Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design
3
had survived war and depression as sovereign political entities that levied taxes, circulated currency and
notes, and regulated debts, vices, economic associations, public safety, and the electoral franchise.
Many an American politician had a vital stake in his state’s independent control over public
policy. In practice, these republican political leaders could not disconnect politics from public policy.
Public policy constructed political alliances and support, while political contests turned on the control of
the policy-making process. They had learned to calibrate tax, currency, debt and regulatory laws to create
distinct and dynamic political republican regimes (on using policy to construct political orders, see
Skowronek 1982, 1997; Bensel 2000). They were inventing and using policy tools to balance the
conflicting demands of democracy, order, economic stability and economic development (Main 1973;
Novak 1996; John 1997; Larson 2001: 9-31). Like organization builders more generally, they placed a
priority on the survival and autonomy of the states they had nurtured along (on organizational behavior in
open systems, see Thompson 1967). By early 1787, however, Shays’ Rebellion, state currency policies,
and other problems in state governance expanded political support for far-reaching national government
reforms (Brown, 1993; Matson, 1996: 382-4). The delegates shared with a number of constituents a deep
anxiety about the nation’s political future, and were willing to consider seriously substantial increases in
specific national powers. Though they expressed concern for economic stability, development,
investment and property rights, these politicians were not simply the agents of wealthy constituents
(Brown 1956; McDonald 1958: 25, 37, 86-92; Ferguson 1961: 251-286). In theory, more effective
national governance of currency, commerce and military security would provide valuable public goods
for their constituents. In practice, though, any specific addition to national power might be used to the
detriment of one or more states.
The delegates’ central political dilemma, then, was to reconstitute the national government so it
could provide the national public goods they believed necessary, without endangering the vital interests of
their constituents and the polities they had built. Each state legislature charged its delegates to render the
national government “adequate to the Exigencies of the Union.” There was widespread agreement that
the national government needed a steady stream of income and some specific additional powers to deal
Convention