it hard to accept as
generally true any simple interpretation of politics.
People leave their homes after Hurricane Katrina hit
New Orleans in August 2005.
Economic interests, powerful elites, entrenched bureaucrats, competing pressure groups, and morally
impassioned individuals have all played a part in
shaping our government and its policies. But the
great shifts in the character of our government—
its size, scope, institutional arrangements, and the direction of its policies—have reflected complex and
sometimes sudden changes in elite or mass beliefs
about what government is supposed to do.
In the 1920s it was widely assumed that the federal
government would play a small role in our lives.
From the 1930s through the 1970s it was generally
believed that the federal government would try to
solve whatever social or economic problem existed.
From 1981 through 1988 the administration of Ronald
Reagan sought to reverse that assumption and to cut
back on the taxes Washington levied, the money it
spent, and the regulations it imposed. It is clear that
no simple theory of politics is likely to explain both
the growth of federal power after 1932 and the effort
to cut back on that power starting in 1981. Every student of politics sooner or later learns that the hardest
things to explain are usually the most important ones.
Take the case of foreign affairs. During certain periods in our history we have taken an active interest
in the outside world—at the time the nation was
founded, when France and England seemed to have it
in their power to determine whether or not America
would survive as a nation; in the 1840s, when we
sought to expand the nation into areas where Mexico
and Canada had claims; in the late 1890s, when many
leaders believed we had an obligation to acquire an
overseas empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific; and
11
12
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
in the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, when we
openly accepted the role of the world’s police officer.
At other times America has looked inward, spurning
opportunities for expansion and virtually ignoring
events that in other periods would have been a cause
for war, or at least mobilization. Today, America seems
to be looking outward once again, spurred, on the
one side, by unprecedented terrorist attacks against the
country and, on the other side, by historic opportunities to make new friends with old foreign foes.
Deep-seated beliefs, major economic developments,
and widely shared (or competing) opinions about
what constitutes the dominant political problem of
the time shape the nature of day-to-day political conflict. What this means is that, in any broad historical
or comparative perspective, politics is not just about
“who gets what,” though that is part of the story. It
is about how people, or elites claiming to speak for
people, define the public interest. Lest one think that
such definitions are mere window dressing, signifying nothing of importance, bear in mind that on occasion men and women have been prepared to fight
and die for one definition or another. Suppose you
had been alive in 1861. Do you think you would have
viewed slavery as a matter of gains and losses, costs
and benefits, winners and losers? Some people did.
Or do you think you would have been willing to fight
to abolish or preserve it? Many others did just that.
The differences in these ways of thinking about such
an issue are at least as important as how institutions
are organized or elections conducted.
★ The Nature of Politics
Ideally, political scientists ought to be able to give
clear answers, amply supported by evidence, to the
questions we have posed about American democracy,
starting with “who governs?” In reality they can (at
best) give partial, contingent, and controversial answers. The reason is to be found in the nature of our
subject. Unlike economists, who assume that people
have more or less stable preferences and can compare
ways of satisfying those preferences by looking at the
relative prices of various goods and services, political
scientists are interested in how preferences are formed,
especially for those kinds of services, such as national
defense or pollution control, that cannot be evaluated chiefly in terms of monetary costs.
Understanding preferences is vital to understanding power. Who did what in government is not hard
to find out, but who wielded power—that is, who made
a difference in the outcome and for what reason—is
much harder to discover. Power is a word that conjures up images of deals, bribes, power plays, and armtwisting. In fact, most power exists because of shared
understanding, common friendships, communal or organizational loyalties, and different degrees of prestige. These are hard to identify and almost impossible
to quantify.
Nor can the distribution of political power be inferred simply by knowing what laws are on the books
or what administrative actions have been taken. The
enactment of a consumer protection law does not
mean that consumers are powerful, any more than
the absence of such a law means that corporations are
powerful. The passage of such a law could reflect an
aroused public opinion, the lobbying of a small group
claiming to speak for consumers, the ambitions of a
senator, or the intrigues of one business firm seeking
to gain a competitive advantage over another. A close
analysis of what the law entails and how it was passed
and administered is necessary before much of anything can be said.
This book will avoid sweeping claims that we have
an “imperial” presidency (or an impotent one), an “obstructionist” Congress (or an innovative one), or “captured” regulatory agencies. Such labels do an injustice
to the different roles that presidents, members of
Congress, and administrators play in different kinds
of issues and in different historical periods.
The view taken in this book is that judgments about
institutions and interests can be made only after one
has seen how they behave on a variety of important
issues or potential issues, such as economic policy,
the regulation of business, social welfare, civil rights
and liberties, and foreign and military affairs. The policies adopted or blocked, the groups heeded or ignored,
the values embraced or rejected—these constitute the
raw material out of which one can fashion an answer
to the central questions we have asked: Who governs?
and To what ends?
The way in which our institutions of government
handle social welfare, for example, differs from the
way other democratic nations handle it, and it differs
as well from the way our own institutions once treated
it. The description of our institutions in Part III will
therefore include not only an account of how they
work today but also a brief historical background on
their workings and a comparison with similar institutions in other countries. There is a tendency to assume that how we do things today is the only way
The Nature of Politics
13
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
MEMORANDUM
To: Governor Steve Finore
From: Edward Heron, chief policy adviser
Subject: Initiative Repeal
You have supported several successful initiatives
(life imprisonment for thrice-convicted violent
felons, property tax limits), but you have never
publicly stated a view on the initiative itself, and
the repeal proposal will probably surface during
tomorrow’s press briefing.
Legal and Policy Experts Call
for a Ban on Ballot Initiatives
December 11
SACRAMENTO, CA
A report released yesterday and signed by
more than 100 law
and public policy professors statewide urges
that the state’s constitution be amended to ban legislation by
initiative. The initiative allows state voters to place legislative
measures directly on
the ballot by getting enough signatures. The
initiative “has led
to disastrous policy decisions on taxes, crim
e, and other issues,”
the report declared . . .
Arguments for a ban:
1. Ours is a representative, not a direct, democracy in which voters elect leaders and
elected leaders make policy decisions subject to review by the courts.
2. Voters are often neither rational nor respectful of constitutional rights. For
example, many people demand both lower taxes and more government services,
and polls find that most voters would prohibit people with certain views from
speaking and deprive all persons accused of a violent crime from getting out on
bail while awaiting trial.
3. Over the past 100 years about 800 statewide ballot initiatives have been passed in
24 states. Rather than giving power to the people, special-interest groups have
spent billions of dollars manipulating voters to pass initiatives that enrich or
benefit them, not the public at large.
Arguments against a ban:
1. When elected officials fail to respond to persistent public majorities favoring
tougher crime measures, lower property taxes, and other popular concerns, direct
democracy via the initiative is legitimate, and the courts can still review the law.
2. More Americans than ever have college degrees and easy access to information
about public affairs. Studies find that most average citizens are able to figure out
which candidates, parties, or advocacy groups come closest to supporting their
own economic interests and personal values.
3. All told, the 24 states that passed 35 laws by initiative also passed more than
14,000 laws by the regular legislative process (out of more than 70,000 bills they
considered). Studies find that special-interest groups are severely limited in their
ability to pass new laws by initiative, while citizens’ groups with broad-based
public support are behind most initiatives that pass.
Your decision:
Favor ban
Oppose ban
14
Chapter 1
The Study of American Government
they could possibly be done. In fact, there are other
ways to operate a government based on some measure of popular rule. History, tradition, and belief
weigh heavily on all that we do.
Although political change is not always accompanied by changes in public laws, the policy process is
arguably one of the best barometers of changes in
who governs. In Chapter 15, we offer a way of classifying and explaining the politics of different policy issues. The model we present there has been developed,
refined, and tested over more than two decades (longer
than most of our readers have been alive!). Our own
students and others have valued it mainly because,
they have found, it helps to answer such questions
about who governs: How do political issues get on the
public agenda in the first place? How, for example,
did sexual harassment, which was hardly ever discussed
or debated by Congress, burst onto the public agenda?
Once on the agenda, how does the politics of issues
like income security for older Americans—for example, the politics of Social Security, a program that
has been on the federal books since 1935 (see Chapter 19)—change over time? And if, today, one cares
about expanding civil liberties (see Chapter 5) or
protecting civil rights (see Chapter 6), what political
obstacles and opportunities are you likely to face, and
what role are public opinion, organized interest groups,
the media, the courts, political parties, and other institutions likely to play in frustrating or fostering your
particular policy preferences, whatever they might be?
Peek ahead, if you wish, to the book’s policy chapters, but understand that the place to begin a search
for how power is distributed in national politics and
what purposes that power serves is with the founding
of the federal government in 1787: the Constitutional
Convention and the events leading up to it. Though
the decisions of that time were not made by philosophers or professors, the practical men who made
them had a philosophic and professorial cast of
mind, and thus they left behind a fairly explicit account of what values they sought to protect and what
arrangements they thought ought to be made for the
allocation of political power.
★ SUMMARY ★
There are two major questions about politics: Who
governs? To what ends? This book focuses mainly on
answering the first.
Four answers have traditionally been given to the
question of who governs.
● The Marxist—those who control the economic
system will control the political one.
● The elitist—a few top leaders, not all of them
drawn from business, make the key decisions
without reference to popular desires.
● The bureaucratic—appointed civil servants run
things.
● The pluralist—competition among affected interests shapes public policy.
To choose among these theories or to devise new
ones requires more than describing governmental institutions and processes. In addition one must examine the kinds of issues that do (or do not) get taken
up by the political system and how that system resolves them.
The distinction between different types of democracies is important. The Framers of the Constitution
intended that America be a representative democracy
in which the power to make decisions is determined
by means of a free and competitive struggle for the
citizens’ votes.
RECONSIDERING WHO GOVERNS?
1. How is political power actually distributed in
America?
Some believe that political power in America is
monopolized by wealthy business leaders, by
other powerful elites, or by entrenched government bureaucrats. Others believe that political
resources such as money, prestige, expertise, organizational position, and access to the mass me-
Summary
dia are so widely dispersed in American society,
and the governmental institutions and offices in
which power may be exercised so numerous and
varied, that no single group truly has all or most
political power. In this view, political power in
America is distributed more or less widely. No
one, however, argues that political resources are
distributed equally in America.
2. What explains major political change?
The great shifts in the character of American
government—its size, scope, institutional arrangements, and the direction of its policies—
have reflected complex and sometimes sudden
changes in elite or mass beliefs about what gov-
ernment is supposed to do. For instance, before
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, most leaders and
citizens did not automatically look to the federal
government to improve the economy, and many
doubted that Washington had any legitimate role
to play in managing economic affairs. Today, however, leaders in both political parties assume that
Washington must help reduce unemployment,
create jobs, and otherwise actively manage the
country’s economy. The federal government now
has policies on street crime, the environment,
homeland security, and many other issues that
were not on the federal agenda a half-century (or,
in the case of homeland security, a mere halfdecade) ago.
RECONSIDERING TO WHAT ENDS?
1. What value or values matter most in American
democracy?
The Framers of the Constitution had their vision of
American democracy and favored certain values,
but neither they nor the Constitution specify what
values matter most or how best to make trade-offs
among or between competing political ends.
2. Are trade-offs among political purposes inevitable?
Yes. For instance, the government cannot spend
more on health care without spending less on
something else we may also desire—college loans,
police patrols, or toxic waste cleanups. Nor can it
maximize one value or purpose (say respecting the
rights of persons suspected or accused of terrorist
acts) without minimizing others (like liberty and
associated legal rights). And, even if everyone
agreed that the same one value—say liberty—was
supreme, we could not all exercise it at the same
time or to the fullest or just as we pleased without
all losing it in the bargain: if everybody is at liberty to shout simultaneously, nobody is at liberty
to be heard individually. We often cannot have
more of some things we desire without having less
of other things we desire, too. That is as true in
politics and government, and as true for American democracy, as it is in other parts of life.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Banfield, Edward C. Political Influence. New York: Free Press, 1961.
A method of analyzing politics—in this case, in the city of
Chicago—comparable to the approach adopted in this book.
Crick, Bernard, The American Science of Politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959. A critical review of the methods of
studying government and politics.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, 2d ed., edited by
Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978, 469–500. The classic statement of the Marxist view of history and politics.
Should be read in conjunction with Engels, “Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific,” in the same collection, 683–717.
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1956. An argument that self-serving elites dominate
American politics.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. 3d
ed. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1950, chs. 20–23. A lucid
statement of the theory of representative democracy and how
it differs from participatory democracy.
Truman, David B. The Governmental Process. 2d ed. New York:
Knopf, 1971. A pluralist interpretation of American politics.
Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and
edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1948, ch. 8. A theory of bureaucracy and its power.
15
C H A P T E R
2
The
Constitution
The Problem of Liberty
The Colonial Mind ★ The Real Revolution ★
Weaknesses of the Confederation
The Constitutional Convention
The Lessons of Experience ★ The Framers
The Challenge
The Virginia Plan ★ The New Jersey Plan ★
The Compromise
The Constitution and Democracy
Key Principles ★ Government and Human Nature
The Constitution and Liberty
The Antifederalist View ★ Need for a Bill of Rights ★
The Constitution and Slavery
The Motives of the Framers
Economic Interests at the Convention ★ Economic
Interests and Ratification ★ The Constitution and
Equality
Constitutional Reform: Modern Views
Reducing the Separation of Powers ★ Making the
System Less Democratic ★ Who Is Right?
16
★
★
WHO GOVERNS?
T O W H AT E N D S ?
1. What is the difference between a
democracy and a republic?
2. What branch of government has the
greatest power?
1. Does the Constitution tell us what
goals the government should serve?
2. Whose freedom does the Constitution protect?
I
f you had been alive in 1787, you might have wondered what was going on in Philadelphia. A small group of men (all white) were meeting to discuss how the country should
be run. They were not chosen by popular election and they were meeting in secret.
There was no press coverage. A few famous men, such as Patrick Henry of Virginia, had
refused to be delegates, and one state, Rhode Island, sent no delegates at all.
And just what were these men going to do? They were supposed to fix the defects
in the Articles of Confederation, the arrangement under which the former American
colonies had waged war against England. But when the convention was over, no defects
in the Articles had been fixed; instead, a wholly new constitution had been proposed.
And it was a constitution that in the eyes of some people gave too much power to a new
national government.
The goal of the American Revolution was liberty. It was not the first revolution with
that object; it may not have been the last; but it was perhaps the clearest case of a people altering the political order violently, simply in order to protect their liberties. Subsequent revolutions had more complicated, or utterly different, objectives. The French
Revolution in 1789 sought not only liberty, but “equality and fraternity.” The Russian
Revolution (1917) and the Chinese Revolution (culminating in 1949) chiefly sought
equality and were little concerned with liberty as we understand it.
★ The Problem of Liberty
What the American colonists sought to protect when they signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were the traditional liberties to which they thought they were entitled as British subjects. These liberties included the right to bring their legal cases
before truly independent judges rather than ones subordinate to the king; to be free of
the burden of having British troops quartered in their homes; to engage in trade without
burdensome restrictions; and, of course, to pay no taxes voted by a British Parliament
in which they had no direct representation. During the ten years or more of agitation
and argument leading up to the War of Independence, most colonists believed that
their liberties could be protected while they remained a part of the British Empire.
Slowly but surely opinion shifted. By the time war broke out in 1775, a large number
of colonists (though perhaps not a majority) had reached the conclusion that the
colonies would have to become independent of Great Britain if their liberties were to
be assured. The colonists had many reasons for regarding independence as the only solution, but one is especially important: they no longer had confidence in the English
constitution. This constitution was not a single written document but rather a collection of laws, charters, and traditional understandings that proclaimed the liberties of
British subjects. Yet these liberties, in the eyes of the colonists, were regularly violated
17
18
Chapter 2
The Constitution
Even before the Revolutionary War, many felt that some form of union would be necessary if the rebellious colonies were to survive. In 1774, the Massachusetts Spy portrayed
the colonies as segments of a snake that must “Join or Die.”
despite their constitutional protection. Clearly, then,
the English constitution was an inadequate check on
the abuses of political power. The revolutionary leaders sought an explanation of the insufficiency of the
constitution and found it in human nature.
The Colonial Mind
“A lust for domination is more or less natural to all
parties,” one colonist wrote.1 Men will seek power,
many colonists believed, because they are ambitious,
greedy, and easily corrupted. John Adams denounced
the “luxury, effeminacy, and venality” of English politics; Patrick Henry spoke scathingly of the “corrupt
House of Commons”; and Alexander Hamilton described England as “an old, wrinkled, withered, wornout hag.”2 This was in part flamboyant rhetoric
designed to whip up enthusiasm for the conflict, but
it was also deeply revealing of the colonial mind.
Their belief that English politicians—and by implication, most politicians—tended to be corrupt was the
colonists’ explanation of why the English constitution was not an adequate guarantee of the liberty of
the citizens. This opinion was to persist and, as we
shall see, profoundly affect the way the Americans
went about designing their own governments.
The liberties the colonists fought to protect were,
they thought, widely understood. They were based not
on the generosity of the king or the language of statutes
but on a “higher law” embodying “natural rights” that
were ordained by God, discoverable in nature and
history, and essential to human progress. These rights,
John Dickinson wrote, “are born with us; exist with
us; and cannot be taken away from us by any human
power.”3 There was general agreement that the essential rights included life, liberty, and property long
before Thomas Jefferson wrote them into the Declaration of Independence. (Jefferson changed “property”
to “the pursuit of happiness,” but almost everybody
else went on talking about property.)
This emphasis on property did not mean that the
American Revolution was thought up by the rich and
wellborn to protect their interests or that there was a
struggle between property owners and the propertyless. In late-eighteenth-century America most people
(except the black slaves) had property of some kind.
The overwhelming majority of citizens were selfemployed—as farmers or artisans—and rather few
people benefited financially by gaining independence
from England. Taxes were higher during and after the
war than before, trade was disrupted by the conflict,
and debts mounted perilously as various expedients
were invented to pay for the struggle. There were, of
course, war profiteers and those who tried to manipulate the currency to their own advantage, but most
Americans at the time of the war saw the conflict
clearly in terms of political rather than economic issues. It was a war of ideology.
The Problem of Liberty
19
Removed due to copyright
permissions restrictions.
The American colonists’ desire to assert their liberties led in time to a deep hostility to
British government, as when these New Yorkers toppled a statue of King George III,
melted it down, and used the metal to make bullets.
Everyone recognizes the glowing language with
which Jefferson set out the case for independence in
the second paragraph of the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed—that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new Government, having its
foundation on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
What almost no one recalls, but what are an essential part of the Declaration, are the next twenty-seven
paragraphs, in which Jefferson listed, item by item,
the specific complaints the colonists had against
George III and his ministers. None of these items
spoke of social or economic conditions in the col-
onies; all spoke instead of specific violations of political liberties. The Declaration was in essence a lawyer’s brief prefaced by a stirring philosophical claim
that the rights being violated were unalienable—that
is, based on nature and Providence, and not on the
whims or preferences of people. Jefferson, in his original draft, added a twenty-eighth complaint—that
the king had allowed the slave trade to continue and
was inciting slaves to revolt against their masters.
Congress, faced with so contraunalienable A
dictory a charge, decided to inhuman right based on
clude a muted reference to slave
nature or God.
insurrections and omit all reference to the slave trade.
The Real Revolution
The Revolution was more than the War of Independence. It began before the war, continued after it, and
involved more than driving out the British army by
force of arms. The real Revolution, as John Adams afterward explained in a letter to a friend, was the “radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments,
and affections of the people.”4 This radical change
Chapter 2
The Constitution
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had to do with a new vision of what could make political authority legitimate and personal liberties secure. Government by royal prerogative was rejected;
instead legitimate government would require the
consent of the governed. Political power could not be
exercised on the basis of tradition but only as a result
of a direct grant of power contained in a written constitution. Human liberty existed before government
was organized, and government must respect that
liberty. The legislative branch of government, in
which the people were directly represented, should be
superior to the executive branch.
These were indeed revolutionary ideas. No government at the time had been organized on the basis
of these principles. And to the colonists such notions
were not empty words but rules to be put into immediate practice. In 1776 eight states adopted written
constitutions. Within a few years every former colony
had adopted one except Connecticut and Rhode Island, two states that continued to rely on their colonial charters. Most state constitutions had detailed
bills of rights defining personal liberties, and most
placed the highest political power in the hands of
elected representatives.
The Problem of Liberty
Written constitutions, representatives, and bills of
rights are so familiar to us now that we forget how
bold and unprecedented those innovations were in
1776. Indeed, many Americans did not think they
would succeed: such arrangements would be either so
strong that they would threaten liberty or so weak
that they would permit chaos.
The eleven years that elapsed between the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the Constitution in 1787 were years of turmoil, uncertainty, and
fear. George Washington had to wage a bitter, protracted war without anything resembling a strong national government to support him. The supply and
financing of his army were based on a series of hasty
improvisations, most badly administered and few adequately supported by the fiercely independent states.
When peace came, many parts of the nation were a
shambles. At least a quarter of New York City was in
ruins, and many other communities were nearly devastated. Though the British lost the war, they still
were powerful on the North American continent,
with an army available in Canada (where many
Americans loyal to Britain had fled) and a large navy
at sea. Spain claimed the Mississippi River valley and
occupied what are now Florida and California. Men
who had left their farms to fight came back to discover themselves in debt with no money and heavy
taxes. The paper money printed to finance the war
was now virtually worthless.
Weaknesses of the Confederation
The thirteen states had formed only a faint semblance
of a national government with which to bring order
to the nation. The Articles of Confederation, which
went into effect in 1781, created little more than a
“league of friendship” that could not levy taxes or regulate commerce. Each state retained its sovereignty
and independence, each state (regardless of size) had
one vote in Congress, nine (of thirteen) votes were
required to pass any measure, and the delegates who
cast these votes were picked and paid for by the state
legislatures. Congress did have the power to make
peace, and thus it was able to ratify the treaty with
England in 1783. It could coin money, but there was
precious little to coin; it could appoint the key army
officers, but the army was small and dependent for
support on independent state militias; it was allowed
to run the post office, then, as now, a thankless task
that nobody else wanted. John Hancock, who in 1785
21
The Articles of Confederation had made it plain that
the United States was not to have a true national
government but was to be governed by a compact
among sovereign and independent states.
was elected to the meaningless office of “president”
under the Articles, never showed up to take the job.
Several states claimed the unsettled lands in the West,
and they occasionally pressed those claims with guns.
Pennsylvania and Virginia went to war near Pittsburgh, and Vermont threatened
Articles of
to become part of Canada. There
Confederation A
was no national judicial system to
weak constitution that
settle these or other claims among
governed America
the states. To amend the Articles
during the
of Confederation, all thirteen
Revolutionary War.
states had to agree.
Many of the leaders of the
Revolution, such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, believed that a stronger national
22
Chapter 2
The Constitution
they were keenly aware of the problems of the confederacy but far from agreeing as to what should be
done about those problems. The protection of life,
liberty, and property was their objective in 1787 as it
had been in 1776, but they had no accepted political
theory that would tell them what kind of national
government, if any, would serve that goal.
The Lessons of Experience
John Hancock was proud to have signed the Declaration
of Independence but thought so little of the presidency
under the Articles of Confederation that he never bothered
to accept the job.
government was essential. They lamented the disruption of commerce and travel caused by the quarrelsome states and deeply feared the possibility of
foreign military intervention, with England or France
playing one state off against another. A small group of men, conConstitutional
ferring at Washington’s home at
Convention A
Mount Vernon in 1785, decided to
meeting in
call a meeting to discuss trade regPhiladelphia in 1787
that produced a new
ulation. That meeting, held at Anconstitution.
napolis, Maryland, in September
1786, was not well attended (no
delegates arrived from New England), and so another
meeting, this one in Philadelphia, was called for the
following spring—in May 1787—to consider ways of
remedying the defects of the Confederation.
★ The Constitutional
Convention
The delegates assembled at Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention, for what was advertised
(and authorized by Congress) as a meeting to revise
the Articles; they adjourned four months later having
written a wholly new constitution. When they met,
They had read ancient and modern political history,
only to learn that nothing seemed to work. James
Madison spent a good part of 1786 studying books
sent to him by Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, in
hopes of finding some model for a workable American republic. He took careful notes on various confederacies in ancient Greece and on the more modern
confederacy of the United Netherlands. He reviewed
the history of Switzerland and Poland and the ups
and downs of the Roman republic. He concluded that
there was no model; as he later put it in one of the
Federalist papers, history consists only of beacon
lights “which give warning of the course to be shunned,
without pointing out that which ought to be pursued.”5 The problem seemed to be that confederacies
were too weak to govern and tended to collapse from
internal dissension, while all stronger forms of government were so powerful as to trample the liberties
of the citizens.
State Constitutions Madison and the others did not
need to consult history, or even the defects of the Articles of Confederation, for illustrations of the problem. These could be found in the government of the
American states at the time. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts exemplified two aspects of the problem.
The Pennsylvania constitution, adopted in 1776, created the most radically democratic of the new state
regimes. All power was given to a one-house (unicameral) legislature, the Assembly, the members of
which were elected annually for one-year terms. No
legislator could serve more than four years. There was
no governor or president, only an Executive Council
that had few powers. Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets had helped precipitate the break with England,
thought the Pennsylvania constitution was the best in
America, and in France philosophers hailed it as the
very embodiment of the principle of rule by the people. Though popular in France, it was a good deal less
popular in Philadelphia. The Assembly disfranchised
The Constitutional Convention
the Quakers, persecuted conscientious objectors to
the war, ignored the requirement of trial by juries,
and manipulated the judiciary.6 To Madison and his
friends the Pennsylvania constitution demonstrated
how a government, though democratic, could be
tyrannical as a result of concentrating all powers into
one set of hands.
The Massachusetts constitution, adopted in 1780,
was a good deal less democratic. There was a clear
separation of powers among the various branches of
government, the directly elected governor could veto
acts of the legislature, and judges served for life. Both
voters and elected officials had to be property owners; the governor, in fact, had to own at least £1,000
worth of property. The principal officeholders had to
swear that they were Christians.
Shays’s Rebellion But if the government of Pennsylvania was thought to be too strong, that of Massachusetts seemed too weak, despite its “conservative”
features. In January 1787 a group of ex-Revolutionary War soldiers and officers, plagued by debts and
high taxes and fearful of losing their property to
creditors and tax collectors, forcibly prevented the
courts in western Massachusetts from sitting. This
became known as Shays’s Rebellion, after one of the
officers, Daniel Shays. The governor of Massachusetts
asked the Continental Congress to send troops to
suppress the rebellion, but it could not raise the
money or the manpower. Then he turned to his own
state militia, but discovered he did not have one. In
desperation private funds were collected to hire a volunteer army, which marched on Springfield and, with
the firing of a few shots, dispersed the rebels, who fled
into neighboring states.
Shays’s Rebellion, occurring between the aborted
Annapolis and the coming Philadelphia conventions,
had a powerful effect on opinion. Delegates who
might have been reluctant to attend the Philadelphia
meeting, especially those from New England, were
galvanized by the fear that state governments were
about to collapse from internal dissension. George
Washington wrote a friend despairingly: “For God’s
sake, if they [the rebels] have real grievances, redress
them; if they have not, employ the force of government against them at once.”7 Thomas Jefferson, living
in Paris, took a more detached view: “A little rebellion
now and then is a good thing,” he wrote. “The tree of
liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of patriots and tyrants.”8 Though Jefferson’s
23
Removed due to copyright
permissions restrictions.
The presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention was
George Washington (1732–1799). He participated just once
in the debates, but the effect of his presence was great. He
was a national military hero, and it was generally expected
that he would be the nation’s first president.
detachment might be explained
Shays’s Rebellion A
by the fact that he was in Paris
1787 rebellion in which
and not in Springfield, there were
ex-Revolutionary War
others, like Governor George
soldiers attempted to
Clinton of New York, who shared
prevent foreclosures of
the view that no strong cenfarms as a result of
tral government was required.
high interest rates and
taxes.
(Whether Clinton would have
agreed about the virtues of
spilled blood, especially his, is another matter.)
The Framers
The Philadelphia convention attracted fifty-five delegates, only about thirty of whom participated regularly in the proceedings. One state, Rhode Island,
refused to send anyone. The convention met during a
miserably hot Philadelphia summer, with the delegates pledged to keep their deliberations secret. The
talkative and party-loving Benjamin Franklin was often accompanied by other delegates to make sure that
neither wine nor his delight in telling stories would
lead him to divulge delicate secrets.
Those who attended were for the most part
young (Hamilton was thirty; Madison thirty-six) but
24
Chapter 2
The Constitution
Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786–
1787 stirred deep fears of anarchy in America. The
ruckus was put down by a hastily assembled militia,
and the rebels were eventually pardoned.
experienced. Eight delegates had signed the Declaration of Independence, seven had been governors,
thirty-four were lawyers and reasonably well-to-do, a
few were wealthy. They were not “intellectuals,” but
men of practical affairs. Thirty-nine had served in the
ineffectual Congress of the Confederation; a third
were veterans of the Continental Army.
Some names made famous by the Revolution were
conspicuously absent. Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams were serving as ministers abroad; Samuel
Adams was ill; Patrick Henry was chosen to attend
but refused, commenting that he “smelled a rat in
Philadelphia, tending toward monarchy.”
The key men at the convention were an odd lot.
George Washington was a very tall, athletic man who
was the best horseman in Virginia and who impressed everyone with his dignity despite decaying
teeth and big eyes. James Madison was the very opposite: quite short with a frail body and not much of an
orator, but possessed of one of the best minds in the
country. Benjamin Franklin, though old and ill, was
the most famous American in the world as a scientist
and writer and always displayed shrewd judgment, at
least when sober. Alexander Hamilton was the illegitimate son of a French woman and a Scottish merchant; Alexander had so strong a mind and so
powerful a desire that he succeeded in everything he
did, from being Washington’s aide during the Revolution to a splendid secretary of the treasury during
Washington’s presidency.
The convention produced not a revision of the Articles of Confederation, as it had been authorized to
do, but instead a wholly new written constitution creating a true national government unlike any that had
existed before. That document is today the world’s
oldest written national constitution. Those who wrote
it were neither saints nor schemers, and the deliberations were not always lofty or philosophical—much
hard bargaining, not a little confusion, and the accidents of personality and time helped shape the final
product. The delegates were split on many issues—
what powers should be given to a central government, how the states should be represented, what was
to be done about slavery, the role of the people—each
of which was resolved by a compromise. The speeches
of the delegates (known to us from the detailed notes
kept by Madison) did not explicitly draw on political
philosophy or quote from the writings of philosophers. Everybody present was quite familiar with the
traditional arguments and, on the whole, well read in
history. But though the leading political philosophers
were only rarely mentioned, the debate was profoundly influenced by philosophical beliefs, some
formed by the revolutionary experience and others
by the eleven-year attempt at self-government.
From the debates leading up to the Revolution, the
delegates had drawn a commitment to liberty, which,
despite the abuses sometimes committed in its name,
they continued to share. Their defense of liberty as a
natural right was derived from the writings of the
English philosopher John Locke and based on his view
that such rights are discoverable by reason. In a “state
of nature,” Locke argued, all men cherish and seek to
protect their life, liberty, and property. But in a state
of nature—that is, a society without a government—
the strong can use their liberty to deprive the weak of
theirs. The instinct for self-preservation leads people
to want a government that will prevent this exploitation. But if the government is not itself to deprive its
subjects of their liberty, it must be limited. The chief
limitation on it, he said, should derive from the fact
that it is created, and governs, by the consent of the
governed. People will not agree to be ruled by a government that threatens their liberty; therefore the
government to which they freely choose to submit
themselves will be a limited government designed to
protect liberty.
The Challenge
The Pennsylvania experience as well as the history
of British government led the Framers to doubt
whether popular consent alone would be a sufficient guarantor of liberty. A popular government
may prove too weak (as in Massachusetts) to prevent
one faction from abusing another, or a popular majority can be tyrannical (as in Pennsylvania). In fact
the tyranny of the majority can be an even graver
threat than rule by the few. In the former case there
may be no defenses for the individual—one lone person cannot count on the succor of public opinion or
the possibility of popular revolt.
The problem, then, was a delicate one: how to devise a government strong enough to preserve order
but not so strong that it would threaten liberty. The
answer, the delegates believed, was not “democracy”
as it was then understood. To many conservatives in
the late-eighteenth century, democracy meant mob
rule—it meant, in short, Shays’s Rebellion (or, if they
had been candid about it, the Boston Tea Party). On
the other hand, aristocracy—the rule of the few—was
no solution, since the few were likely to be selfseeking. Madison, writing later in the Federalist papers, put the problem this way:
If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither
external nor internal controls on government
would be necessary. In framing a government
which is to be administered by men over men,
the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed;
and in the next place oblige it to control itself.9
Striking this balance could not be done, Madison
believed, simply by writing a constitution that set limits on what government could do. The example of
British rule over the colonies proved that laws and
customs were inadequate checks on political power.
As he expressed it, “A mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits [of government] is
not a sufficient guard against those encroachments
which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the
powers of government in the same hands.”10
★ The Challenge
The resolution of political issues, great and small, often depends crucially on how the central question is
phrased. The delegates came to Philadelphia in general agreement that there were defects in the Articles
of Confederation that ought to be remedied. Had
they, after convening, decided to make their business
that of listing these defects and debating alternative
remedies for them, the document that emerged would
in all likelihood have been very different from what in
fact was adopted. But immediately after the convention had organized itself and chosen Washington to
be its presiding officer, the Virginia delegation, led by
Governor Edmund Randolph but relying heavily on
the draftsmanship of James Madison, presented to
the convention a comprehensive plan for a wholly
new national government. The plan quickly became
the major item of business of the meeting; it, and little else, was debated for the next two weeks.
The Virginia Plan
When the convention decided to make the Virginia
Plan its agenda, it had fundamentally altered the nature of its task. The business at hand was not to be the
Articles and their defects, but rather how one should
go about designing a true national government. The
Virginia Plan called for a strong national union organized into three governmental branches—the legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislature was to
be composed of two houses, the first elected directly
by the people and the second chosen by the first house
from among the people nominated by state legislatures. The executive was to be
chosen by the national legislaVirginia Plan
ture, as were members of a naProposal to create
tional judiciary. The executive
a strong national
and some members of the judigovernment.
ciary were to constitute a “council of revision” that could veto
acts of the legislature; that veto, in turn, could be
overridden by the legislature. There were other interesting details, but the key features of the Virginia Plan
were two: (1) a national legislature would have supreme powers on all matters on which the separate
states were not competent to act, as well as the power
to veto any and all state laws, and (2) at least one
house of the legislature would be elected directly by
the people.
The New Jersey Plan
As the debate went on, the representatives of New
Jersey and other small states became increasingly
worried that the convention was going to write a
25
26
Chapter 2
The Constitution
constitution in which the states would be represented
in both houses of Congress on the basis of population. If this happened, the smaller states feared they
would always be outvoted by the larger ones, and so,
with William Paterson of New Jersey as their spokesman, they introduced a new plan. The New Jersey
Plan proposed to amend, not replace, the old Articles
of Confederation. It enhanced the power of the national government (though not as much as the Virginia Plan), but it did so in a way that left the states’
representation in Congress unchanged from the
Articles—each state would have one vote. Thus not
only would the interests of the small states be protected, but Congress itself would remain to a substantial degree the creature of state governments.
If the New Jersey resolutions had been presented
first and taken up as the major item of business, it is
quite possible that they would have become the framework for the document that finally emerged. But they
were not. Offered after the convention had been discussing the Virginia Plan for two weeks, the resolutions encountered a reception very different from what
they would have received if introduced earlier. The
debate had the delegates already thinking in terms of
a national government that was more independent of
the states, and thus it had accustomed them to proposals that, under other circumstances, might have
seemed quite radical. On June 19 the first decisive
vote of the convention was taken: seven states preferred the Virginia Plan, three states the New Jersey
Plan, and one state was split.
With the tide running in favor of a strong national
government, the supporters of the small states had to
shift their strategy. They now began to focus their efforts on ensuring that the small states could not be
outvoted by the larger ones in Congress. One way was
to have the members of the lower house elected by the
state legislatures rather than the
people, with each state getting
New Jersey Plan
the same number of seats rather
Proposal to create a
weak national
than seats proportional to its
government.
population.
Great Compromise
The debate was long and feelPlan to have a
ings ran high, so much so that
popularly elected
Benjamin Franklin, at eighty-one
House based on state
the oldest delegate present, sugpopulation and a
gested that each day’s meeting
state-selected Senate,
b...
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