June 21, 2024More on the Founders and Faction(As I was writing this I received a trackback ping from OTB, where James has also dealt with Fed 10—indeed, I cut short the post as James cites several of the passages from Fed 10 I was going to reference). Some clarification and amplification is in order regarding my post on factions/parties and the Founders. I did not mean to state that the Founders did not understand the natural proclivity of masses to divide into factions, rather I was arguing that the did not understand the profound importance in a representative government of institutionalized political parties. Indeed, that is not really a surprise insofar as there really had not yet been a functioning mass representative government in the world (although parties had formed in Britain). Madison was quite aware of the causes of faction, as he wrote in Federalist 10: Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. And, as is pointed on in the text, Madison does not wish to do away with liberty. Rather, the whole constitutional design of the US government is set up, as I made reference to yesterday, to control the passions and ambitions of men and groups so that no one faction can dominate the rest. As such, the current fight between the President and the factions in the Senate is by design, I would argue. Comments
Ah. Okay--this is a separate post. I thought I was commenting on an in-progress one and caused you to cut short. :-) And congrats on the traffic pickup--you've had 1000 visits in a very short time now. Posted by: James Joyner at June 21, 2024 08:37 AMI like your posts and think we're on the same track here, actually. My original question was whether or not it was unconstitutional for Dems to ask for, or even hope for an institutionalization of, Presidential consultation on nominees. My answer is no, both because the constitutional analysis that relies only on the Federalist as (magically) explaining founding intent is flawed, but also because such a proposal would be functionally sensible in our political world, precisely because of alterations in constitutional operation that would have struck the framers as unfortunate. Posted by: Brett at June 21, 2024 01:53 PMInstitutionalized party systems are really only necessary with a mass electorate, at least in terms of the "translation of preferences into policy" thing. At the time the Framers were writing, there was no true mass electorate in the world, and there wouldn't be until the Jacksonian era (and the creation of the second party system, the first party system being rather short-lived and uninstitutionalized outside New England) and Britain's similar reforms in the mid-1800s. Posted by: Chris Lawrence at June 21, 2024 05:37 PMTrue, although I would argue that even semi-mass democracy will generate at least an inchoate party system. This was certainly the case during the 1780s and into the 19th century, as I noted. I don't know enough about the "Era of Good Feelings" to intelligently comment, but I am willing to wager that in the Congress there were still identifiable factions. Posted by: Steven at June 21, 2024 07:40 PMPost a comment
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