New Constitutional Forms in Africa

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-76
Author(s):  
Herbert J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Unique Combination ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
The Federalist Papers

When the American Founding Fathers set about the task of perfecting the constitution of their union, they turned to the theory and practice of the Old World for counsel and illustration. The Federalist Papers contain many references to Hume and Montesquieu, the British Constitution and ancient leagues. However, it was not copying from foreign examples that made such an outstanding success of the Constitution of the United States. Rather it was the authors' imaginative creativity that gave to this oldest of the still operating written constitutions its unique combination of stability and flexibility, effectiveness and efficiency.

scholarly journals Book Review | George Will’s Conservatism and Democracy in Crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Madison ◽  
American Government ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Federalist Papers

Americans typically view the United States as a democracy and are rightly proud of that. Of course, as those of a more precise nature, along with smug college students enrolled in introductory American government classes, are quick to point out, the United States is technically a republic. This is a bit too clever by half since James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, defined a republic the way most people think of a democracy—a system of representative government with elections: “[The]… difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” What the framers thought of as democracy is today referred to as direct democracy, the belief that citizens should have more direct control over governing. The Athenian assembly was what the framers, Madison in particular, saw as the paragon of direct democracy—and as quite dangerous. While direct democracy has its champions, most Americans equate democracy with electing officials to do the business of government.

scholarly journals Rule by the Few in the Federalist Papers: An Examination of the Aristocratic Preference of Publius

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl M. Felice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Federalist Papers

AbstractThe Federalist Papers are a set of eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the founding era of the United States, with the purpose of persuading the states to adopt the Constitution as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation. The Papers were some of the most impressive political writings of the time, and are still cited frequently today by the United States Supreme Court. The arguments set forth in the Papers attempted to defend the Constitution's aristocratic characteristics against its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, while also attempting to normalize an anti-democratic, representative form of government in the minds of the American people. The clever advocacy and skillful rhetoric employed by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution, and consequently the creation of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet. This paper examines the differences between the traditional forms of government, the political philosophies of the Papers’ authors, the anti-democratic, aristocratic nature of the government proposed by the Constitution, and the arguments for and against its adoption, as articulated in the Papers and various other writings.

Imitation of Switzerland: Historical Reflections

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Moment

CAN THE SWISS CONFEDERATION BE IMITATED? THAT DEPENDS, says the historian, on what you mean by imitation. Switzerland has certainly served as a model for others, sometimes a model distinctly not to be imitated. When the American Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to write a new constitution and ‘to form a more perfect Union’, they had Switzerland in mind. Alexander Hamilton, a chief actor in that enterprise, devoted part of an issue of The Federalist Papers, written the following year as a defence of what the framers had drafted, to a close analysis of the Swiss Confederation. Switzerland did not impress him:The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a confederacy, though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the stability of such institutions. They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common part of sovereignty …He recognised that they were held together ‘by their joint interest’ but saw the confederacy as a poor guarantor of internal and external coherence. ‘Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up capable of trying its strength it failed.’

Alexander Hamilton and the Early Republic in Edwardian Imperial Thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
George Washington ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used the figures of Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of (modern) self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the US while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts were publicly presented as Washington and Hamilton reborn.

The “Separation” of Religion and Polities: The Paradoxes of Spinoza

1988 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 603-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillel G. Fradkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers

Benedict Spinoza is the first philosophical proponent of liberal democracy. In his Theologico-Political Tractate he calls for the liberation of philosophy from theology and for the subordination of religion to politics. Though Spinoza may have not influenced the American Founding Fathers directly, both the clarity and the paradoxes of his arguments are perhaps the best guide to understanding better the present-day conflicts over religion and politics in the United States. Spinoza's insistence on the prerogative of the political sovereign to exercise absolute authority in the sphere of moral action necessarily complicates religious values. But the “inconveniences” resulting from liberal democracy are justified in terms of justice.

Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding

1989 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 515
Author(s):  
James M. Banner ◽  
Charles R. Kesler
Keyword(s):  
American Founding ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
The Revolution

William Lloyd Garrison and the United States Constitution: The Political Evolution of an American Radical

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Osborn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
William Lloyd Garrison ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Great Leader ◽  
Political Choices

On August 6, 1824, William Lloyd Garrison, not yet twenty years old, penned a letter to the Salem Gazette opposing John Quincy Adams's bid for the presidency and endorsing the candidacy of a dedicated Georgian, United States Senator William Crawford. There is no mention in the document of the slavery issue and no hint that the young Garrison viewed the Constitution as anything less than a triumph of the founding fathers. The “high and exalted character” of the elections proved the Federalist Party “worthy of its great leader, the immortal WASHINGTON” and spread “vigor and strength throughout the political fabric of our constitution and government,” Garrison wrote. “It is peculiarly gratifying, too,” he declared,to observe the dignified course pursued generally by the few sentinels of freedom, who advocate and uphold those principles, which were promulgated by the Father of his Country, and sanctioned by JAY and HAMILTON, and AMES, with a host of other distinguished patriots.Garrison went on to stress the civic duty of voting, arguing that although no citizen was legally required to support any of the presidential candidates, reason “dictates that we should” so as not to upset “the peace of the Union.” Federalists should make pragmatic political choices, he wrote, and not squander their votes on ideal but unlikely candidates.

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