Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The phrase sciences politiques was first used by Condorcet, and taken up as political science by Jefferson and Hamilton. The American Framers and their critics had to make up political science as they went along, in order to argue for (or against) a federal constitution from first principles. To do so, they drew on Scottish and French social science. We trace the influence of Scots (especially Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith) and French (especially Condorcet) thought on the first generation of political science.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Analyses of the political thought of James Madison have typically divided his theoretical work into two phases. In the first -- Madison as Publius -- the Founder grapples with the challenges of creating a strong central state. In the second -- Madison as politician -- the Founder abandons the Federalist position and becomes the chief theorist of the Jeffersonian effort to protect individual rights. Madison’s defenders, such as Lance Banning, have sought to reconcile these phases, while the Founder’s critics typically dismiss one or the other of them as opportunist.

Less noticed -- but crucial to understanding the whole of Madison’s thought -- is the emergence of a third phase: Madison as elder statesman, a period that bridges the end of his political career and the emergence of rights-oriented philosophies, like those of John Calhoun, that portended a rupture of the republic the Founder worked so hard to create. In this phase, Madison sheds the rhetoric of individual rights and reincarnates his role as Publius, the advocate of a strong central government in which popular majorities are slowed and channeled but ultimately accepted as the only alternative to despotic rule. This paper, which charts Madison’s retreat from rights and return to his majoritarian beginnings, is part of a larger project that explores the balance the Founder sought to strike between individual rights and majority rule -- a conflict that continues to haunt liberal theory to this day.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The place of heir apparent presidents tells us something important about how political time moves. Skowronek's (1997) account stresses the place of regime-builders, mid-life regime presidents and late regime affiliates. Heir apparent presidents immediately succeeded presidents of their respective parties who had built the foundations for a new political regime. As a consequence, an heir apparent president faces a diminished presidency, in comparison to his predecessor. James Madison confronted a political environment that complicated his ability to innovate due to an increasingly divided party and stronger forces of opposition. Rather than boldly innovate, the heir apparent president finds himself in the leadership position of protecting the policy achievements of his predecessor. This paper will consider the Madison presidency as a case that exemplifies the leadership dilemma of the heir apparent president.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: In this paper I define three different types of theory about theory based on scholarship about James Madison. The theories about theory suggest different ways in which theory affects the "real world." A "content based theory" suggests that politicians accept and use ideas from specific political theorists. A "nature of theory itself" argument, by contrast, suggests that it is the act of theorizing that produces the effect. Attention to Madison scholarship reveals two different kinds of nature of theory itself arguments. A "pure" nature of theory itself argument suggests that theory and theorizing almost inevitably has a certain effect on those who do it and the politics which results when political leaders theorize. An "affiliated" nature of theory itself argument is much more circumscribed. Its only claim is that an individual politician's theoretical bent has affected that individual in a particular way. I stress that the demonstration of each kind of argument depends on different kinds of evidence and that while any of these arguments may be made poorly or well, the amount and type of evidence required to demonstrate a pure nature of theory itself claim is so extensive, that such arguments have remained suggestive.