Abstract
This chapter examines anti-federalist critique of the newly proposed Constitution. It combines the elements of the older tradition of “mixed” or ancient constitutionalism, with the typical economic arguments against mercantilism and central government’s control over the economic life. It demonstrates that anti-federalists were a diverse group of people who cherished American traditional political concepts mixed with an intuitive, and yet sometimes rather sophisticated grasp of free market economics and the dangers for economic liberty posed by the emerging mercantilist machinery of government. The chapter challenges the conventional interpretation of the weakness of the regime under the Articles of Confederation and demonstrates its superiority over the new Constitution in protecting economic liberty. It employs economic analysis to demonstrate the relevance of anti-federalist arguments for modern theories of fiscal federalism and decentralization.
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Notes
- 1.
For the discussion of the “ancient constitution” and anti-federalists, see section ‘Public Choice and “Ancient Constitution”’ of this chapter.
- 2.
- 3.
I will use this term throughout the chapter for the reasons of convenience, although its meaning is exactly the opposite of reality: “anti-federalists’” were actually federalists according to the linguistic usages of the time, the people opposing strong central government and emphasizing the rights and liberties of federal units, just as mush the “federalists” were actually “anti-federalists,” advocating a strong central government and a radical diminution, and in some cases even abolishing, of political subjectivity of the federal states.
- 4.
See Cecilya Kenyon, “Hamilton: Rousseau of the Right,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 2 (June 1958), pp. 161–178.
- 5.
Even Gordon Wood in his magisterial “The Creation of the American Republic” adheres to the standard Beardian platitudes of federalists as promoters of “commercial republicanism” and anti-federalists as “radical democrats,” egalitarians, and majoritarians, see Wood (1969: 9–16).
- 6.
- 7.
See the Article I, section 10 of the Constitution. “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”
- 8.
- 9.
This is widely held assumption, most notably and consistently formulated by Forrest McDonald (2000).
- 10.
It used to be widely accepted by the progressive historians that the Constitution was primarily premeditated to give the central government the power to pay off the wartime bods, reward land speculation and give the tariff protection to wealthy merchants who were disproportionately federalists (Jensen 1963; Beard 1986). However, later revisions (McDonald 1958) this strong thesis was put into question, but the basic argument that economic power of the central government should serve as a vehicle of political power and consolidation, that federalists themselves boasted, is undeniable.
- 11.
See Frohnen (1999).
- 12.
For an explanation (a sympathetic one) of the reasons for considering federalists to be the monarchists of the European mold, see Rose (1990).
- 13.
- 14.
One of the expressions of this fear was the insistence on the inclusion of a comprehensive Bill or Rights in the new Constitution.
- 15.
The “revolving door” represents a notion that public officials change positions in and out of the government, either in power where they can help the interest of various groups or as lobbyists of the same groups, once they leave the position in the government. See Cohen (1986). Revolving Door Lobbyists Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Mirko Draca, and Christian Fons-Rosen, The American Economic Review, Vol. 102, No. 7 (December 2012), pp. 3731–3748; The Dynamics of the “Revolving Door” on the FCC Jeffrey E. Cohen, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 30, No. 4 (November 1986), pp. 689–708.
- 16.
See Chapter 6.
- 17.
- 18.
The standard literature on constitutional economics was by and large inaugurated by Buchanan and Tullock (1999).
- 19.
This is especially the case with commerce clause, taxing powers as well as a couple of clauses with elastic meaning such as general welfare and necessary and proper. For an analysis of how those institutional changes affected the government powers, see Holcombe (1991).
- 20.
A good example of this is the behavior of the Soviet government, facing the local managers trying to by-pass the “production quotas” assigned to them by the central planning bodies, by faking the reports on production. The government would simply determine higher quotas to begin with, counting in advance that the managers would try to fake the results. For this kind of difficulties of the Soviet central planning, see Birman (1988).
- 21.
The best known modern example is the European Union, whose “founding fathers” openly compared themselves to the American Framers during the process of writing the founding the EU “founding” document, the so-called Lisbon Treaty. And the most common avenue they are using for centralization is a gradual takeover of monetary and trade policy competencies from the national governments.
- 22.
This is literature is enormous. See, for example, Phillip J. Grossman, “Federalism and the Size of Government,” 55 Southern Economic Journal (1989), pp. 580–593; Kenneth C. Wheare, Federal Government (4th edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Friedrich Hayek, “The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism,” reprinted in Individual and Economic Order (1948), pp. 255–272, University of Chicago Press; James M. Buchanan, “Federalism and Fiscal Equity,” 40 American Economic Review (1950), pp. 583–599; James M. Buchanan, “Federalism as an Ideal Political Order and an Objective for Constitutional Reform,” 25 Publius (1995), pp. 19–27; Gary M. Anderson and Robert D. Tollison, “Legislative Monopoly and the Size of Government,” 54 Southern Economic Journal (1988), pp. 529–545.
- 23.
This is a common assumption accepted in the public choice theory as a heuristic model or a methodological instrument to analyze politics. But Tiebout is thinking literally, and in a more stringent sense, that if we grant certain reasonable assumptions it follows that local governments really function as private firms.
- 24.
- 25.
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Jankovic, I. (2019). 1776 Strikes Back—Anti-federalist Critics of the Constitution. In: The American Counter-Revolution in Favor of Liberty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03733-8_7
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