The Roots of American Politics

This book examines the ways in which American habits and politics replaced the traditional European republican canon.

Before the modern era, European republics relied on procedural complexity in office-filling to arrive at neutral government. They did so with such technical consistency over a long span of time as to create a republican procedural tradition. That tradition collided with conditions in the Anglo-American world: with entrenched social deference in politics, quasi-representative institutions, and an ascendant doctrine of majorities. American habits would ultimately overwhelm the European republican canon, but not without a fight. This book suggests that arguments over the abandonment of the procedural tradition shook politics in early America, especially at the federal convention, and that it is difficult to understand the convention delegates’ votes concerning the Great Compromise (apportioning the House and Senate) and the presidential selection system without reference to those arguments. The contest between simple majorities and complexity aiming at comity was not resolved neatly in Philadelphia and continued during the first decades of the republic; this book argues that some political institutions to this day bear the stamp of the imperfect arrangements reached at the nation’s founding which among other things was a moment of inflection between older and newer concepts of republican architecture.

This volume will be of interest to students and scholars interested in American Political History, Early American History, and Political Science.