The Roots of the Polarization of Modern U. S. Politics
Keith T. Poole
Department of Political Science
University of California, San Diego
13 October 2008
Abstract
The elites of the United States are deeply polarized. Polarization of the
Democratic and Republican Parties is higher than at any time since the late 19th Century.
How could this be true given the obvious economic success of the United States? This
essay describes how the modern polarization trend emerged.
To understand the historical forces producing modern polarization it is necessary
to understand the British colonial origins of the U. S. political-economic system.
Representative democracy, plurality elections, geographic-based representation (the
tradition of the representative living with those he represented), and private property
rights were established from the beginning of the British colonies and shaped everything
that was to follow. How these factors shaped the evolution of political parties over time
gives us insight into why the current party system is so polarized and why there may be
no simple solution to the serious polarization of the elites in the United States.
2
Introduction
On 4 November 2008 the United States will conduct its 56th Presidential election
and its 111th Congressional election. The U.S. has held elections every two years without
an interruption since 1788. It is the World’s oldest democracy, third in population, fourth
in total land area, and the richest country with a gross domestic product equal to the
entire European Union. Yet despite its success its political and cultural elites are deeply
polarized ideologically and this polarization is at its highest level since the latter part of
the 19th Century. Given its mass affluence, high standard of living, and its prominent role
in World affairs, how could U. S. elites be so polarized?
In this essay I explain how this polarization came about. First, I briefly explain
how my colleagues and I measure elite ideology. I focus only on the U. S. Congress but
the method described below has been extended to many of other voting bodies. 1 Second,
in order to make sense of modern U.S. politics, the British colonial origins of the United
States and the nature of its geographic expansion must be understood. Representative
democracy, plurality elections, geographic-based representation (the tradition of the
representative living with those he represented), and private property rights were
established from the beginning of the British colonies and shaped everything that was to
follow.
Representative democracy and capitalism in North America evolved together in
an environment of almost unlimited natural resources. Private property rights and
representative democracy have cooperatively cohabitated since the earliest British
colonial settlements and no real European style socialist party ever gained a lasting
3
foothold in the United States. This is what Louis Hartz called the “Liberal Tradition in
America” (Hofstadter, 1948; Hartz, 1955). 2 In addition, due to nature of the earliest
settlements, geographic based representation in representative assemblies became the
norm. That is, the sharp break with British tradition was that legislators lived in the
district/town that they represented in the legislature rather than being assigned by a
political party to represent a district. The colonies and later the United States always
used geographic districts with (usually) one representative assigned to each district. The
important shift in the colonial period was that the representative was expected to
physically live in the district. Later, when mass based political parties emerged in the
1820s this form of geographic representation had the effect of incorporating important
regional interests within the political parties. Because the political parties were active
throughout the United States, these regional interests were incorporated within the parties
and that tended to dampen conflict between the parties. For example, before the Civil
War (1861 – 65) Southern Whigs and Southern Democrats shared an interest in
representing the economic concerns of the South against high tariffs because the Southern
states were commodity exporters (Cotton, Rice, Naval Stores, Indigo). In addition, the U.
S. always utilized the English style plurality election system (the candidate with the most
votes wins). The plurality voting method tends to produce only two dominant political
parties. These electoral characteristics coupled with the emergence of mass based
political parties in the 1820s and the colonial legacy of private property rights formed the
basis of the U. S. political-economic system that has survived into the 21st Century.
The interaction of these four factors account for the periods of polarization in U.
S. history. First, the plurality election system coupled with the requirement that
4
representatives live in their districts, tended to produce two political parties that were
usually divided internally due to regional interests. The primary division between the
two parties was almost always economic regulation, taxes, tariffs, and so on. The
regional interests cut across these traditional left vs. right divisions thereby dampening
down the conflict between the parties. Further dampening this conflict between the two
parties was the powerful norm of private property rights. This limited the extent of the
division between the two parties on the primary economic dimension because never in
U.S. history has private property rights been seriously challenged. The periods of
polarization have occurred when conflict between the two parties became completely
one-dimensional; that is, when the regional division within the parties becomes the
primary focus of conflict or disappears altogether. The former occurred in the 1850s and
the result was the Civil War. The latter occurred to some extent after the Civil War to the
1930s and then the regional division re-emerged from about 1937 into the 1980s. Since
the 1980s U.S. politics is purely one-dimensional with increasing polarization.
Measuring Elite Polarization
In 1984 Howard Rosenthal and I published a paper in the Journal of Politics
entitled “The Polarization of American Politics” (Poole and Rosenthal, 1984). We found
that beginning in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, U. S. politics became much more divisive.
More Democrats staked out consistently liberal positions, and more Republicans
supported wholly conservative ones. The primary evidence in that study, which focused
exclusively on the Senate, were ratings issued by interest groups such as the Americans
for Democratic Action and the United States Chamber of Commerce. 3
5
These early findings motivated Rosenthal and I to develop a better measurement
of legislative ideology. Interest group ratings are in fact nothing other than aggregations
of legislator roll call voting decisions. We realized that much better information would
be available by scaling the individual roll call votes directly. To do this, we adapted the
standard dichotomous logit (or probit) model and developed our NOMINATE (Nominal
Three-step Estimation) procedure. A dynamic version of this procedure – DNOMINATE – enabled us to analyze all the roll call votes in the first 100 Congresses. In
Congress: A Political Economic History of Roll Call Voting, we confirmed our earlier
analyses and found that the polarization surge had continued unabated through the 100th
Congress (1987-88) (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997; 2001). It has continued through 2007
(McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2006; Poole and Rosenthal, 2007).
Our NOMINATE procedure is based on a simple geometric (spatial) model of
voting behavior. Each legislator is represented by one point and each roll call is
represented by two points – one for “Yea” and one for “Nay”. These points form a
spatial map that summarizes the roll calls. In this sense a spatial map is much like a road
map. A spreadsheet that tabulates all the distances between every pair of sizable cities in
the United States contains the same information as the corresponding map of the U.S. but
the spreadsheet gives you no idea what the U.S. looks like. 4 Much like a road map, a
spatial map formed from roll calls gives us a way of visualizing the political world of a
legislature. The closeness of two legislators on the map shows how similar their voting
records are, and the distribution of legislators shows what the dimensions are.
The number of dimensions needed to represent the points is usually small,
because legislators typically decide how to vote on the basis of their positions on a small
6
number of underlying evaluative or basic dimensions. For example, in recent U.S.
Congresses, we can easily predict how a “liberal” or a “conservative” will vote on most
issues. These basic dimensions structure the roll call votes and are captured by the spatial
maps.
For most of American history only two dimensions are required to account for the
fourteen million choices of the twelve thousand members who served in Congress. In
fact, one dimension suffices except in two periods, roughly 1829-1851 and 1937-1970,
when race-related issues introduced a second dimension. The two brief periods where the
spatial model fails are the Era of Good Feelings, when there was a one party system, and
the 32nd Congress (1851-53), when the Compromise of 1850 unraveled. In these periods,
there is a poor fit, even when 10 or more dimensions are used. Voting is chaotic.
The first dimension typically divides the two major parties on the fundamental
issue of the role of government in the economy. In the early period of U. S. history
before the development of mass political parties in the 1820s, this dimension divided the
followers of Alexander Hamilton (Federalists) from the followers of Thomas Jefferson
(Jeffersonian-Republicans). The economic conflicts were over excise taxes on goods
such as salt, shoes, and whiskey; tariffs; whether to establish a national (central) bank;
and similar economic issues. During the Whig-Democrat mass based political party
system (1820s to 1852) the first dimension was concerned with taxes, tariffs, and the role
of the federal government in the economy. Whigs wanted a stronger federal government
and favored business. Democrats were suspicious of a strong federal government and
less favorable to business (Gerring, 1996, chapters 3 and 5).
7
During the post-Reconstruction Republican-Democrat mass based party system
(1879 to 2008) the first dimension is again concerned mainly with taxes, tariffs, and the
extent to which the federal government should be active in the economy. Democrats
have been consistently anti-corporate and anti-capitalist in the sense of favoring the
“common man.” Through most of this period Democrats tended to be pro-agrarian and,
at least until just the past 20 years, they were also anti-tariff. The Republicans
throughout this period have been pro-business, pro-capitalist in the sense of favoring the
upper classes and investors, and have generally favored lower taxes. They were pro-tariff
until the 1930s (Gerring, 1996, chapters 4, 6, and 7).
The second dimension through almost all of U. S. history differentiates the
members of Congress by region mainly over race and civil rights but in the latter part of
the 19th Century it picked up regional differences on bimetallism and the free coinage of
silver. It reflects the nature of geographic-based representation in the United States;
namely, the two dominant political parties are almost always national parties that bridge
across regions. Hence, both parties throughout U. S. history have some internal divisions
due to regional differences.
In the past 40 years U. S. politics has changed dramatically. Although I use the
words “liberal” (or “left”) and “conservative” (or “right”) to describe recent U. S. politics
it is difficult to reconcile these terms with their classical economic meanings. In the
current U. S. political system one party – the Republicans – favors tight regulation of
private personal behavior (these are known as “social” or “lifestyle/cultural” issues -abortion, homosexual rights, assisted suicide, etc.) and low regulation of the economy;
while the opposite party – the Democrats – favor little if any regulation of private
8
personal behavior and much greater regulation of economic behavior. There is no
logically consistent philosophy that underlies these issues. To make matters even more
incoherent, the issue of gun control 5 does not fit comfortably into the category of an
“economic” issue or a “social” issue. Viewed as a “social” issue, gun control has the two
parties on the wrong sides – the Republicans oppose further regulation, the Democrats
want more regulation. Complicating matters further is the deep politicization of foreign
policy. The Iraq War is deeply unpopular with Democrats and the Parties are as split on
Iraq as they are on the “social” or “lifestyle” issues (Jacobson, 2007).
The ideological bases of the two political parties are simply two opposing sets of
interrelated or bundled issue positions. Philip Converse (1964) defined an ideology or
belief system in just this way. Namely, it is a set of issues that are interrelated or bundled
together and that ideology is fundamentally the knowledge of what-goes-with-what.
Converse called this bundling of issues constraint – the ability, based on one or two issue
positions, to predict other (seemingly unrelated) issue positions. This constraint or
bundling of issue positions does not have to be strictly logical or even coherent. And
they certainly are not coherent in current U. S. politics.
The British Colonial Origins of the U. S. Political-Economy
The first permanent British colony in what is now the United States was
established in Virginia in 1607. Initially this colony was seen as a trading post and a base
for raiding the shipping of rival European powers. But it quickly changed into an
agricultural settlement with the cultivation of tobacco. The New England colonies were
settled in the 1620s and 1630s and these were agricultural settlements from the beginning
9
and were largely populated by religious dissenters. These colonies grew rapidly and by
1700 over 250,000 people lived in the British colonies that lie inside what is now the
United States.
From the very beginning these colonies had English style representative
government with popular election of the colonial assemblies. They differed in a very
important way from the English House of Commons, however. From the earliest times
the colonial legislators used geographic based representation. That is, as settlement
spread inward in concentric circles from the original towns on the Atlantic seaboard,
representatives were added to the corresponding colonial legislature from the new towns
and villages. This established the precedent that a representative in the legislature had to
live in the town or village that he represented. This is much different from the method
the English used and still use where the political parties can run their candidates in any
constituency in the British Isles. This departure from the English system meant that the
U. S. political system would always have an important geographic component.
The European settlers in the North American British colonies took it for granted
that they could move inland to the west at will and settle there. The form of land tenure 6
in the British colonies was much freer than in England because of the simple necessity of
attracting colonists. By the time of the Revolution (1775 – 1781) the prevailing form of
land tenure was free and common socage or what is referred to in more modern language
as title in fee simple. This was, in effect, the modern form of land ownership free of the
old English feudal burdens. 7 The land owner could freely sell his land, pass it to his
heirs, cut down the trees or dig up the minerals on the land, and so on. 8 Land quickly
10
became a commodity that was bought and sold for profit rather than a family estate that
was preserved for one's heirs (Carstensen, 1963; Harris, 1970).
In the North American British Colonies private property rights in land and
representative democracy were established from the very beginning. In addition, social
and political turmoil in England meant that the colonists were largely unfettered in their
political and economic affairs through the 17th Century and up to the 1730s (Bailyn,
1970). During this period the losers from the various internal conflicts in the British Isles
migrated to the North American colonies. Indeed, one half to two-thirds of the White
population crossed the Atlantic as indentured servants (Galenson, 1984). After working
for five to seven years the indentured servants were free to strike out on their own. Most
moved west-ward to establish farms.
The economic success of the British colonies acted as a magnet for the disaffected
and those seeking a better life. The population in what is now the United States grew to
251,000 in 1700, 1,200,000 in 1750, and on the eve of the Revolution in 1775, the
population had more than doubled in just twenty-five years reaching 2,500,000. By the
outbreak of the Revolution in April of 1775 the per-capita income of the North American
colonies was about the same as England (Anderson, 1975; Walton and Shepherd, 1979;
Main, 1983; Walsh, 1983; Hughes and Cain, 2007, ch. 3).
The Revolution and the Early Republic to 1825
The Revolution of 1775 – 1781 is best understood as an English Civil War. The
Revolution was the result of a mix of economic and political grievances that cut to the
heart of what the colonists believed was their fundamental rights as Englishmen (Bailyn,
1970; 1971). The Revolution succeeded because of the dogged persistence of George
11
Washington, the crucial Naval assistance of the French near the end of the fighting, and
the logistical difficulty the British had in fielding an occupation army several thousand
kilometers across a harsh and unforgiving north Atlantic ocean.
The Revolution created a cadre of young leaders with a national outlook who did
not appreciate the subsequent squabbling and ineptitude of the 13 separate sovereign
nations that inherited the nationalists’ hard-won victory (Elkins and McKitrick, 1961).
The national government was a toothless confederation that had no taxing power and
could not defend its own borders. Worse, the individual states erected tariff barriers
between themselves that impeded economic activity. But it was finally Shay’s Rebellion
in Massachusetts in 1786 that alarmed property holders and persuaded many that a strong
national government was necessary. George Washington agreed to attend and the
Constitutional Convention convened in May of 1787.
The U.S. Constitution broke with the English form of Parliamentary government.
The experience of a weak and ineffectual national legislature with no real executive
during the Revolution and its aftermath coupled with the nationalists’ fear of Monarchial
tyranny that they had just defeated in 1781 led them to craft a hybrid. The national
government was to be powerful but power was divided between a national legislature, the
executive, and a set of Courts. The executive was easy. Everyone knew that George
Washington would be the first national leader. 9 The Courts were also easy. They set up
one Supreme Court and left it to the national legislature to legislate the rest. The national
legislature was the most difficult problem. They settled that with the “Great
Compromise” which erected a two chamber national legislature with an upper chamber
where representation was by State and a lower chamber where representation was by
12
population. In a decisive break with English tradition, they enshrined geographic-based
representation by requiring that both the upper and lower legislators had to live in the
State that they represented. They also guaranteed that legislators in the upper chamber
would always be by State. The Constitution prohibits any amendment changing the
nature of representation in the upper chamber -- the Senate. 10 They also were very clear
that the new United States was to be an economic common market. A fact they
underlined by very explicit provisions scattered through the document that limited the
power of states over economic activity that crossed state boundaries.
The U.S. Constitution is not a particularly well-written document. It was written
by politicians, not Gods. It is full of vague language and it is repetitive. Indeed, there
was strong disagreement about the powers of the national government within the first
term of Washington’s Presidency. 11
The major problem with the whole scheme was there was no way that it could
possibly work as it was originally designed. James Madison in his famous Federalist #10
essay discusses the rampant factionalism of colonial politics and how this factionalism
was based in economic interests (Bailyn, 1970). His solution, again a sharp break from
English tradition, was wholly practical. Factions/Parties exist, they cannot be eliminated,
and we must deal with them as they are because they are the price we pay for liberty and
a free Republic. But Madison and his compatriots were never able to accept
factions/parties as good – as a means to coordinate the branches of government and as a
means of bridging between the states and the national government. 12 Instead, all the
Founders basically thought parties were bad and longed for one party. Their unrealistic
ideal was unanimity (Hofstadter, 1969). Consequently, the earliest political parties – the
13
Jeffersonian-Republicans and the Federalists – were loose coalitions of national level
politicians based in the national legislature that cooperated with like-minded state
politicians. However, these “parties” were not mass based. This was to change in the
1820s when true mass based popular parties emerged.
That the U. S. Republic survived is a minor miracle. George Washington
understood how perilous the international situation was for the new United States and
was determined to keep the country out of European conflicts. The revolutionary era
Presidents who followed Washington were not particularly effective. John Adams
(President, 1797 – 1801) followed Washington’s lead but was an ineffective and divisive
leader. Thomas Jefferson (1801 – 1809) purchased the Louisiana territory from the
French and doubled the size of the United States but his foreign policy was ineffectual.
James Madison (1809 – 1817) stumbled into war with Britain which the U. S. for all
intents and purposes lost. The British burned the capital in 1814 and a peace treaty was
signed with the British in December. The great victory of General Andrew Jackson at
New Orleans in January of 1815 (before the treaty reached the U. S.) allowed the U. S. to
interpret the war as a victory rather than a defeat.
The first political parties emerged during Washington’s first term. These were
coalitions of like-minded legislators within Congress along with the major state
politicians, merchants, and planters. The Federalists as they became known coalesced
around Alexander Hamilton (Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury) and the
Republicans (or Jeffersonian-Republicans to distinguish them from the second
Republican Party) coalesced around Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State) and James
Madison (Jefferson’s fellow Virginian and ideological soul-mate).
14
Both parties had support throughout the United States but the Federalists tended
to be concentrated in New England and were the conservative party. They supported
high protective tariffs, excise taxes, a national bank, the assumption of the Revolutionary
era State debt, and policies that encouraged trade and favored merchants and men of
property. The Jeffersonians were based more to the interior of the United States and had
broad support amongst farmers. They opposed the high tariffs, excise taxes, assumption
of the State debt, and national bank advocated by the Federalists.
Figure 1 shows the spatial map for the 5th U. S. House of Representatives (179798) that served during the first two years of John Adams’ presidency (1797 – 1801). The
lower case “r”’s are the Jeffersonians and the lower case “f”’s are the Federalists.
15
The first dimension captures voting on economic issues and shows the clear
separation between the Federalists (on the right) and the Jeffersonians (on the left). The
second dimension picks up the slight differences between the two parties in their regional
bases. The Jeffersonians tended to be concentrated in the interior and in the South (the
Planters were Jeffersonians because, as commodity exporters, they opposed the high
tariff policies of the Federalists). The Federalists tended to be concentrated in New
England and the coastal regions of the Middle Atlantic States (New York, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Delaware). Because of the colonial legacy of geographic based
representation, throughout U. S. history the major political parties have tended to be
16
concentrated geographically. However, this tendency has almost always been secondary
to the basic split between the two major political parties on economic policy.
Although Figure 1 shows a clear separation between the Jeffersonians and
Federalists with the Jeffersonians on the liberal or left side of the economic dimension, it
is important to note that the ideological spectrum in U. S. politics is truncated. No one
advocated taking private property or socializing resources. Thomas Jefferson was a great
believer in the importance of private property rights as one of the pillars of liberty. He
swallowed his considerable distaste for government action not explicitly authorized by
the Constitution when he purchased the Louisiana territory from the French thereby
instantly doubling the land area of the country. 13 He did so because his vision for the
United States was an endless sea of yeoman farmers stretching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Oceans. Alexander Hamilton despised farmers and regarded them as “people of
no particular importance.” In contrast, Jefferson believed men (farmers) “habituated to
think for themselves” were easier to govern than city dwellers “debased by ignorance,
indolence, and oppression.” The debate was over levels of taxes and tariffs not over
taking property from one group and giving it to another group or the government.
The War of 1812 deeply split the U. S. and was a disaster for the Federalists. The
maritime areas in New England opposed the War because their shipping interests would
be severely affected and the British did not blockade the U. S. coastline from New
London, Connecticut northwards. 14 Because the Federalist Party tended to be
concentrated in New England the War led to its loss of legitimacy and it collapsed by
1820. The result was that the U. S. for the only time in its history became a one-party
nation.
17
James Monroe (1817 – 1825) managed to heal the regional rift by touring New
England in early 1817 just before his assuming the Presidency. The cordiality shown by
both sides ushered in the “Era of Good Feelings” and ended the regional crisis.
Although the rift between New England and the rest of the United States was
healed, another more serious rift could no longer be ignored -- slavery. Most of the
Founders believed that slavery was a doomed system and would wither away. Soil
exhaustion in the tobacco growing areas of the Chesapeake Bay region limited the
profitability of tobacco exports. The existence of slavery alongside the rhetoric of the
declaration of independence and the Constitution was a contradiction that was papered
over in the early Republic.
The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1792 revolutionized the slave
system in the United States because it made cotton production profitable. Sugar
production with its high death rate was never very important in the U. S. In contrast, the
major use of slave labor in the Caribbean was sugar. The much lower death rates of
African slaves in the U. S. was in sharp contrast to the slave systems in the rest of the
Western Hemisphere (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Fogel, 1989). By the early 1790s over
80 percent of the African slaves had been born in the United States and the importation of
slaves was banned after 1808.
Cotton cultivation spread rapidly through the Deep South and was immensely
profitable. The economic success of the large cotton plantations resulted in a large
population transfer of African slaves from the old tobacco regions to Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and, eventually, Texas. The geographic spread of slavery and the
geographic character of representation in Congress made the expansion of slavery into
18
the territories a central issue of U. S. politics beginning with the controversy over the
admission of Missouri into the Union in 1820.
The problem Missouri posed was that, although it was not a Deep South cotton
producer, it had a large enough slave population (16.4%) to cause slavery proponents to
seek its admission as a slave state. Congress had the right to set conditions on the
admission of states. Congress could stipulate that slavery would be illegal in the state as
a condition of entry. In 1820 there were 11 free states and 11 slave states. However,
under the Land Ordinance of 1787 (written by Thomas Jefferson) all the territory north of
the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi was closed to slavery. Missouri was west of
the Mississippi but almost the whole state was north of the Ohio River junction with the
Mississippi River. Hence the controversy.
The total population of the United States in 1820 was 9,638,453 of whom
1,771,656 (18.4%) were African slaves (Missouri’s 16.4% slave population was smaller
than any of the 11 slave states). 15 After much debate including attempts to ban future
imports of slaves into Missouri and free all slave children born after 1825 (gradual
Manumission), a compromise was struck. The Compromise of 1820 had three essential
elements: first, Maine, a non-contiguous portion of Massachusetts, was carved out into a
separate free state and admitted in March 1820; second, Missouri was admitted as a slave
state in August 1821, producing a balance of 12 free and 12 slave states; finally, slavery
would be prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30´ latitude
(the southern border of Missouri).
The Compromise was doomed to eventually unravel. In the 40-year period
between the admission of Missouri and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, only 3
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slave states south of the 36°30´ latitude were admitted to the Union. In contrast, 6 free
states, including 3 in the area closed to slavery by the Missouri Compromise, were
admitted by 1859. Indeed, the attempt to undo the Compromise in the 1850s triggered
the Civil War (1861-65).
The Emergence of Mass-Based Political Parties
Bubbling below the surface during the early period of U. S. history was a second
Revolution – a “Revolution From Below” that demanded popular election of all offices
and true mass democracy. It was the “Rise of the Common Man” (Hofstadter, Miller,
and Aaron, 1959, v. 1, ch. 13) that culminated in the emergence of mass-based political
parties and the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. In 1790 there were 13 States and by
1821 there were 24 states. As the population spilled over the Appalachian Mountains and
into the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, new states were formed and admitted into the
Union. These new states largely dropped property qualifications for voting and made
almost all offices popularly elected. This put pressure on the remaining older states to
follow suit. In the original Constitution the President was chosen by electors who were in
turn chosen by the states. The President was not popularly elected. However, some
states did allow the general public to vote on the slates of electors (who were pledged to
vote for a particular candidate). The new states all allowed popular vote for the electors.
In 1800 only 2 states chose the electors by popular vote; by 1824, 18 of 24 States used
popular vote; by 1828, 22 of 24 States by popular vote (only Delaware and South
Carolina held out); and by 1832 all 24 States by popular vote. Turnout of eligible voters
sharply increased reaching 25 percent in 1824 (324,000 votes, white males only) and 60
20
percent in 1828 (1,100,000 votes). By the 1840s 80 percent of the eligible voters
participated (still only white males, but no property qualifications in most states).
The watershed event was the 1824 election which was a four-way contest between
four Jeffersonian-Republicans including Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams (son
of President John Adams). Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the
electoral votes but lost the election in the House of Representatives to Adams. This
enraged Jackson and with his followers, most importantly Martin Van Buren of New
York, organized the first true mass based political party (the Democrats) (Hofstadter,
1969). Jackson won by a wide margin in 1828. The opposition party (at first antiJacksons) later became known as the Whig Party. This two-party system lasted until the
early 1850s.
Figure 2 shows the spatial map for the 30th U. S. Senate (1847-48) that served
during the last two years of James K. Polk’s presidency (1845 – 1849). In the figure I
show the Northern and Southern 16 members of both parties. The lower case “d”’s are the
Northern Democrats and the lower case “w”’s are the Northern Whigs. Their Southern
counterparts are denoted with “s”’s and “x”’s, respectively.
21
The regional divisions in both political parties are clearly displayed in Figure 2.
The primary dimension is still economics – taxes, tariffs, and so on. The second
dimension is North vs. South on the issue of slavery. During this period of history the
great question was the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United
States. Note the slight counter-clock-wise tilt of the two parties. Most voting in
Congress was concerned with economics-related issues but by this time the slavery issue
had heated up to the point that its importance was rising fast. Hence the tilt.
The territorial question was exacerbated by the war with Mexico from 1846 to
1848. Texas had won its independence from Mexico in 1836 and President Andrew
22
Jackson’s last act as President in March of 1837 was to recognize the Republic of Texas.
Thereafter there had been considerable agitation for the annexation of Texas by the
United States but because slavery was established along the gulf coast of Texas, it would
have to enter the Union as a slave state. James K. Polk won the presidential election of
1844 in part with the slogan “Reoccupation of Oregon and reannexation of Texas.”
Before he took office President John Tyler got Congress to pass a joint resolution
admitting Texas to the Union on 18 February 1845 much to the displeasure of Mexico.
President Polk (1845 – 1849) managed to provoke a war with Mexico in April of
1846, with a U. S. victory in September of 1847. The shortness of the war was a surprise.
The U. S. had not fought a war since 1812 and a quick victory was unexpected. The war
was opposed by most of the Whig Party and after the victory the central question became
whether the territories acquired from Mexico – most of which was below the 36 degree
30 minute parallel -- could be admitted as slave states. Indeed, the act admitting Texas
into the Union provided for Texas dividing itself into five states if it so wished. This was
seen as a way to balance the many Free states that would almost certainly be admitted
west of the Mississippi River in the old Louisiana Purchase. However, it was clear to the
Texans that only the gulf coast area would probably enter as a slave state so dividing the
state was never given serious consideration (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2000).
The Civil War (1861 – 65) and its Lasting Impact on U. S. Politics
Attempts to craft compromises on the territorial issue ultimately failed. For a
time “popular sovereignty” wherein the residents of a territory desiring admission to the
U. S. would vote on whether to legalize slavery within their new state seemed like an
ideal solution. It did not work. The great Compromise of 1850 attempted to give
23
everyone something – California was admitted as a free state (because of its gold), the U.
S. assumed Texas’ debt, the Southerners got a fugitive slave law, and so on. The result
was the collapse of the Whig Political party because its stronghold in New England was
opposed to slavery on moral grounds and could not stomach the fugitive slave law.
The result was a collapse of the political party system that had emerged in the
1820s and the emergence of the Republican Party beginning 1854-56. Figure 3 shows
the spatial map for the 35th U. S. House (1857-58) that served during the first two years
of James Buchanan’s presidency (1857 – 1861). The lower case “d”’s are the Northern
Democrats, the lower case “s”’s are the Southern Democrats, the “r”’s are the
Republicans, and the “a”’s are the American (“Know-Nothing”) Party members.
24
The primary dimension is now concerned with slavery with the Southern
Democrats furthest to the left followed by the remains of the Democratic Party in the
North. The Democratic Party managed to barely hold itself together primarily by
papering over the divisions on slavery by emphasizing its pro-White policies (Gerring,
1998). The second dimension is barely present and is very weakly related to nativism –
that is, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiments of the American or “Know Nothing”
Party.
25
It was only a matter of time before the United States split into two nations
peacefully or a war between the states would break out. The Civil War lasted almost
exactly four years – April 1861 to April 1865. Like most major wars in human history,
the combatants had no idea at the outset what they had gotten into or how the war would
take on a life of its own. 17 The U. S. Civil War was a bloodbath. The largest land armies
assembled in human history (to that time) were thrown into battle. By 1863 the North
had 1,000,000 men under arms and the South 650,000. Battles involving over 100,000
men were commonplace and some reached 200,000. The total number of dead was
618,000 (more than any other war fought by the U. S.) with at least 500,000 wounded. It
devastated the Southern states and their people to such an extent that the South did not
fully recover from the war for 100 years.
The cost of the Civil War was a staggering $6.7 billion in the currency of the
time. This was four times all government expenditures, 1789 to 1860; 17 times 1860
export earnings; and it could have purchased all the African slaves at prevailing market
prices, given each family 40 acres and a mule, and $3.5 billion would have been left over.
The indirect costs -- hypothetical (consumption if no War) versus actual consumption
over time discounted by the prevailing interest rate – were a total of $14.7 billion (Goldin
and Lewis, 1975). The Southern economy was ruined and the spread of hookworm due
to the war devastated the rural white and African population until it was eradicated early
in the 20th Century (Coelho and McGuire, 1997; Brinkley, 1997).
The political legacy of the Civil War was to turn the Southern states into a bastion
of the Democratic Party until the 1970s. African-Americans after a short period of
freedom were walled off from the Southern whites by “Jim Crow” laws and systematic
26
segregation that was not to be relieved until the 1960s. The economic legacy was
widespread poverty for both races. The tremendous economic expansion that made the
United States the largest economy in the World in 1892 occurred in the North leaving the
South a third world country inside the boundaries of the United States.
The Democrat-Republican Party System: 1879 - 2008
The political system that emerged after the final withdrawal of the Union troops
from the Southern states after the 1876 presidential election was in many respects a return
to the old Democrat vs. Whig system except now the regional divisions were over the use
of gold and silver as currency rather than slavery. Race related issues were to be
submerged until the latter part of the 1930s. The primary dimension again becomes
economics.
Figure 4 shows the spatial map for the 53rd U. S. House (1893-94) that served
during the first two years of Grover Cleveland’s second Presidential term (1885-89 and
1893 – 97). 18 The lower case “d”’s are the Northern Democrats, the lower case “s”’s are
the Southern Democrats, the “r”’s are the Republicans, the “p”’s are Populists, and the
“x”’s are Silverists.
27
The primary dimension is economics. The Southern Democrats tend to be the
furthest to the left reflecting the strong support for populism in the agrarian South. The
Western state Democrats (where populism also was strong) are intermingled with the
Southerners. The Republicans are on the right. The weak second dimension picked up
divisions on the use of both gold and silver as currency. Many southerners, westerners,
and the populists are high on the second dimension. The farm states in the interior of the
United States plus the western states where the silver mines were concentrated favored
the “free coinage of silver.” That is, the favored solution to the problem of deflation was
28
for the government to buy the silver from the western mines, coin it into dollars, and
place it in circulation.
The wide gulf between the Democrats and Republicans is a reflection of the
divisiveness of the economic issues of that time. This Congress occurred near the peak of
the industrialization of the United States. By 1892 the U. S. was the World’s largest
economy. Real per capita income tripled from 1869 to about 1914 while the population
increased a factor of 2.5 -- from about 40 million to about 105 million. By 1914 the U. S.
produced 36% of the World’ manufactured goods, steel output exceeded the combined
capacity of the main combatants in World War I (Germany and Britain), produced more
coal than all of Europe combined, and had approximately 563,000 km of railroad track of
which 464,000 km was main line track. The pace of industrialization was so rapid that
the index of manufacturing doubled between 1900 and 1914. This translates into a per
capita income growth rate of 2.2 percent annually from 1870 to 1913.
This rapid growth produced enormous social changes that rippled through the
political system. The money supply – still based in gold and silver coin (there was no
central bank until 1913) -- could not keep pace so that from 1866 to 1896 there was a
steady deflation with falling commodity prices. The spread of the railroad network
across the Mississippi River and into the Great Plains changed agriculture from a
subsistence system to a market-based system in just twenty years. Farmers blamed the
falling prices they received for their crops on mortgage companies, “speculators”, grain
elevators, and the railroads (Higgs, 1971; Mayhew, 1972; McGuire, 1981; Eichengreen,
1984). In fact, the cost of shipping as a percent of the farm price fell during this period
(Williamson, 1974).
29
In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act and for the first time the U.
S. government regulated an entire industry – the railroads. The dissatisfaction of the
farmers coupled with complaints about discriminatory pricing by businesses and cities
forced Congress to act. However, even with the widespread dislike of the railroads (it
was known as the “Railroad problem”) out and out confiscation of railroad property was
never seriously considered (the railroads were briefly “nationalized” during World War I)
because the norm of private property rights was so strong in U. S. politics.
Industrialization also produced a huge change in the nature of employment. By
1915 more people were employed in manufacturing than in agriculture. Working
conditions in the factories and mills were appalling. Twelve hours a day and seven days
a week men worked in close proximity to belts that ran machines with no safety
equipment. A worker was one accident away from poverty. Consequently, labor
agitation for better wages and working conditions increased rapidly in the latter part of
the 19th Century. Again, the goal of these labor unions was not to socialize private
property. Rather, like the men who struck Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Works in
1892, they simply wanted better wages and better treatment. But like the men of the
Homestead Strike, the unions were fiercely opposed by the industrialists who more often
than not were backed by the federal courts and the U. S. government. It was not until the
Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) of 1935 that U. S. workers were guaranteed
the right of collective bargaining.
These economic-based divisions are shown clearly in Figures 5 and 6. Figures 5
and 6 show the average positions of Democratic and Republican legislators in the House
of Representatives from the end of Reconstruction through the 110th Congress (1879 –
30
2007) on the liberal-conservative and regional dimensions. 19 The most notable features
are: (1) the long rightward drift on the first dimension of the southern Democrats after
World War I, followed by a reverse movement to the left that began in the late 1960s; (2)
the slow drift leftward of the Republicans on the first dimension beginning in the early
1900s with a turn back to right beginning in the early 1970s; and (3) the emergence of a
significant second dimension related to Civil Rights that split the northern and southern
Democrats from the late 1930s onward. The forces driving these changes in the party
means over time are the same for both chambers. The correlation between the House and
Senate Republican first dimension means is .94 and for the Democrats the correlation is
.84. 20 Despite the institutional differences in the method of election and the length of
term served, the basic forces driving U. S. politics affect the two chambers equally over
time.
31
The political party system of the 1940s and 1950s emerged during the latter part
of the New Deal when, in the wake of the 1936 elections, northern Democrats heavily
outnumbered southern Democrats in Congress. Many of the programs initiated during
the subsequent Second New Deal (1937-38) were not to the liking of the South. Voting
on minimum wages in 1937 and 1938 split the Democratic Party because southerners did
not want minimum wages paid to southern agricultural workers (many of whom were
African-American). Northern and Southern Democrats were again deeply split during
World War II by voting on the poll tax (used to keep southern blacks from voting) and
voting rights in the armed forces (would state law or federal law decide who was eligible
to vote). 21 Voting in Congress became two dimensional in order to differentiate
northerners from southerners on civil rights and related votes.
Figure 7 shows the spatial map for the 80th U. S. House (1947-48) that served
during the last two years of Harry Truman’s (1945-53) first Presidential term 22 that
32
occurred at the peak of the regional separation of the Northern and Southern Democrats
shown in Figure 6. The lower case “d”’s are the Northern Democrats, the lower case
“s”’s are the Southern Democrats, and the “r”’s are the Republicans.
The three-party structure of U. S. politics during this period is clearly shown in
the Figure. The Northern and Southern Democrats are distinct clusters reflecting the
deep split within the Party. During this period every coalition of two of the three
“parties” occurred. The Northern and Southern Democrats voted together to organize
Congress and distribute the spoils due to the majority party. The Southern Democrats
and the Republicans were known as the “Conservative Coalition” that for most of this
33
period had majority control in the sense that they could block liberal policies not to their
liking. Finally, the Republicans and Northern Democrats formed a coalition versus the
Southern Democrats to pass the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s.
The rapid decline in the importance of the second dimension after the passage of
the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s reflects the realignment of the South towards the
Republican Party. 23 During the past 30 years Republicans have moved steadily to the
right on the liberal-conservative dimension with conservatives replacing more moderate
Republicans outside the southern states and conservatives replacing moderate and
conservative Democrats in the South. The effect has been a right-ward movement on the
liberal-conservative dimension of the Republican Party as a whole. As a result the
number of southern Democrats declined and as a group they became much more liberal.
This is also shown by the fact that the means of the two parties on the second dimension
have drawn closer together reflecting the declining importance of region in accounting
for roll call voting in Congresses since the 1980s. The regional differences within the
Democratic Party have almost completely disappeared. These trends have continued
through the 110th Congress (2007-08) in both the House and the Senate. 24
Figure 8 shows the 108th (2003-04) that served during the last two years of
George W. Bush’s first Presidential term (2001-09) that occurred after the realignment of
the South into the Republican Party. The lower case “d”’s are the Northern Democrats,
the lower case “s”’s are the Southern Democrats, and the “r”’s are the Republicans.
34
In recent Congresses there is very little differentiation between Northern and
Southern Democrats. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, and the 1968 Open Housing Act, the second dimension slowly declined in
importance and is now almost totally absent. Race related issues – affirmative action,
welfare, Medicaid, subsidized housing, etc. – are now questions of redistribution. Voting
on race related issues now largely takes place along the liberal-conservative dimension
and the old split in the Democratic Party between North and South has largely
disappeared. Voting in Congress is now almost purely one-dimensional – a single
35
dimension accounts for about 93 percent of roll call voting choices in the 110th House and
Senate – and the two parties are increasingly polarized.
Although the old regional issues have largely disappeared traces still linger in
what are called the “social” or “lifestyle/cultural” issues – abortion, gay rights, gun
control, school prayer, and other similar issues. Because the South tends to be a bit more
conservative on these lifestyle issues there is still a tiny bit of differentiation within the
Democratic Party. However, there are many Midwestern and Western Democrats who
are “conservative” on these issues so the regional component is very weak. Indeed,
reflecting the long run impact of the geographic-based system of representation from the
British colonial period, now the geographic effect tends to be the major U. S. cities which
are heavily liberal Democratic versus the rural areas on many of these lifestyle issues.
The Polarization of Modern U. S. Politics
The wide gulf between the two parties on the economic dimension reflects the
dramatic polarization of the two political parties in the past 40 years. Figure 9 shows the
difference between the Democrat and Republican Party means for the postReconstruction period. Polarization as measured by the distance between the two major
party means on the first dimension declined in both chambers from roughly the beginning
of the 20th Century until World War II. It was then fairly stable until the mid 1970s and
has been increasing steadily over the past 40 years. The polarization trend is essentially
the same in both chambers. The correlation between the two series is .92 echoing the
point above about the basic political forces affecting the two chambers equally.
36
Moderates have virtually disappeared during the past 40 years and the parties
have pulled apart. In the early 1970s there was considerable overlap of the two political
parties. In the past ten years that overlap has almost completely disappeared. In addition
to the pulling apart of the two parties, the Republican Party is now skewed to the right
with a sizable bulge in its right flank. In contrast, the old right flank of the Democratic
party composed mostly of southerners is now gone. To reiterate the point I made above,
Republicans have moved steadily to the right on the liberal-conservative dimension with
conservatives replacing more moderate Republicans outside the southern states and
conservatives replacing moderate and conservative Democrats in the South.
Figure 10 compares the ideological distributions of the members of Congress for
three Congresses over the past 40 years -- the 90th (1967-68), the 100th (1987-88), and the
110th (2007). In each Congress I show the positions of Senators Clinton, Obama, and
McCain and President George W. Bush for reference. The Democrats are on the left (the
37
solid line smoothed histogram) and the Republicans are on the right (the dotted line
smoothed histogram).
During the past 40 years the political parties have steadily diverged ideologically
to the point that they are further apart than at any time since the end of Reconstruction.
This polarization is clearly evident in Figure 10. Forty years ago Senator McCain at 0.33
38
would have been to the right of the Republican mean at 0.25. Twenty years later in the
100th Congress McCain would have been slightly left of the Republican mean at 0.34. By
2007 the Republican mean had shifted all the way out to 0.47 and President Bush at 0.76
was now within the Republican Caucus. Senators Clinton and Obama would have been
very liberal forty years ago in the 90th Congress when the Democratic Party mean was
-0.26. By the 100th Congress the Democratic Party mean was -0.30 and by 2007 it had
moved all the way out to -0.37.
Figure 11 shows just the 110th (2007) Congress with a variety of important
members for reference. The Democrats are on the left (the solid line smoothed
histogram) and the Republicans are on the right (the dotted line smoothed histogram).
39
Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is one of the furthest left legislators in
Congress and was Senator John McCain’s partner in passing the campaign finance reform
law in 2004. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California is in the left wing whereas both Senator
Obama of Illinois and Senator Clinton of New York are near the middle of the
distribution of Congressional Democrats. Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid of Nevada
and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut are in the right wing of the Democratic
Party. Finally, Senator McCain of Arizona and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky are in the left wing of the Republican Party.
It is still the case that the left side of the ideological spectrum is truncated in that
there is almost no support for classical socialism in the sense of the federal government
nationalizing industries and directly running large sections of the national economy. In
addition, the norm of private property rights and the right of an inventor or entrepreneur
to “make a buck” is unchallenged.
Why is the U. S. political system so polarized? There is no clear answer but there
is some evidence that elite polarization is related to income inequality and immigration
(McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2006). The mass public does not appear to be as
polarized as the elites. Public opinion on most issues appears nicely “bell-shaped” with
large numbers of people taking moderate or centrist positions (DiMaggio, Evans, and
Bryson, 1996; Fiorina, 2005). However, strong party identifiers have increasingly
polarized over the past 30 years and they are likelier to vote (Jacobson, 2007).
Elite political polarization, income inequality, and immigration have all increased
dramatically in the United States over the past several decades. However, these increases
have followed an equally dramatic decline over the first seven decades of the twentieth
40
century. All three have moved roughly in tandem since the passage of the Income Tax
Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (ratified in 1913) that allowed the federal
government to tax individual incomes. Figure 12 shows the percentage share of all
income garnered by the top one percent of income earners against House polarization and
Figure 13 shows the percent of the U. S. population that was foreign born against House
polarization.
The income data for Figure 12 are from Piketty and Saez (2003). Early in the
series the income share of the top 1% was disproportionately capital income – over 50%
was from dividends, interest, rents, and royalties. At the end of the series over 50% was
from wage income. The percent foreign born data for Figure 13 are from the U.S. Census
and are gathered every ten years. The last point is an estimate from the Census Bureau.
41
At the height of industrial capitalism early in the 20th Century wealth and income
were very unequally distributed. Congress passed an income tax in 1892 but it was
struck down by the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote in 1895. This led to efforts to amend
the Constitution to permit income taxation and that effort was successful in 1913. At first
the rate was very low but after the entry of the United States in World War I the top
marginal rate went up to about 75% and, after falling to about 25% during the 1920s,
from the Great Depression until the 1960s it always exceeded 80%.
Paralleling the movement of the income series, immigration was essentially cut
off in 1924. Until then, the U. S. essentially had an “open doors” policy since the British
Colonial period. The doors were only open the Europeans, however. Immigration from
Asia was discouraged if not outright prohibited (the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) as
was African immigration after the Civil War. After 1924 the percentage of foreign born
42
in the U. S. population steadily fell for the simple reason that it was very difficult to get
into the country. This changed with the immigration reform act that was passed in 1965.
The new system abolished the racial (area) quotas and switched the emphasis to family
reunion. The unforeseen consequence of the policy change was the enormous increase in
immigration from Latin America and Asia. These immigrants tended to be lower on the
income scale relative to the European immigrants and this has exacerbated income
inequality in the U. S.
Immigration, income inequality, and political polarization interact in ways that are
as yet not fully understood. Social, economic, and political phenomena are mutually
causal. For example, immigration might lead to policies that increase economic
inequality if immigrants are at the bottom of the income distribution and do not have the
right to vote (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2006). There are no easy answers to the
problem of income inequality in the United States and the high level of polarization
makes any kind of elite consensus almost impossible to reach.
Conclusion
The political-economic system of the United States originated in the British North
American colonies. Representative democracy and private property rights were
established from the beginning and shaped everything that was to follow. In addition, the
nature of the settlement of the eastern seaboard produced geographic based
representation; that is, the norm that the representative must physically live in the
area/town that he represented in the local legislature. This norm became enshrined in the
Constitution guaranteeing that mass based political parties would almost always have
some regional concentration. In addition, because the U. S. always used the English style
43
plurality election system (the candidate with the most votes wins), this strongly biased the
system towards just two political parties.
Through most of U. S. history there have been two major mass based political
parties. A “Left” party represents the less well off and the “Right” party represents the
somewhat better off. To be competitive both the “Left” and “Right” parties had to aim
their appeals at people of middling incomes. Because of the nature of the system of
representation both parties have tended to be internally divided over regional issues. For
most of U. S. history this regional issue has been concerned with race.
The beginning of the modern trend to greater polarization began with the break
down of the three party system in the late 1960s. For almost 50 years the United States
had a three political party system (late 1930s to early 1980s). In Congress all three
parties easily formed coalitions with one of the others against the third depending on the
issue at hand. The northern and southern Democrats united to organize the House and
Senate and thereby seize the spoils due the “majority” party. The northern Democrats
and Republicans united to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act
and the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and southern Democrats united to block
liberal economic (and in the 1970s, social) policies.
The demise of this system began with the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy (1961 – 63). President Lyndon Johnson (1963 – 69) was able to do what
Kennedy was unable to do – push fundamental civil rights legislation through Congress.
This was followed by President Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory over an “extremist”
Barry Goldwater that produced a liberal northern Democratic Congressional majority for
the first time since 1936. This destabilized the Democratic coalition. Democrats in the
44
89th Congress (1965-66) no longer required southern support to pass expansive federal
programs. These programs along with other redistributive programs initiated by the
federal courts – mandatory school busing to alleviate racial disparities in the public
schools being the most conspicuous – led to a polarizing backlash 25 in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. The effects of this backlash were blunted by the Watergate scandal (197274) and the Republican Party did not fully recover its footing until the 1980 elections.
The old southern Democratic Party has, in effect, disintegrated, and with it the
disappearance of the second dimension of congressional voting. Race has been drawn
into the first dimension because race-related issues are increasingly questions of
redistribution. In addition, the “social/lifestyle” issues are increasingly being drawn into
the main dimension of conflict. The end result is that the Democrat and Republican
parties have become more homogeneous and are now deeply polarized. The moderates
are gone and we are left with a polarized, unidimensional U. S. Congress.
Are there any lessons from the U. S. experience that are useful for other
countries? I am quite reluctant to make any generalizations because U. S. diplomats and
politicians have been making simplistic statements for decades about how U.S.
institutions should be tried in other countries because they have been proven to “work.”
To some extent this is true. There is little argument that Democratic Capitalism, to
paraphrase Winston Churchill, is the worst possible system except for all the others.
North and Thomas (1973) make a compelling historical case for how the emergence of
government guaranteed private property rights in England and the Netherlands made
them economically successful while other European countries lagged behind. However,
this process was highly path dependent and at many historical junctures very tenuous
45
indeed (North and Weingast, 1989). The success of the U.S. is a product of a unique set
of circumstances that produced a political culture that valued both representative
democracy and private property rights. This political culture cannot be forced upon other
countries that do not have this experience (North, Summerhill, and Weingast, 2000).
As to the problem of how to keep a Democratic Capitalist country from polarizing
as the United States now has, I can only answer that political institutions must be
designed so that not all interests line up along a single dimension of conflict. How to do
that I do not know. I can only hope that in the coming decades the U. S. depolarizes
before it is too late.
46
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Phillips, Kevin B. 1969. The Emerging Republican Majority. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Co.
Piketty, Thomas and Emmanuel Saez. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States,
1913 – 1998.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1):1-39.
Poole, Keith T. 1990. "Least Squares Metric, Unidimensional Scaling of Multivariate
Linear Models." Psychometrika, 55:123-149.
50
Poole, Keith T. 2005. Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Poole, Keith T. and Howard Rosenthal. 1984. “The Polarization of American Politics.”
Journal of Politics, 46: 1061-1079.
Poole, Keith T. and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History
of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.
Poole, Keith T. and Howard Rosenthal. 2001. "D-NOMINATE After 10 Years: An
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Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc.
Schattschneider, Eric E. 1942. Party Government. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Schattschneider, Eric E. 1960. The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of
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Walton, Gary M. and James F. Shepherd. 1979. The Economic Rise of Early America.
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52
Endnotes
1
There has been an explosion of applications of the spatial (geometric) model of choice
in the past ten years. Poole (2005) has an extensive bibliography.
2
Hofstadter (1948/1973, p. xxx) states it this way: “The sanctity of private property, the
right of the individual to dispose of and invest it, the value of opportunity, and the natural
evolution of self-interest and self-assertion, within broad legal limits, into a beneficent
social order have been staple tenets of the central faith in American political
ideologies…” Gerring (1998) in his history of party ideologies argues against both
Hofstadter and Hartz. In Gerring’s view “American political culture has been a looser
constraint on the development of party ideologies than was hitherto supposed” (p. 41).
At bottom this is a debate about the absence of a true socialist party or broad mass
socialist movement in American history – in short, a truncated ideological spectrum. In
my opinion, Gerring is correct that Hartz overstates his case. However, the fact remains
that private property rights and the primacy of the common law and the courts that
enforce it, have never been seriously challenged in U. S. history. The importance of the
common law lies in its English origins. “Medieval common law was principally land
law……for several centuries every family fortune in England has been protected and
regulated by intricate rules of common law……Thanks to the rise of Parliament in the
Middle Ages and to the medieval evolution of the House of Commons, English property
owners thereafter had a channel for the expression of alarm and opposition to sudden,
revolutionary changes in the law of Property” (Hogue, 1966, p. 246-247).
3
A larger set of interest group data were analyzed in Poole (1990). The results confirm
our 1984 analysis.
53
4
I borrowed this analogy from Jordan Ellenberg, who used it in an article about our
political polarization research (Ellenberg, 2001).
5
The second amendment to the U. S. Constitution states that “A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms, shall not be infringed.” The controversy is whether or not U. S. citizens have an
individual right to own firearms or whether the right of individuals to own firearms is
derivative of the right of the States to field militias. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled
that the right to own firearms is an individual right but they left it unclear how much
regulation of firearms was permissible by the States.
6
Technically, land tenure refers to the manner in which and the period for which rights
in land are held. In this regard, property is rights, not things. “The things are property
objects, and tenure is concerned with rights in these things” (Harris, 1970, p.2). Tenure
in land is a bundle of rights and rights in land held by a private party is an estate in land.
See Harris (1970, pp.1-10) for a full discussion of these definitions.
7
In feudal England these were: 1) Homage; 2) Fealty; 3) Wardship; 4) Marriage; 5)
Relief; 6) primer seisin; 7) Aids; 8) fines for Alienation; and 9) Escheat. See Harris,
1970, pp. 25-27 for a full discussion of these definitions.
8
Technically, the characteristics of free and common socage were: 1) it was perpetual;
2) it could be inherited; 3) it could be passed in a will; 4) obligations were fixed and
certain; 5) the owner had the right to waste; 6) it was freely alienable (you could sell it,
etc.).
9
Indeed, unlike Lenin or Mao, Washington had turned down absolute power and had
retired to his home in Virginia at the end of the war. He did not subvert his Revolution.
54
10
Article V lists how the Constitution can be amended. The last sentence reads: “no
State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” As a
practical matter this makes the Senate permanent because no State would ever agree to
give up its right to two Senators.
11
For example, the argument over the Constitutionality of the National Bank favored by
Alexander Hamilton. Madison and Jefferson claimed it was Unconstitutional because the
national government was not explicitly empowered to charter corporations. Attorney
General Randolph equivocated and Hamilton prevailed. Hamilton argued that Congress
has the power to regulate currency; therefore it had the implied power to establish a Bank
to issue Currency. Washington decided in favor of Hamilton. Washington tended to side
with the “staff officer” who had authority over the subject matter area. It passed in
House on 8 February 1791 by 39 – 20, 36 of the 39 came from commercial areas, 19 of
the 20 were from the South. In the Senate the 3rd reading of the bill (passage) was on 24
February 1791 by 22 – 3. There was no pattern to the Nay voters; two were Jeffersonians
and one was a Federalist.
12
Schattschneider (1942; 1960) argues that mass based political parties were essential for
making the federal government work and preserving democracy.
13
Specifically, the Constitution did not explicitly delegate power to the Executive to
purchase foreign territory. Jefferson initially wanted to amend the Constitution to
specifically authorize such a purchase. However, he was warned that it was essential to
move quickly so he authorized the purchase on his own authority. See Hofstadter, Miller,
and Aaron (1959, volume 1, p. 314-318), Morison and Commager (1942, volume 1, p.
389-392), and Morison (1965, p. 363-367) for detailed discussions.
55
14
Hofstadter, Miller, and Aaron (1959, volume 1, chapter 11), Morison and Commager
(1942, volume 1, chapter 20), and Morison (1965, chapter 24) have comprehensive
discussions of the circumstances surrounding the War of 1812 and its aftermath.
15
For the Southern states, the percentage of the total population that were slaves in 1820
was: Alabama, 33%; Delaware, 23%; Georgia, 44%; Kentucky, 23%; Louisiana, 52%;
Maryland, 36%; Mississippi, 44%; North Carolina, 34%; South Carolina, 53%;
Tennessee, 20%; and Virginia, 50% (Source, Historical Statistics of the United States,
series A 195-209).
16
I use the Congressional Quarterly definition of South – the eleven states of the
Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.
17
For example, see Barbara Tuchman’s account of the events leading up to August, 1914
(Tuchman, 1962). Also see her book The Proud Tower (1966) about the social milieu of
the elites in Europe and the U. S. who triggered the Great War.
18
Grover Cleveland was the only U. S. President who served two terms that were not
contiguous.
19
For Congresses 46 – 99 (1879 – 1986) the patterns are essentially the same as those
shown in Poole and Rosenthal (1997, p. 62-63, Fig. 4.3, 4.4).
20
The correlation of the two chamber means was .77. As Rosenthal and I noted in
Congress (p. 63), cross-chamber differences are affected by party ratios within the
respective chambers and these tend to lower the correlation between the chamber means.
21
22
See Poole and Rosenthal, 1997, chapter 5.
Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vice President and became President when
Roosevelt died in April of 1945.
56
23
See Carmines and Stimson, 1989; Poole and Rosenthal 1997; McCarty, Poole, and
Rosenthal, 2006.
24
Graphs of party means for the Senate are very similar to those for the House shown in
Figures 5 and 6.
25
The reasons for this polarization are discussed in Phillips (1969) and Scammon and
Wattenberg (1970).
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The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the
Preservation of the Union
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, December 18, 1787.
Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THE necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the
preservation of the Union, is the point at the examination of which we are now arrived.
This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three branches the objects to be provided for by
the federal government, the quantity of power necessary to the accomplishment of those
objects, the persons upon whom that power ought to operate. Its distribution and
organization will more properly claim our attention under the succeeding head.
The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the
members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as
external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States;
the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.
The authorities essential to the
common defense are these: to
raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the government of both; to
direct their operations; to provide for their support. These powers ought to exist without
limitation, BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND
VARIETY OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND
VARIETY OF THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The
circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no
constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is
committed. This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such
circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are
appointed to preside over the common defense.
This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind, carries its own
evidence along with it; and may be obscured, but cannot be made plainer by argument or
reasoning. It rests upon axioms as simple as they are universal; the MEANS ought to be
proportioned to the END; the persons, from whose agency the attainment of any END is
expected, ought to possess the MEANS by which it is to be attained.
Whether there ought to be a federal government intrusted with the care of the common
defense, is a question in the first instance, open for discussion; but the moment it is
decided in the affirmative, it will follow, that that government ought to be clothed with all
the powers requisite to complete execution of its trust. And unless it can be shown that
the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain
determinate limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally
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disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary consequence, that there can be no
limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the
community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any matter essential to the
FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the NATIONAL FORCES.
Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be, this principle appears to
have been fully recognized by the framers of it; though they have not made proper or
adequate provision for its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make
requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to direct their operations.
As their requisitions are made constitutionally binding upon the States, who are in fact
under the most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them, the intention
evidently was that the United States should command whatever resources were by them
judged requisite to the "common defense and general welfare." It was presumed that a
sense of their true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good faith, would be found
sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of the duty of the members to the federal
head.
The experiment has, however, demonstrated that this expectation was ill-founded and
illusory; and the observations, made under the last head, will, I imagine, have sufficed to
convince the impartial and discerning, that there is an absolute necessity for an entire
change in the first principles of the system; that if we are in earnest about giving the
Union energy and duration, we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the
States in their collective capacities; we must extend the laws of the federal government to
the individual citizens of America; we must discard the fallacious scheme of quotas and
requisitions, as equally impracticable and unjust. The result from all this is that the Union
ought to be invested with full power to levy troops; to build and equip fleets; and to raise
the revenues which will be required for the formation and support of an army and navy, in
the customary and ordinary modes practiced in other governments.
If the circumstances of our country are such as to demand a compound instead of a
simple, a confederate instead of a sole, government, the essential point which will remain
to be adjusted will be to discriminate the OBJECTS, as far as it can be done, which shall
appertain to the different provinces or departments of power; allowing to each the most
ample authority for fulfilling the objects committed to its charge. Shall the Union be
constituted the guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and armies and revenues
necessary to this purpose? The government of the Union must be empowered to pass all
laws, and to make all regulations which have relation to them. The same must be the
case in respect to commerce, and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is
permitted to extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of the same
State the proper department of the local governments? These must possess all the
authorities which are connected with this object, and with every other that may be allotted
to their particular cognizance and direction. Not to confer in each case a degree of power
commensurate to the end, would be to violate the most obvious rules of prudence and
propriety, and improvidently to trust the great interests of the nation to hands which are
disabled from managing them with vigor and success.
Who is likely to make suitable provisions for the public defense, as that body to which the
guardianship of the public safety is confided; which, as the centre of information, will best
understand the extent and urgency of the dangers that threaten; as the representative of
the WHOLE, will feel itself most deeply interested in the preservation of every part;
which, from the responsibility implied in the duty assigned to it, will be most sensibly
impressed with the necessity of proper exertions; and which, by the extension of its
authority throughout the States, can alone establish uniformity and concert in the plans
and measures by which the common safety is to be secured? Is there not a manifest
inconsistency in devolving upon the federal government the care of the general defense,
and leaving in the State governments the EFFECTIVE powers by which it is to be
provided for? Is not a want of co-operation the infallible consequence of such a system?
And will not weakness, disorder, an undue distribution of the burdens and calamities of
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war, an unnecessary and intolerable increase of expense, be its natural and inevitable
concomitants? Have we not had unequivocal experience of its effects in the course of the
revolution which we have just accomplished?
Every view we may take of the subject, as candid inquirers after truth, will serve to
convince us, that it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal government an
unconfined authority, as to all those objects which are intrusted to its management. It will
indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful attention of the people, to see that it be
modeled in such a manner as to admit of its being safely vested with the requisite
powers. If any plan which has been, or may be, offered to our consideration, should not,
upon a dispassionate inspection, be found to answer this description, it ought to be
rejected. A government, the constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the
powers which a free people OUGHT TO DELEGATE TO ANY GOVERNMENT, would be
an unsafe and improper depositary of the NATIONAL INTERESTS. Wherever THESE can
with propriety be confided, the coincident powers may safely accompany them. This is
the true result of all just reasoning upon the subject. And the adversaries of the plan
promulgated by the convention ought to have confined themselves to showing, that the
internal structure of the proposed government was such as to render it unworthy of the
confidence of the people. They ought not to have wandered into inflammatory
declamations and unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers. The POWERS are
not too extensive for the OBJECTS of federal administration, or, in other words, for the
management of our NATIONAL INTERESTS; nor can any satisfactory argument be
framed to show that they are chargeable with such an excess. If it be true, as has been
insinuated by some of the writers on the other side, that the difficulty arises from the
nature of the thing, and that the extent of the country will not permit us to form a
government in which such ample powers can safely be reposed, it would prove that we
ought to contract our views, and resort to the expedient of separate confederacies, which
will move within more practicable spheres. For the absurdity must continually stare us in
the face of confiding to a government the direction of the most essential national
interests, without daring to trust it to the authorities which are indispensible to their proper
and efficient management. Let us not attempt to reconcile contradictions, but firmly
embrace a rational alternative.
I trust, however, that the impracticability of one general system cannot be shown. I am
greatly mistaken, if any thing of weight has yet been advanced of this tendency; and I
flatter myself, that the observations which have been made in the course of these papers
have served to place the reverse of that position in as clear a light as any matter still in
the womb of time and experience can be susceptible of. This, at all events, must be
evident, that the very difficulty itself, drawn from the extent of the country, is the strongest
argument in favor of an energetic government; for any other can certainly never preserve
the Union of so large an empire. If we embrace the tenets of those who oppose the
adoption of the proposed Constitution, as the standard of our political creed, we cannot
fail to verify the gloomy doctrines which predict the impracticability of a national system
pervading entire limits of the present Confederacy.
PUBLIUS.
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The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances
Between the Different Departments
From the New York Packet.
Friday, February 8, 1788.
Alexander Hamilton or James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:
TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the
necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the
Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions
are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior
structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual
relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming
to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general
observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more
correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the
convention.
In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different
powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential
to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its
own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have
as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. Were this
principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme
executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain
of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one
another. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less
difficult in practice than it may in contemplation appear. Some difficulties, however, and
some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Some deviations, therefore,
from the principle must be admitted. In the constitution of the judiciary department in
particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the principle: first, because
peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to
be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications; secondly,
because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department,
must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them.
It is equally evident, that the
members of each department
should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments
annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of
the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely
nominal.
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same
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department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary
constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The
provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the
danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man
must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on
human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of
government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human
nature? 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. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions.
This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives,
might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We
see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the
constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each
may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel
over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the
distribution of the supreme powers of the State.
But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In
republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for
this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them,
by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with
each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the
society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments
by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should
be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it
should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be
the natural defense with which the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it
would be neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it might not
be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary occasions it might be
perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an absolute negative be supplied by some
qualified connection between this weaker department and the weaker branch of the
stronger department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of
the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own department?
If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as I persuade myself
they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the several State constitutions, and to the
federal Constitution it will be found that if the latter does not perfectly correspond with
them, the former are infinitely less able to bear such a test.
There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of
America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view.
First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the
administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a
division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound
republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two
distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and
separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The
different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled
by itself.
Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the
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oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the
other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority
be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but
two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community
independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in
the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination
of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails
in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is
but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well
espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and
may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in
the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and
dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests,
and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little
danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for
civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the
multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security
in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be
presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under
the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper
federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since
it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more
circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be
facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of
citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some
member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased.
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever
will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under
the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy
may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not
secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger
individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government
which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more
powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a
government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can
be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy
and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such
narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities
that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the
voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended
republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects
which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place
on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus
less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to
provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not
dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no
less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been
entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more
duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the
practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and
mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.
PUBLIUS.
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The Real Character of the Executive
From the New York Packet.
Friday, March 14, 1788.
Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
I PROCEED now to trace the real characters of the proposed Executive, as they are
marked out in the plan of the convention. This will serve to place in a strong light the
unfairness of the representations which have been made in regard to it.
The first thing which strikes our attention is, that the executive authority, with few
exceptions, is to be vested in a single magistrate. This will scarcely, however, be
considered as a point upon which any comparison can be grounded; for if, in this
particular, there be a resemblance to the king of Great Britain, there is not less a
resemblance to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven
Mountains, or to the governor of New York.
That magistrate is to be elected
for FOUR years; and is to be
re-eligible as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their
confidence. In these circumstances there is a total dissimilitude between HIM and a king
of Great Britain, who is an HEREDITARY monarch, possessing the crown as a patrimony
descendible to his heirs forever; but there is a close analogy between HIM and a
governor of New York, who is elected for THREE years, and is re-eligible without
limitation or intermission. If we consider how much less time would be requisite for
establishing a dangerous influence in a single State, than for establishing a like influence
throughout the United States, we must conclude that a duration of FOUR years for the
Chief Magistrate of the Union is a degree of permanency far less to be dreaded in that
office, than a duration of THREE years for a corresponding office in a single State.
The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon
conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from
office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary
course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no
constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be
subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important
circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would
stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than
the governors of Maryland and Delaware.
The President of the United States is to have power to return a bill, which shall have
passed the two branches of the legislature, for reconsideration; and the bill so returned is
to become a law, if, upon that reconsideration, it be approved by two thirds of both
houses. The king of Great Britain, on his part, has an absolute negative upon the acts of
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the two houses of Parliament. The disuse of that power for a considerable time past
does not affect the reality of its existence; and is to be ascribed wholly to the crown's
having found the means of substituting influence to authority, or the art of gaining a
majority in one or the other of the two houses, to the necessity of exerting a prerogative
which could seldom be exerted without hazarding some degree of national agitation. The
qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the British
sovereign; and tallies exactly with the revisionary authority of the council of revision of this
State, of which the governor is a constituent part. In this respect the power of the
President would exceed that of the governor of New York, because the former would
possess, singly, what the latter shares with the chancellor and judges; but it would be
precisely the same with that of the governor of Massachusetts, whose constitution, as to
this article, seems to have been the original from which the convention have copied.
The President is to be the "commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United
States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the
United States. He is to have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against
the United States, EXCEPT IN CASES OF IMPEACHMENT; to recommend to the
consideration of Congress such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; to
convene, on extraordinary occasions, both houses of the legislature, or either of them,
and, in case of disagreement between them WITH RESPECT TO THE TIME OF
ADJOURNMENT, to adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; to take care that
the laws be faithfully executed; and to commission all officers of the United States." In
most of these particulars, the power of the President will resemble equally that of the
king of Great Britain and of the governor of New York. The most material points of
difference are these: First. The President will have only the occasional command of such
part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual
service of the Union. The king of Great Britain and the governor of New York have at all
times the entire command of all the militia within their several jurisdictions. In this article,
therefore, the power of the President would be inferior to that of either the monarch or
the governor. Secondly. The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy
of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of
the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing
more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first
General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the
DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all
which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.1 The
governor of New York, on the other hand, is by the constitution of the State vested only
with the command of its militia and navy. But the constitutions of several of the States
expressly declare their governors to be commanders-in-chief, as well of the army as
navy; and it may well be a question, whether those of New Hampshire and
Massachusetts, in particular, do not, in this instance, confer larger powers upon their
respective governors, than could be claimed by a President of the United States. Thirdly.
The power of the President, in respect to pardons, would extend to all cases, EXCEPT
THOSE OF IMPEACHMENT. The governor of New York may pardon in all cases, even in
those of impeachment, except for treason and murder. Is not the power of the governor,
in this article, on a calculation of political consequences, greater than that of the
President? All conspiracies and plots against the government, which have not been
matured into actual treason, may be screened from punishment of every kind, by the
interposition of the prerogative of pardoning. If a governor of New York, therefore, should
be at the head of any such conspiracy, until the design had been ripened into actual
hostility he could insure his accomplices and adherents an entire impunity. A President of
the Union, on the other hand, though he may even pardon treason, when prosecuted in
the ordinary course of law, could shelter no offender, in any degree, from the effects of
impeachment and conviction. Would not the prospect of a total indemnity for all the
preliminary steps be a greater temptation to undertake and persevere in an enterprise
against the public liberty, than the mere prospect of an exemption from death and
confiscation, if the final execution of the design, upon an actual appeal to arms, should
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miscarry? Would this last expectation have any influence at all, when the probability was
computed, that the person who was to afford that exemption might himself be involved in
the consequences of the measure, and might be incapacitated by his agency in it from
affording the desired impunity? The better to judge of this matter, it will be necessary to
recollect, that, by the proposed Constitution, the offense of treason is limited "to levying
war upon the United States, and adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort";
and that by the laws of New York it is confined within similar bounds. Fourthly. The
President can only adjourn the national legislature in the single case of disagreement
about the time of adjournment. The British monarch may prorogue or even dissolve the
Parliament. The governor of New York may also prorogue the legislature of this State for
a limited time; a power which, in certain situations, may be employed to very important
purposes.
The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make
treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The king of Great Britain is
the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of his
own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every other description.
It has been insinuated, that his authority in this respect is not conclusive, and that his
conventions with foreign powers are subject to the revision, and stand in need of the
ratification, of Parliament. But I believe this doctrine was never heard of, until it was
broached upon the present occasion. Every jurist2 of that kingdom, and every other man
acquainted with its Constitution, knows, as an established fact, that the prerogative of
making treaties exists in the crown in its utomst plentitude; and that the compacts entered
into by the royal authority have the most complete legal validity and perfection,
independent of any other sanction. The Parliament, it is true, is sometimes seen
employing itself in altering the existing laws to conform them to the stipulations in a new
treaty; and this may have possibly given birth to the imagination, that its co-operation was
necessary to the obligatory efficacy of the treaty. But this parliamentary interposition
proceeds from a different cause: from the necessity of adjusting a most artificial and
intricate system of revenue and commercial laws, to the changes made in them by the
operation of the treaty; and of adapting new provisions and precautions to the new state
of things, to keep the machine from running into disorder. In this respect, therefore, there
is no comparison between the intended power of the President and the actual power of
the British sovereign. The one can perform alone what the other can do only with the
concurrence of a branch of the legislature. It must be admitted, that, in this instance, the
power of the federal Executive would exceed that of any State Executive. But this arises
naturally from the sovereign power which relates to treaties. If the Confederacy were to
be dissolved, it would become a question, whether the Executives of the several States
were not solely invested with that delicate and important prerogative.
The President is also to be authorized to receive ambassadors and other public ministers.
This, though it has been a rich theme of declamation, is more a matter of dignity than of
authority. It is a circumstance which will be without consequence in the administration of
the government; and it was far more convenient that it should be arranged in this manner,
than that there should be a necessity of convening the legislature, or one of its branches,
upon every arrival of a foreign minister, though it were merely to take the place of a
departed predecessor.
The President is to nominate, and, WITH THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE
SENATE, to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers, judges of the Supreme
Court, and in general all officers of the United States established by law, and whose
appointments are not otherwise provided for by the Constitution. The king of Great Britain
is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices,
but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure; and has the disposal of
an immense number of church preferments. There is evidently a great inferiority in the
power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British king; nor is it equal to that
of the governor of New York, if we are to interpret the meaning of the constitution of the
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State by the practice which has obtained under it. The power of appointment is with us
lodged in a council, composed of the governor and four members of the Senate, chosen
by the Assembly. The governor CLAIMS, and has frequently EXERCISED, the right of
nomination, and is ENTITLED to a casting vote in the appointment. If he really has the
right of nominating, his authority is in this respect equal to that of the President, and
exceeds it in the article of the casting vote. In the national government, if the Senate
should be divided, no appointment could be made; in the government of New York, if the
council should be divided, the governor can turn the scale, and confirm his own
nomination.3 If we compare the publicity which must necessarily attend the mode of
appointment by the President and an entire branch of the national legislature, with the
privacy in the mode of appointment by the governor of New York, closeted in a secret
apartment with at most four, and frequently with only two persons; and if we at the same
time consider how much more easy it must be to influence the small number of which a
council of appointment consists, than the considerable number of which the national
Senate would consist, we cannot hesitate to pronounce that the power of the chief
magistrate of this State, in the disposition of offices, must, in practice, be greatly superior
to that of the Chief Magistrate of the Union.
Hence it appears that, except as to the concurrent authority of the President in the article
of treaties, it would be difficult to determine whether that magistrate would, in the
aggregate, possess more or less power than the Governor of New York. And it appears
yet more unequivocally, that there is no pretense for the parallel which has been
attempted between him and the king of Great Britain. But to render the contrast in this
respect still more striking, it may be of use to throw the principal circumstances of
dissimilitude into a closer group.
The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR
years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would
be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and
inviolable. The one would have a QUALIFIED negative upon the acts of the legislative
body; the other has an ABSOLUTE negative. The one would have a right to command the
military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that
of DECLARING war, and of RAISING and REGULATING fleets and armies by his own
authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the
formation of treaties; the other is the SOLE POSSESSOR of the power of making
treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other
is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the
other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with
all the rights incident to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules concerning the
commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of
commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and
measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or
prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the
other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we
give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The
same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of
which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an
aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.
PUBLIUS.
1. A writer in a Pennsylvania paper, under the signature of TAMONY, has asserted that
the king of Great Britain oweshis prerogative as commander-in-chief to an annual mutiny
bill. The truth is, on the contrary, that his prerogative, in this respect, is immenmorial, and
was only disputed, "contrary to all reason and precedent," as Blackstone vol. i., page
262, expresses it, by the Long Parliament of Charles I. but by the statute the 13th of
Charles II., chap. 6, it was declared to be in the king alone, for that the sole supreme
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government and command of the militia within his Majesty's realms and dominions, and of
all forces by sea and land, and of all forts and places of strength, EVER WAS AND IS the
undoubted right of his Majesty and his royal predecessors, kings and queens of England,
and that both or either house of Parliament cannot nor ought to pretend to the same.
2
Vide Blackstone's "Commentaries," vol i., p. 257.
3
Candor, however, demands an acknowledgment that I do not think the claim of the
governor to a right of nomination well founded. Yet it is always justifiable to reason from
the practice of a government, till its propriety has been constitutionally questioned. And
independent of this claim, when we take into view the other considerations, and pursue
them through all their consequences, we shall be inclined to draw much the same
conclusion.
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The Executive Department Further Considered
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, March 18, 1788.
Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THERE is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is
inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers to
this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of
foundation; since they can never admit its truth, without at the same time admitting the
condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the
definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against
foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the
protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which
sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the
enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. Every man the least
conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in
the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against
the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of
whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all
government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and
destruction of Rome.
There can be no need, however,
to multiply arguments or examples
on this head. A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble
execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed,
whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
Taking it for granted, therefore, that all men of sense will agree in the necessity of an
energetic Executive, it will only remain to inquire, what are the ingredients which
constitute this energy? How far can they be combined with those other ingredients which
constitute safety in the republican sense? And how far does this combination characterize
the plan which has been reported by the convention?
The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly,
duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers.
The ingredients which constitute safety in the repub lican sense are, first, a due
dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility.
Those politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for the soundness of
their principles and for the justice of their views, have declared in favor of a single
Executive and a numerous legislature. They have with great propriety, considered energy
as the most necessary qualification of the former, and have regarded this as most
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applicable to power in a single hand, while they have, with equal propriety, considered the
latter as best adapted to deliberation and wisdom, and best calculated to conciliate the
confidence of the people and to secure their privileges and interests.
That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and
despatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent
degree than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is
increased, these qualities will be diminished.
This unity may be destroyed in two ways: either by vesting the power in two or more
magistrates of equal dignity and authority; or by vesting it ostensibly in one man, subject,
in whole or in part, to the control and co-operation of others, in the capacity of
counsellors to him. Of the first, the two Consuls of Rome may serve as an example; of
the last, we shall find examples in the constitutions of several of the States. New York
and New Jersey, if I recollect right, are the only States which have intrusted the executive
authority wholly to single men.1 Both these methods of destroying the unity of the
Executive have their partisans; but the votaries of an executive council are the most
numerous. They are both liable, if not to equal, to similar objections, and may in most
lights be examined in conjunction.
The experience of other nations will afford little instruction on this head. As far, however,
as it teaches any thing, it teaches us not to be enamoured of plurality in the Executive.
We have seen that the Achaeans, on an experiment of two Praetors, were induced to
abolish one. The Roman history records many instances of mischiefs to the republic from
the dissensions between the Consuls, and between the military Tribunes, who were at
times substituted for the Consuls. But it gives us no specimens of any peculiar
advantages derived to the state from the circumstance of the plurality of those
magistrates. That the dissensions between them were not more frequent or more fatal, is
a matter of astonishment, until we advert to the singular position in which the republic was
almost continually placed, and to the prudent policy pointed out by the circumstances of
the state, and pursued by the Consuls, of making a division of the government between
them. The patricians engaged in a perpetual struggle with the plebeians for the
preservation of their ancient authorities and dignities; the Consuls, who were generally
chosen out of the former body, were commonly united by the personal interest they had in
the defense of the privileges of their order. In addition to this motive of union, after the
arms of the republic had considerably expanded the bounds of its empire, it became an
established custom with the Consuls to divide the administration between themselves by
lot one of them remaining at Rome to govern the city and its environs, the other taking the
command in the more distant provinces. This expedient must, no doubt, have had great
influence in preventing those collisions and rivalships which might otherwise have
embroiled the peace of the republic.
But quitting the dim light of historical research, attaching ourselves purely to the dictates
of reason and good se se, we shall discover much greater cause to reject than to
approve the idea of plurality in the Executive, under any modification whatever.
Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit, there
is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust or office, in which they are
clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation
and even animosity. From either, and especially from all these causes, the most bitter
dissensions are apt to spring. Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability,
weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operation of those whom they divide. If
they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive magistracy of a country, consisting
of a plurality of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures of
the government, in the most critical emergencies of the state. And what is still worse,
they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering
differently to the different individuals who composed the magistracy.
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Men often oppose a thing, merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or
because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have been
consulted, and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their
estimation, an indispensable duty of self-love. They seem to think themselves bound in
honor, and by all the motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has
been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men of upright, benevolent tempers
have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this
disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are
sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit
enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind. Perhaps the
question now before the public may, in its consequences, afford melancholy proofs of the
effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice, in the human character.
Upon the principles of a free government, inconveniences from the source just mentioned
must necessarily be submitted to in the formation of the legislature; but it is unnecessary,
and therefore unwise, to introduce them into the constitution of the Executive. It is here
too that they may be most pernicious. In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener
an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that
department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet
often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the
majority. When a resolution too is once taken, the opposition must be at an end. That
resolution is a law, and resistance to it punishable. But no favorable circumstances
palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissension in the executive department. Here,
they are pure and unmixed. There is no point at which they cease to operate. They serve
to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate, from
the first step to the final conclusion of it. They constantly counteract those qualities in the
Executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its composition, vigor and
expedition, and this without anycounterbalancing good. In the conduct of war, in which the
energy of the Executive is the bulwark of the national security, every thing would be to be
apprehended from its plurality.
It must be confessed that these observations apply with principal weight to the first case
supposed that is, to a plurality of magistrates of equal dignity and authority a scheme, the
advocates for which are not likely to form a numerous sect; but they apply, though not
with equal, yet with considerable weight to the project of a council, whose concurrence is
made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible Executive. An artful
cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of
administration. If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions
would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a spirit of
habitual feebleness and dilatoriness.
But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive, and which lies as much
against the last as the first plan, is, that it tends to conceal faults and destroy
responsibility. Responsibility is of two kinds to censure and to punishment. The first is the
more important of the two, especially in an elective office. Man, in public trust, will much
oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than
in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of
the Executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It often becomes
impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the
punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to
fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible
appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. The
circumstances which may have led to any national miscarriage or misfortune are
sometimes so complicated that, where there are a number of actors who may have had
different degrees and kinds of agency, though we may clearly see upon the whole that
there has been mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce to whose
account the evil which may have been incurred is truly chargeable.
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"I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their opinions that it was
impossible to obtain any better resolution on the point." These and similar pretexts are
constantly at hand, whether true or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble
or incur the odium, of a strict scrunity into the secret springs of the transaction? Should
there be found a citizen zealous enough to undertake the unpromising task, if there
happen to be collusion between the parties concerned, how easy it is to clothe the
circumstances with so much ambiguity, as to render it uncertain what was the precise
conduct of any of those parties?
In the single instance in which the governor of this State is coupled with a council that is,
in the appointment to offices, we have seen the mischiefs of it in the view now under
consideration. Scandalous appointments to important offices have been made. Some
cases, indeed, have been so flagrant that ALL PARTIES have agreed in the impropriety
of the thing. When inquiry has been made, the blame has been laid by the governor on
the members of the council, who, on their part, have charged it upon his nomination; while
the people remain altogether at a loss to determine, by whose influence their interests
have been committed to hands so unqualified and so manifestly improper. In tenderness
to individuals, I forbear to descend to particulars.
It is evident from these considerations, that the plurality of the Executive tends to deprive
the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any
delegated power, first, the restraints of public opinion, which lose their efficacy, as well on
account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among a number, as on
account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall; and, secondly, the opportunity of
discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order
either to their removal from office or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it.
In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for
the sake of the pub lic peace, that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his
person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to the king
a constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the advice they give.
Without this, there would be no responsibility whatever in the executive department an
idea inadmissible in a free government. But even there the king is not bound by the
resolutions of his council, though they are answerable for the advice they give. He is the
absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office, and may observe or
disregard the counsel given to him at his sole discretion.
But in a republic, where every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his
behavior in office the reason which in the British Constitution dictates the propriety of a
council, not only ceases to apply, but turns against the institution. In the monarchy of
Great Britain, it furnishes a substitute for the prohibited responsibility of the chief
magistrate, which serves in some degree as a hostage to the national justice for his good
behavior. In the American republic, it would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish,
the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.
The idea of a council to the Executive, which has so generally obtained in the State
constitutions, has been derived from that maxim of republican jealousy which considers
power as safer in the hands of a number of men than of a single man. If the maxim should
be admitted to be applicable to the case, I should contend that the advantage on that
side would not counterbalance the numerous disadvantages on the opposite side. But I
do not think the rule at all applicable to the executive power. I clearly concur in opinion, in
this particular, with a writer whom the celebrated Junius pronounces to be "deep, solid,
and ingenious," that "the executive power is more easily confined when it is ONE";2 that it
is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the
people; and, in a word, that all multiplication of the Executive is rather dangerous than
friendly to liberty.
A little consideration will satisfy us, that the species of security sought for in the
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Federalist Papers: FEDERALIST No. 70
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http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fed70a.htm
multiplication of the Executive, is nattainable. Numbers must be so great as to render
combination difficult, or they are rather a source of danger than of security. The united
credit and influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty, than the
credit and influence of either of them separately. When power, therefore, is placed in the
hands of so small a number of men, as to admit of their interests and views being easily
combined in a common enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse,
and more dangerous when abused, than if it be lodged in the hands of one man; who,
from the very circumstance of his being alone, will be more narrowly watched and more
readily suspected, and who cannot unite so great a mass of influence as when he is
associated with others. The Decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number,3
were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any ONE of them would have been. No
person would think of proposing an Executive much more numerous than that body; from
six to a dozen have been suggested for the number of the council. The extreme of these
numbers, is not too great for an easy combination; and from such a combination America
would have more to fear, than from the ambition of any single individual. A council to a
magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, are generally nothing better than
a clog upon his good intentions, are often the instruments and accomplices of his bad and
are almost always a cloak to his faults.
I forbear to dwell upon the subject of expense; though it be evident that if the council
should be numerous enough to answer the principal end aimed at by the institution, the
salaries of the members, who must be drawn from their homes to reside at the seat of
government, would form an item in the catalogue of public expenditures too serious to be
incurred for an object of equivocal utility. I will only add that, prior to the appearance of
the Constitution, I rarely met with an intelligent man from any of the States, who did not
admit, as the result of experience, that the UNITY of the executive of this State was one
of the best of the distinguishing features of our constitution.
PUBLIUS.
1. New York has no council except for the single purpose of appointing to offices; New
Jersey has a council whom the governor may consult. But I think, from the terms of the
constitution, their resolutions do not bind him.
2. De Lolme.
3. Ten.
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