Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T16:46:19.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Federalism, Nationalism, and Democracy in America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Samuel H. Beer
Samuel H. Beer*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The growth of the public sector in recent years has been accompanied by both centralization and decentralization. More important than any such shifts of power or function between levels of government, however, has been the emergence of new arenas of mutual influence among levels of government. In this way recent developments in intergovernmental relations are adding a new dimension to the national system of representation. That the federal division of powers should serve a representative function is entirely in accord with the original design. A look at this design in the light of the theory of its founders helps one perceive this distinctive purpose. Then as now American federalism was primarily an instrument of national democracy. Current American experience with this aspect of intergovernmental relations, moreover, suggests questions for comparative study of the contemporary welfare state.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 9 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to dedicate this paper to the memory of Martin Diamond from whom over the years I have learned much about American federalism and especially about the importance of theory to its original design.

References

Adair, Douglass (1957). “ ‘That politics may be reduced to a science': David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist,” Huntington Library Quarterly 20:343–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, John (1774). “Novanglus; or a history of the dispute with America from its origin in 1754, to the present time.” In Adams, Charles Francis (ed.), The Works of John Adams, vol. 4. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Ashford, Douglas E. (1976a). The Limits of Consensus: The Reorganization of British Local Government and the French Contrast. Western European societies program, occasional paper no. 6. Ithaca, N.Y.Google Scholar
Ashford, Douglas E. (1976b). “Territory vs. function: toward a policy-based theory of subnational government.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Sept. 2–5, 1977.Google Scholar
Bailyn, Bernard (1967). The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bancroft, George (1888). History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the Continent [through the ratification of the Constitution]. 6 vols. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Bass, Jack, and De Vries, Walter (1976). The Transformation of Southern Politics. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. (1969). British Politics in the Collectivist Age. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. (1973). “The modernization of American federalism.” In Elazar, Daniel J. (ed.), The Federal Polity. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 3(2):49–95.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. (1976). “The adoption of general revenue sharing: a case study in public sector politics.” Public Policy 24:127–95.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. (1977a). “A political scientist's view of fiscal federalism.” In Oates, Wallace E. (ed.), The Political Economy of Fiscal Federalism. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Beer, Samuel H. (1977b). “Political overload and federalism.” Polity: the Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association 10:5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brauer, Carl M. (1977). John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
CGO (1976). U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Government Operations. Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1975. Report to accompany S. 2925, 94th Cong., 2d. sess., S. Rept. 1137.Google Scholar
Convention. Notes of debates in the federal convention of 1787 reported by James Madison. Introduced by Koch, Adrienne. New York, Norton: 1969.Google Scholar
Corwin, Edward S. (1934). The Twilight of the Supreme Court. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Corwin, Edward S. (1950). “The passing of dual federalism.” Virginia Law Review 36:1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corwin, Edward S. (1974). The Constitution and What it Means Today. Revised by Chase, Harold W. and Ducat, Craig R.. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Martin (1961). “The Federalist's view of federalism.” In Benson, George C. S. (ed.), Essays in Federalism. Claremont, Calif.: Institute for Studies in Federalism.Google Scholar
De Grazia, Alfred (1951). Public and Republic: Political Representation in America. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Dickinson, John (1767). “The farmer's letters to the inhabitants of the British colonies.” Political writings, vol. 1. Wilmington, Del.: Bonsal and Niles.Google Scholar
Elazar, Daniel J. (1962). The American Partnership: Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Elazar, Daniel J. (1973). “Cursed by bigness or toward a post-technocratic federalism.” In Elazar, Daniel J. (ed.), The Federal Polity. Publius: the Journal of Federalism 3(2):239–98.Google Scholar
Elliott, Johnathan, ed. (1836). Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution… 4 vols. 2 ed. Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Eulau, Heinz (1973). “Polarity in representational federalism: a neglected theme of political theory.” In Elazar, Daniel J. (ed.), The Federal Polity. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 3(2):153–71.Google Scholar
Farkas, Suzanne (1971). Urban Lobbying: Mayors in the Federal Area. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Federalist. Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, Madison, James. The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States. Nos. 1–85 (1787–1788). Introduced by Earle, Edward Mead. New York, 1937: Modern Library.Google Scholar
Fortenberry, Charles N., and Abney, F. Glenn (1972). “Mississippi: unreconstructed and unredeemed.” In Havard, William C. (ed.), The Changing Politics of the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Benjamin.The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. Smyth, Albert H. (ed.), vol. 4. New York: Macmillan, 1905–1907.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Carl J. (1968). Constitutional Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America. 4th ed. Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell.Google Scholar
Graves, W. Brooke (1964). American Intergovernmental Relations: Their Origins, Historical Development and Current Status. New York: Scribner's.Google Scholar
Grodzins, Morton (1966). The American System: A New View of Government in the United States. Elazar, Daniel J. (ed.). Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Haider, Donald H. (1974). When Governments Come to Washington: Governors, Mayors and Intergovernmental Lobbying. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis (1955). The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1963; first published 1741–1742). Essays: Moral, Political and Literary. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. (1959). “The founding fathers and the division of powers.” In Maass, Arthur (ed.), Area and Power: A Theory of Local Government. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Lincoln, Abraham (1861). “Message to Congress, July 4, 1861.” In Commager, Henry Steele (ed.), Documents of American History. 7th ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Lindsay, A. D. (1943). The Modern Democratic State. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Madison, James (1787). Letter of October 24, 1787, to Thomas Jefferson. In Boyd, Julian P. (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–1974. vol. 12:270–84.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Andrew C. (1918). “The background of American federalism.” American Political Science Review 12:215–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Andrew C. (1936). A Constitutional History of the United States. New York: Appleton-Century.Google Scholar
Montesquieu, (1949; first published 1748). The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Nugent, Thomas. Introduced by Neumann, Franz. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Morris, Richard (1974). “The forging of the union reconsidered: a historical refutation of state sovereignty over seabeds.” Columbia Law Review 74:1056–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosher, Frederick C. (1968). Democracy and the Public Service. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nathan, Richard P. (1975). “The new federalism versus the emerging new structuralism.” Publius: the Journal of Federalism 5(3): 111–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, Richard P. and Adams, Charles F. Jr., et al. (1977). Revenue Sharing: The Second Round. Washington, D.C.: Brookings.Google Scholar
Pamphlets. Bailyn, Bernard with Garrett, Jane N. (1965). Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Plant, Jeremy (1975). The Big Seven: The Role of Public Official Associations in the American Political System. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Rakove, Jack Norman (1975). The Continental Congress and the Beginnings of National Politics, 1774–1789. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. To be published by Knopf in 1979.Google Scholar
Ranney, Austin (1976). “‘The divine science’: political engineering in American culture,” American Political Science Review 70:140–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reagan, Michael D. (1972). The New Federalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Riley, Patrick (1968). Historical Development of the Theory of Federalism, Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1947). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 2nd ed. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Seidman, Harold (1970). Politics, Position and Power. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Page (1956). James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742–1798. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Stekler, Paul Jeffrey (1976). “The unification of the Mississippi democratic party: realignment and reorientation in Mississippi politics.” Unpublished paper, Department of Government, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Sundquist, James L. with Davis, David (1969). Making Federalism Work: A Study of Program Coordination at the Community Level. Washington, D.C.: Brookings.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (1977). Introduction to Graziano, Luigi, Katzenstein, Peter J. and Tarrow, Sidney (eds.), Territorial Politics in Industrial States. Draft MS.Google Scholar
Van Tyne, Claude H. (1907). “Sovereignty in the American revolution.” American Historical Review 12:529–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Tyne, Claude H. (1922). The Causes of the War of Independence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Van Tyne, Claude H. (1929). The War of Independence: American Phase. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Walker, David B. (1975). “The new system of intergovernmental assistance: some initial notes.” Publius: the Journal of Federalism 5(3):131–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilhoit, Francis M. (1973). The Politics of Massive Resistance. New York: Braziller.Google Scholar
Wilson, James (1967; first published 1774). “Considerations on the nature and extent of the legislative authority of the British parliament.” In McCloskey, Robert G. (ed.), The Works of James Wilson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.