JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, VI

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

This blog, at present, is attempting to demonstrate how isomorphic parochial federalism is – i.e., how much of a one-to-one match it is to what it describes and explains.  That would be governance and politics and this blog is relying on the federalist thinking that the founding fathers utilized in getting this nation started.  Basically, the recent postings have focused on a set of the founding documents such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and the Declaration of Independence.

          This posting begins by reviewing the Articles of Confederation and the important role it played in the eventual constitution upon which the nation has relied since the late 1780s.  Of course, the Articles was the first attempt at a national constitution, and it was organized in the familiar compact style. 

It established a national governmental arrangement in which the created national government did not get direct authority from or over the citizenry, only from and over the states, despite the fact that it lacked the coercive power to enforce the states to obey the policies it enacted.  This lack of power pertained to the most fundamental governmental activities such as collecting taxes or enlisting soldiers during a time of war.[2]

As is commonly known, these deficiencies are the motivators for writing a new constitution in 1787.  What is seldom pointed out, though, are the innovations and provisions contained in the Articles that were incorporated in the US Constitution.

 

That the Articles were wholly replaced by the Constitution of 1787 is not exactly the case.  It would be more accurate to say that the 1787 document, although providing for a fundamentally different kind of government, was generally constructed around an amended Articles of Confederation.  Depending upon how one counts words and provisions, from one-half to two-thirds of what appears in the Articles was retained in the Federalist Constitution of 1787.[3]

 

Donald Lutz points out that these provisions which were later adopted include:

 

·      “full faith and credit,” “privileges and immunities,” and the return of interstate fugitives provisions of Article IV

·      provision for admitting new states

·      republican guarantee

·      specific grant of power (though the powers are obviously different)

·      list of prohibitions on national powers is similar in both documents

·      list of prohibitions on state governments is similar in both documents, and

·      provision that “… the free inhabitants of each of these states … shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states” (a fundamentally federalist provision in that it creates dual citizenship in state and national levels and helps define the structure of citizenship in the subsequent national constitution of 1787).

 

The Articles, Lutz writes, was the vessel which precluded the shape that the eventual national government arrangement would take under the new constitution.  Before they moved on to the US Constitution, it is important to note that the foundational generation did not easily relinquish their localism – intrinsic in state sovereignty and protected by the Articles. 

The practical necessities of gaining independence from Britain and other ongoing national forces – such as ever-increasing interstate trade – made the step toward federalizing at a national level essential.  That does not necessarily mean it was welcomed by all parties, but the tide was cast.[4]

Among the average Americans, the emphasis was still in local communities meeting their own concerns despite the call for more nationalistic approaches (for example, in the pamphlet by Thomas Paine, Common Sense[5]).  What one is apt to do is to assume that Americans up and down the Atlantic seaboard were familiar with their fellow colonists.  That was not the case.

This blog will end its treatment of isomorphism with this last document.  The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights amply demonstrate the culmination of how parochial federalism views governance and politics and, due to their ongoing application in the nation’s political affairs, they define the American view of governance and politics as the basis of its parochialism.  Hopefully, the reader can appreciate that that view reflects a national, parochial federalist perspective.

From this sampling of the concerns, the governmental issues that this blog has recently addressed, and how this blog has relied on the writings of Lutz, the judgement is that this review has amply demonstrated the isomorphism of this perspective.  Hopefully, the reader agrees and is willing to accept parochial federalism as the basis for the study of all aspects of the national governmental arrangement by using a historical, developmental approach.  That approach – under the designation of “methodology” – will be shortly addressed in an upcoming posting.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Donald S. Lutz, “The Articles of Confederation, 1781” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 227-248.

[3] Ibid., 229.

[4] For an interesting account of this less than enthusiastic unionization among Americans, see T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution:  How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, NY:  The Oxford University Press, 2004).

[5] See Richard B. Bernstein, “John Adams’s Thoughts on Government,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 118-128.