Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-74
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
American Union ◽  
And Control

The preamble’s promise of “a more perfect union” suggests that the US Constitution of 1787 aimed to reform the less than perfect union established by the Articles of Confederation of 1781. The framers’ understanding of union was grounded in early modern political ideas about confederations, and their call for reform in their analysis of the flaws of the articles. Their reform of the American union was characterized by both change and continuity. Although the Constitution laid the basis for a federal government founded on popular sovereignty and capable of acting independently of the states, the fundamental purpose of the American union and the remit of the federal government remained the management of intraunion and international affairs. In the reformed American federal union the states still retained the power to regulate the social, economic, and civic life of their citizens and inhabitants with only limited supervision and control from the federal government.

Perfecting the Union

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
American States ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Habitually interpreted as the fundamental law of the American republic, the US Constitution was in fact designed as an instrument of union between thirteen American republics and as a form of government for their common central government. It offered an organizational solution to the security concerns of the newly independent American states. Confederation was an established means for weak states to maintain their independence by joining in union to manage relations with the outside world from a position of strength. Confederation also transformed the immediate international environment by turning neighboring states from potential enemies into sister states in a common union or peace pact. The US Constitution profoundly altered the structure of the American union and made the federal government more effective than under the defunct Articles of Confederation. But it did not transform the fundamental purpose of the federal union, which remained the management of relations between the American states, on the one hand, and between the American states and foreign powers, on the other. As had been the case under the articles, the states regulated the social, economic, and civic life of their citizens and inhabitants with only limited supervision and control from the federal government. This book demonstrates that interpreting the Constitution as an instrument of union has important implications for the understanding of the American founding. The Constitution mattered much more to the international than to the domestic history of the United States. Its importance to the latter was dwarfed by that of state constitutions and legislation.

Peace Pact and Nation

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-34
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
State System ◽  
International Competition ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Founding ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The One ◽  
American Union

In recent years a new Unionist interpretation of the American founding has presented the US Constitution as a compact of union between sovereign states, which allowed them to maintain interstate peace and to act in unison as a single nation vis-à-vis other nations in the international state-system. The American compact of union entailed the voluntary circumscription of the member-states’ sovereignty and the creation of a federal government through the delegation of enumerated powers from the states to the union. The Constitution was a limited, if very important, reform of the already existing American union under the Articles of Confederation. It did not aim at a wholesale transformation of American social and economic life, but sought to equip the union with the means to address challenges that arose from intraunion tensions, on the one hand, and from international competition in the Atlantic marketplace and the Western borderlands, on the other.

Internal Police

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-104
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The State ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
American Union ◽  
Shed Light

The US Constitution reserved to the member-states of the American federal union the power to regulate their internal police. Now largely forgotten, but much in use in the decades surrounding the American founding, the term internal police described an extensive range of activities that eighteenth-century states did to regulate their societies and their economies. By recovering the illusive meaning of internal police and by studying how the Constitution distributed internal police powers between Congress and the state governments, it is possible to shed light on how the Constitution divided political authority between the states and the federal government in the American union. The analysis in this chapter shows that under the Constitution, domestic affairs in the early United States was overwhelmingly meant to be regulated by the state governments and not the federal government.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
State System ◽  
State Governments ◽  
American Founding ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
American State

In recent years a new Unionist interpretation of the American founding has presented the US Constitution as a compact of union between sovereign states, which allowed them to maintain interstate peace and to act in unison as a single nation vis-à-vis other nations in the international state-system. Such an understanding of the American founding argues that the Constitution created a bisected American state divided into a federal government in charge of international and intraunion affairs and state governments in charge of promoting socioeconomic development and maintaining civic rights. The introduction provides an overview of different interpretations of the founding and of the structure of the book.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
James R. Skillen
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Federal Law Enforcement ◽  
Federal Lands ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution

In April 2014, near Bunkerville, Nevada, Cliven Bundy and hundreds of armed supporters faced off with federal law enforcement officers who were removing his trespassing cattle from federal lands. Bundy described himself as the victim of a rogue federal government that trampled the US Constitution and deprived him of basic rights, and he was ready to “take this country back by force.”...

WILLIAM MANNING AND THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE DEPENDENT CLASSES

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX GOUREVITCH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early American ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Republican Liberty ◽  
Modern Republicanism ◽  
American Farmer

This article reappraises the political ideas of William Manning, and through him the trajectory of early modern republicanism. Manning, an early American farmer writing in the 1780s and 1790s, developed the republican distinction between “the idle Few” and “the laboring Many” into a novel “political theory of the dependent classes.” On this theory, it is the dependent, laboring classes who share an interest in social equality. Because of this interest, they are the only ones who can achieve and maintain republican liberty. With this identification of the interests of the dependent classes with the common good, Manning inverted inherited republican ideas, and transformed the language of liberty and virtue into one of the first potent, republican critiques of exploitation. As such, he stands as a key figure for understanding the shift in early modern republicanism from a concern with constitutionalism and the rule of law to the social question.

4. What state and local governments do

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Mark J. Rozell ◽  
Clyde Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
National Government ◽  
Federal System ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
State And Local

Even as most Americans fix their gaze on the actions of the federal government, states and localities are the cornerstones of the US federal system. “What state and local governments do” explains that states are free to design their own governments so long as their structure does not violate the US Constitution. All states have designed their governments to somewhat resemble the national government, with an elected governor, elected legislatures, and state supreme courts. However, each of these structures can operate in different ways, with different powers from state to state. The governments of the Native American reservations and those of the five permanently inhabited US territories are also discussed.

scholarly journals The Democracy and the Reconstruction of the Citizenship

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-73
Author(s):  
أ.م.د.مهدية صالح حسن
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
And Control

This research includes the principles of the democracy، and to which extent it can contribute in establishing these principles. Democracy is not only to hold parliamentary or presidential elections but also the result of these elections wills it lead to the emergence of an integrated regime that can actually expresses the citizen's rights and to which extent those citizens can contribute in that regime and control it. Since 2005، when the first elections took place in Iraq after the US occupation of Iraq 2003، Iraqi people are looking to a rule that represented them and achieve their interests after getting rid of the totalitarian regimes and establishing an institutional regime that work by democratic means in order to achieve the social، economic and political development This research will be presented as following: 1- The citizenship is the base of the democracy 2- The democracy and the reconstruction of the citizenship 3- The building of the economy and investment in the democracy

Men's Dilemma: The Future of Patriarchy in England 1560–1660

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
And Control ◽  
Development And Evolution

PATRIARCHY was very old when Queen Elizabeth ascended the English throne. Historians have sought its origins in die Old Testament record of the creation of Jewish monotiieism and in the social conditions of Hebrew society. They have explored die contributions of classical Greece and early Christian thinking to its development and evolution. By the time that the Tudor dynasty ruled in England, the institutionalised male dominance over women and children in die family and die extension of diat subordination to women in society in general, die scriptural patriarchy with which I am concerned, had become so deeply embedded diat it has appeared immutable. Something so permanent, something that was so given, has seemed not to deserve scrutiny by die historians of early modern England. It was socialist and radical feminists who took up die notion of patriarchy in die 1960s because they needed a concept which would help diem to theorise male dominance. From dieir contemporary perspective also, patriarchy appeared immovable and monumental. There was a tendency among them at first to study it as such: feminist historians approached die past wim die premise diat there has always been an undifferentiated and consistent male commitment to domination and control over women in every sphere of life. The conflation of patriarchy with misogyny, I suggest, produced an unhistorical patriarchy as die staple of women's history. It is only fairly recendy diat historical studies of gender have broken free from diese shackles, diat historians have begun to penetrate die discourses and strategies dirough which men have—or have not— coerced, or oppressed or subordinated women through die ages.

Old Principles, New Constitutions, 1783–1790

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
The Us ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Us Constitution

This chapter investigates the period between the federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the revision of the Pennsylvania State Constitution in 1790. Debates over the ratification of the US Constitution grew out of and reflected long-running Pennsylvanian debates over ideal forms of government. These debates—rhetorically and literally violent—saw Federalists adopt the language of their Anti-Federalist opponents in using popular sovereignty and a participatory political culture to justify their new frame of government. This widened debates on governmental reform to include extra-governmental activism alongside formal structures of government. Thus the success of Pennsylvanian Federalists in revising the state constitution in 1790 was only possible through legitimizing extra-governmental mobilization—which in turn ensured that the spirit of the 1776 constitution remained at the heart of Pennsylvanian politics.

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