We the People…say what???: Anti-Federalists and the “American” Identity

One has often heard political leaders of all stripes evoke the qualities of our national government: liberty, representation, and federalism. All these ingredients baked together, leave us constitutional republicanism: the more descriptive, long-hand for American democracy. While we may see the various chefs of each political party try to sweeten the cream (at best), or burn our rich tradition (at worst), these tenets have remained shared and fixed within the culinary delight of our nation’s government.

But what of a time when the rules of the game, the basic branches of our government didn’t exist? Or better yet, what of the time in our history when our current practices, now enshrined within the slowly tattering but eternally majestic paper of our Constitution, came to be?

This article focuses on the conflict between those proponents of the Constitution and those American patriots that fought, futilely, against its ratification. It then asks, what was this different form of republicanism that these failed founding fathers fought so nobly for? Moving Back: The Legacy of the American Revolution
Paine’s World Project

Temporizing a national army, throwing a dash of national fervor, and of course, receiving some aid from France, American patriots blasted colonial rule out of thirteen colonies. But what were they fighting for? Independence, naturally. But what sort of independence?

Some may say that the American Revolution was a natural occurrence: what way could a distant, foreign nation control a new, thriving wilderness? But history follows interests: with British policy getting more brazen, more colonial leaders (once enamored Anglophiles) moved into an independence camp riddled with commoners, idealogues, and, worst yet, radicals.

American merchants’ desire for freedom from British taxation did not exactly match with the dream of some for a radically free and different type of nation. One based on personal liberty, not state authority.

So, aside from material interests, what was this radical image of the new America?

Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, clearly articulated America’s Revolutionary ideology. One must bear in mind that it was in large part his pamphlet and the debates it aroused that brought a shift in colonial policy: from tortured ambivalence to a clear resolve for independence.
But what did Paine actually call for? His book can be easily summed up: 1) bash the divine mandate (kings and anything like them), 2) prove that America is now ready for independence, and 3) state the bright future that awaits this newly independent American nation on the world stage.

The first part seems easy in retrospect, but at that time went against centuries of the history of mankind. There was no hegemonic republic within the world of the 1770s; all the ‘great’ nations of the world were either partial or complete monarchies. Rule for centuries (at least within the ‘great’ European nations) based itself on ‘divine right’: kings were divinely chosen vessels for authority, and protected the interests of the masses. Furthermore, the then-archetype of the modern world was Britain: a mixed government that fused the tradition of royalty with the common voice of parliament. How could one go against the nation that touched each and every pond of the globe and held the mightiest army in the world? Might must equal right.

Paine’s blasphemous manifesto considered kings a perversion of Christianity and discussed their inherent legitimacy gap: how does one retain any greatness of a particular ruler by automatically giving his heirs control, whether or not that son had the ability to walk in a straight line let alone run a state. While such thoughts were in no way new, Paine’s pamphlet gave brought them to life within the public sphere to an extent never before witnessed in America.

The second point was a bit harder: Paine provides a few fantastical facts and figures that ‘prove’ the success of revolution. But empirical arguments were not what mattered to Paine; rather, he appealed to the heart to get the mind into gear. And this ties directly to his final argument: the providential path of Republicanism.

Paine considered America the birth place of a new, modern world. This world would not be dominated by lords, armed with slender swords, muskets and hereditary coats of arms. Instead ‘the people’ would be sovereign: with all individuals given the right to have a voice in the affairs of state. Such a system was the only way to survive in the new, ‘modern’ era of world history. America would prove not only that democratic practices could work, but that they were the future. Paine felt that all those who stood in the way would one day fall. Kings could no longer be the law. Law, constructed by free men seeking justice, would become the one and only true royalty of the New World.

Paine’s Revolutionary Sketch of America

So how was America supposed to espouse these values? Paine’s had a pretty clear ‘suggestion’ of a constitutional framework:

National Assembly
-annually elected; scope only domestic
-weak executive that presides meetings
-states to be divided into districts; district will elect representatives for their state, with a state minimum of 30 representatives
– President selected by lot, with an alternating system that guarantees a representative from each state being selected from the representatives
-all resolutions must have a 3/5 majority

Constitutional Charter
-made by representatives from the state governments and some national representatives
-sets number and manner of national representatives
-secures national freedoms (religion, property, etc.)
-committee that forms it is immediately dissolved upon completion

State Governments
-everything else

How did we get from this ideal-type republic to our current Constitution?

The “Triumph” of the Traditional Republic: The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union

So maybe the Articles of Confederation and Perceptual Union did not live up to their name-sake, but its importance is clear: this document stands as America’s first national plan of government. Exactly what type of national government did America have during those years after the Revolution but before the Constitution came to be?

The Articles of Confederation show a clear attempt to create a ‘traditional republic’. What does ‘traditional’ mean? First that it be small. Few at the time thought that a single, national republic would function over a large area like America. These two selections from Brutus, the pseudonym for a New York Anti-Federalist represent this position well:

…that a free government cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent, containing such a number of inhabitants, and these encreasing in such rapid progression as that of the whole United States. Among the many illustrious authorities which might be produced to this point, I shall content myself with quoting only two…

History furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the Untied States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their government were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

These passages and Paine’s constitutional sketch reveal his firm belief that a republic depended on small constituencies. If the people were truly to be sovereign, each individual must be close to his or her representative.

The Articles of Confederation thus formalized thirteen separate republican states, serving only to provide a national forum to settle interstate dispute. The powers of the national government, as one would expect, were severely limited. With no power to tax or pass any national policy without a unanimous vote, there were many practical problems with this union. Yet, it did deliver on an ideal: within the new American nation, the government closest to the people would have the most control. Relinquishing this state authority to a national government was, to many, tantamount to handing power to a king. Why? Many American leaders felt that revolutionary movements were capricious, and that to maintain such a radical republican government individual citizens must constantly and actively rule– not be drowned out within a large population. Therefore, any arrangements that could open a door for reactionary forces must be slammed shut. The result is a weak federal state.

The Federalist Response: Philadelphia’s Surprise Legacy

So on February 21st, 1787 the Philadelphia Convention commenced, under orders to revise the Articles of Confederation. Behind the secrecy of locked doors, the Convention brought to the nation an entirely new system of government– a rather liberal reading of its instructions as laid down by the Continental Congress.

The end result is well known: three branches of government, seamless and interlocking checks on authority, an executive branch with separate terms from the legislative branch, and a independent judiciary system.

At its genesis, this document was simultaneously radical and reactionary. For those that saw this as a new path to republicanism, it offered a never-before-articulated formula for successful popular sovereignty. For those that saw its slant toward centralization, it represented the worst possible result: the return of oppression, camouflaged in the language of false democracy, onto a nation that held the divine duty to begin a new chapter in world history.

Behind this major shift from the Articles to the Constitution was the idea that Republics could only perform successfully under larger territories than smaller. This logic went against an entire history of tiny republics: whether it be the ancient city-states of Greece, the quasi-states of Italy, or the strange national experience of Switzerland.

James Madison provided the best-crafted defense in his oft-studied Federalist #10. In Madison’s world view, truth was not a convergence of interests but instead a separate substance: one that could be defined through reason. For politicians to arrive at ‘just’ laws, politicians must be as isolated as possible from particular or abstract interests of the time. He demanded that this republic not make a new class of slaves by replacing a royal tyranny with that of a particularist majority. In his view, to be free from the intoxicating voice of particular interests was the only path towards survival for the Republic.

This republican isolation was achieved by fracturing the voice of the people: through distanced election cycles, unelected branches, and split authorities.

It was thought that ‘just’ laws could be made only by politicians who had achieved freedom from particular interests. And the easiest way to do this was to expand the number of interests pushing upon each representative. Thus we arrive at our nation’s strange republican formula: diluting representation to preserving it.

The Battle of Republics: Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist

As with all political struggles, there was lofty and incendiary rhetoric. And for the Anti-Federalists, they made clear to use it:

O great God, avert that dreadful catastrophe. Let not the day be permitted to dawn, which shall discover to the world that America remains no longer a free nation! O let not this last sacred asylum of persecuted liberty cease to afford a resting place for that fair goddess! Shine in upon us, and illumine all our counsels! Suffer thy bright ministers of grace to come down and direct us; and hovering for awhile on the wings of affection, breathe into our souls true sentiments of wisdom, that in this awful, this important one we may be conducted safely through the maze of error, that a firm basis of national happiness may be established, and flourish in undiminished glory through all succeeding ages!

Anti-Federalists attacked from many angles. Some evoked the language of political theory to disprove the republican formula Madison championed. Some spoke to class interests, stroking the fears of lower middle class voters that they would be locked out of the ‘elite’ club of national government. Others blasted the Constitution as a repudiation of the Revolution. Evoking the spirit of Paine, one prominent Anti-Federalist speaks of Switzerland:

Let us now contrast this scene with one, where the people personally exercise the powers of government. The three small democratic Cantons of Uri, Schuitz, and Underwald, broke the chains of their former servitude and laid the foundation of the Swiss confederacy, they effected the revolution, and in conjunction with the other democratic Cantons and their democratic allies the Grisons, have supported the grand fabric of Helvetic liberty to this day. Every Swiss farmer is by birth a legislator, and he becomes a voluntary soldier to defend his power and his property; their fathers have been so before them for near 500 years, without revolution, and almost without commotion. They have been the secure spectators of the constant and universal destruction of the human species, which the usurpations of the few have ever created, and must I fear forever perpetuate:– Whilst all Europe were butchering each other for the love of God, and defending the usurpations of the clergy, under the masque of religion, the malignant evil crept into this sacred asylum of liberty; (but where the government resides in the body of the people, they can never be corrupted by the artifice of the wealth of the few) they soon banished the daemon of discord, and Protestant and Papist sate down under the peaceful shade of the same tree, whilst in ever surround State and kingdom, the son was dragging the father, and brothers, their brothers, to the scaffold, under the sanction of those distinctions: Thus these happy Helvetians have in peace and security beheld all the rest of Europe become a common slaughterhouse…
A free Swiss pays no taxes, on the contrary he receives taxes; every male of 16 years, shares near ten shillings sterling annually, which the rich and powerful surrounding monarchies pay for the friendship of these manly farmers. Whenever their society becomes too large, as government belongs to the citizens and the citizens are the property of no government, they divide amicably, and each separate part pursues the simple form, recommended by their ancestors and become venerable, by the glorious and happy experience of ages of prosperity…

This passage paints the extreme vision of the Anti-Federalist camp. The state of a true republic was meant to be small and powerless. Individual republics were meant to fully empower individuals, while protecting them as well by allowing them to create wealth. Armies were not maintained; in fact, in a world of ‘true’ republics war would cease to exist.

Note that this Anti-Federalist is not defending the Articles of Confederation: in fact, he calls for a new constitutional and world order that stands as far apart from both the ‘norms’ represented by the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. He desires small states, states that could be constantly divided, and re-divided depending on the will of the people. There is no talk here of the inherent and legitimate power of the state governments within the Union, which many Anti-Federalists based their arguments against the Constitution upon (and latter succession). Instead, the Constitution must be banished because it takes away forever the hope that idyllic republics, without war and without poor, may shine upon the Earth and teach man by example how consummate harmony can be brought into this world.

Opposing this view were the voices of the more traditional nation-state supporters. Federalists, while creating a new science of politics, were building off the growing tradition of the nation-state. The state had to be large, armed with authorities that could tax the people and raise an army for defense or conquest. People were to look up to their government, not to be a constant participant in it.

Paine’s world-view was dying out. The Revolution unleashed a powerfully ideological age, but the realities of the time and time itself were conspiring against the radically new world he so passionately used to throw off his nation’s British shackles.

America did not form a series of interlocking republics, maintaining the individualistic ideal. Instead it became, over a long period of time, a fused nation, thanks to a Constitution that gave us clear national leaders who could evoke the national identity to move the masses. America transformed into a more practical hegemon, fighting for freedom in a more traditional fashion: with force and ideology, not just the latter. Have these righteous forces achieved ‘good’ in the world? Most assuredly. Have they created harm? Naturally. But both these questions point to a more profound query: how truly revolutionary was the end result of the American independence?

The Anti-Federalist Legacy

America’s republicanism was not a given, but rather a concept that evoked as much passion and debate as the very War of Independence that gave birth to it.

Furthermore, this article suggests an alternative conception of America: as nation of radical republics, free from any national scope. Had the Antifederalists won, its clear that state governments would have survived and Republican utopia would not exist: but perhaps we would be analogous to today’s Europe: smaller states, freeing trading and at peace. But behind the two realities of the Anti-Federalist and Federalist fight were extremes, extremes that have served to define our national character.

The Federalist extreme was Britain: a great centralized state, with armies and power that could shake the world with her might. On the opposite end stood the radical Anti-Federalists who demanded a state truly derived from the people, one without the pains of warfare, class conflict, and religious strife that seemed so inherent to the nation-states of Europe. Both these images were ideals: none really explaining what America would become, but both ideals are what we start from when discussing our national identity.

It’s intriguing to imagine an Anti-Federalist America: a Continent of Switzerlands. Small, peace-loving republics bounded by the shared pursuit for individual self-expression. Imagine our country without a standing army and truly direct representation. But one must also imagine a country without a national authority to force states to fall into line, whether over the mundane matter of highway construction or over the profound issue of slavery.

That this new world never came to be permits one to romanticize it, forgetting all the imperfections that might have blighted it beyond repair. But the passions of this new world have stirred within our nation. From the first moment the Constitution breathed life, the Anti-Federalists grabbed and tamed it, stapling onto it a Bill of Rights. So ingrained are these rights that it’s hard to believe that they were actually alterations to the Constitution: altercations that many opposed.

And the Antifederalist voice did not die even after the Bill of Rights: with each step towards the expansion of public sovereignty, (whether it is through direct Senate elections or the quasi-direct selection of the President or the emancipation of the slaves) the tenets of Anti-Federalism have remained strong in the American experience. In seems appropriate to note that Lincoln’s immortal worlds that “a house divided cannot stand” were borrowed from Paine’s Common Sense; a man who returned to America considered a lunatic radical, eventually dying alone, poor, and forgotten.
Perhaps the radical Anti-Federalist view was one made by and limited to the Divine terrain. But it seems that the divine guidance, which so many Anti-Federalists feared was lost in the mundane words of the Constitution, has managed to descend periodically to our mortal and imperfect shores.

These too often forgotten patriots, however imperfect, demand of us various and virtuous acts. They caution us in both their arguments to always be skeptical of our role within the state, this national asylum of liberty. They force us to fully face-up to our utopian visions we have of our nation and critically assess them, not merely to cheer when they are used as campaign fodder. And finally, they instill within us a sacred moral: that in whatever happy asylum we find ourselves, it is sometimes the vanquished lunatics that hold the key to salvation.

Works Cited

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. Edited by Isaac Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 1976.
Storing, Herbert J. The Anti-Federalist. Selections by Murray Dry. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985

Making Theory and Sense Out of “Making Democracy Work”: Analyzing Cultural Variables in the Development of the Italian Nation-State

        Robert Putnam, author of Making Democracies Work, places political culture as the critical variable for democratic success, studying the Italian decentralization of governmental authority during the 1970s. His finding: cultural differences between North and South Italy, forged during the 12^th century, hold the key for their contrasting levels of latter institutional success. While not eliminating political culture as an important variable in institutional success, this paper challenges Putnam’s causal story and, thereby, his conclusions on the nature of institutions. Putnam’s historical narrative suffers from several gaps: neglecting the differing development pathways of northern and southern Italy, the significance of Italian fascism, and post-WWII party structures. Such considerations will suggest that the divide within Italian civic culture rests not within the Italy of the 12th century, but within latter critical junctures. Instead of a slow moving institutional conception, this paper will show Italian cultural orientations as the result of a dynamic history of political decision-making.

Putnam offers the following hypothesis: the existence of putative republics within twelfth century northern Italy stand out as the key to understanding modern Italy (Putnam 136). Putnam bases this claim on a straightforward assumption of human behavior: when power is vertically orientated, a power holder has no need to seek cooperation. But if one deals among political equals, as in a republic, dominance is not possible: cooperation based on trust thus takes its place. Northern Italy’s republican legacy altered the types of autocratic rule it faced during the seventeenth century: all of Italy stood dominated, but the North retained a somewhat civically-minded autocratic structure, with moneys going to hospitals, roads, and local bureaucratic salaries (134). The absence of putative republics in the South, however, fostered a predatory state, with rulers keeping subjects divided and weak (135). Thus while the North found itself entering the era of mass mobilization by incorporating the wealthy and poor into strong communities, fostering trust, the South was left to the Mafia form of “privatized Leviathan (146-47).” These discordant trajectories have resulted in the differing effects of Italian decentralization in the 1970s: low civic-minded regions having less efficient governments, and higher civic minded regions faring better. Hence, it is a lasting difference within civic culture—not socio-economic status—that has determined the trajectory of regional governments in the late twentieth century.

Putnam, though, never explains the root of his causal chain: what permitted northern Italy to develop republics in the first place (180)? Civic culture is thus a norm without a discernable basis. This absence leaves open the charge that Putnam’s theory merely cherry-picks Italian history for conditions that resemble its present condition. Furthermore, what differentiates the 12^th century Italian historical moment from other historical episodes in Italian history? Putnam does not offer a clear benchmark from which to identify critical normative moments. As such, his normative theory holds little generalizablity. Pushing aside this presentist charge and lack of theoretical generalizability, Putnam’s historical narrative holds another substantial weakness: its inability to deal with certain key episodes within Italian history.

Putnam fails to fully consider the unique party structure that came to rule post-WWII Italy: the hegemonic Christian Democratic Party (DC). The DC controlled Italian politics in varying degrees from post-WWII until the end of the Cold War. This uninterrupted one-party rule garners a mere footnote within Putnam’s text (233). Why is this omission significant? DC hegemonic politicking fostered the mafia within southern Italy. The success of this strategy gave the DC power, but at a cost: the tolerance of corruption within southern Italy that undercut any attempt at true regional equality. Thus a political decision, made within a social framework distinct to Italy, led to the fostering of a clientalistic within south regions. American gangs within Chicago were eventually broken by strong national mobilization that blasted through local corruption; in the Italian case, the national government, itself, stood indebted to extra-legal organizations. The DC also found their rule aided by outside actors, receiving significant American support in order to beat back the Red Menace. And before the rise of the DC, there stands the ‘ultra-civical’ development of Italian fascism. If the North embodies a strong culture of trust and civic virtue, how did Italy become fascism’s vanguard?

Aside from these omissions, Putnam blurs the economic differences between northern and southern regions of Italy. He tells of Italy that [s]ome places are better governed than others, even when the governments involved have identical structures and equivalent legal and financial resources (82).” This statement makes clear a theoretical burden Putnam must overcome: showing that economic development is not, itself, the critical variable in the different regional trajectories of Italy. While Italy works to equalize economic relations between its differing provinces, one cannot claim that southern Italy and northern Italy are anywhere near an “equivalent” plane of socio-economic development. Italy boasts the world’s 5^th largest economy. But slicing out the northern region, Italy would stand as the principal pauper of the European Union. Furthermore, attempts to manufacture this ‘equivalence’ have been mired in inefficiency and made dull owing to the nationally (not regional) implemented plans: while Italy and the EU financed a combined aid package of $50 billion dollars to Southern Italy, most of it was misallocated to areas already developed within southern Italy (Nadeau). Political realities foster norms, not the other way around. Decades of corrupt rule inherited from various institutional legacies have served to divide Italy: making the South victim to continuous rent-seeking behavior. And this behavior has been codified within the institutional environment by the state apparatus. Southerners are less civic because the state treats them as prey, emerging as a predator to the body-politic, not its protector.

Rent-seeking does not occur because of a lack of civic-mindedness, but rather owing to the dilemma of collective action. Whereas one could point to a long history of different cultural orientations, one could view the Italian divide as a distinctly 20^th century phenomenon: the active development of the Mafia by the national government after WWII. But how did Italy inherit this regional characteristic? Perhaps the key lies within Napoleon’s land-reform measures of the northern Italian states, which provided room for the future development of an Italian middle class (Rempel). This class structure thus promoted vertical lines of association. But the South remained agrarian, dominated by horizontally orientated landlord-farmer relationships.

But even this view would blind one to the choices and strategies that hold as much, if not more, explanatory power for describing the different natures of Italy’s regional governments. Thelen’s conception of evolutionary institutions could be used to explain the development of the mafia. The mafia modified itself into a vote-machine; getting votes for the DC and receiving, in return, government positions and protection for delivering votes to a consistently dominant party. Thus political decisions, shaped by past legacies, created and reinforced a norm.

While one can exploit weaknesses within Putnam’s work, his focus of theoretical inquiry should not be disregarded. Culture is a dominant force in how all people live, with clear implications on political choices; but it cannot be as static as Putnam suggests. While culture can explain particular forms of institutions or their rules, one must keep in mind that culture is passed down in generational increments (Barnes 119). Times of great historical change (war, economic depression, and economic shifts) bring with them generational normative shifts, as current cultural norms prove useless in different historical contexts. And while culture may color institutional choices, cultural norms have varying strength over time: demanding a study that shows the variable effect norms have had within political outcomes.

Cultural concerns may be powerful, but Putnam’s study of Italian civic culture proves neither its separateness from other factors or its causal primacy. The roots of Putnam’s civic culture norm seem to lie within economic power relations, mirroring interest structures. Thus a state may forge political institutions (or permit other actors to do so), using its monopoly of force, which then can change the interests of state-actors; and thereby altering national norms. Alternatively, the state can choose (or be forced) to operate within the norms it has inherited. While there may be an overall cultural context that the state operates within, Putnam fails to explain the origin of normative variable and fails to offer a benchmark by which to differentiate when states change norms or reinforce them. Thus Putnam’s causal mechanism falls short: unable to explain Italian history or prove its primacy over other explanations. Making Democracy Work convincingly details the existence of a contrasting Italian civic culture, but offers little insight to its role within the black box of state development.

Works Cited

Barnes, Samuel H. “Electoral Behavior and Comparative Politics.” Comparative Politics:
Rationality, Culture, and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Nadeau, Barbie. “Poor, Poorer, Poorest.” Newsweek International. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9378520/site/newsweek/ Date Last Accessed: October 30, 2005.

Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.
Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Rempel, Gerhard. “The Napoleonic Revolution.” Lecture Notes: http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/napoleon.html . West New England College. Date Last Accessed: October 31, 2005.