Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Politics and the Constitution
- 2 The Policy Crisis of the 1780s
- 3 James Madison's Plan for the Constitutional Convention
- 4 The Political Landscape of the Constitutional Convention
- 5 Who Governs? Constituting Policy Agency
- 6 What Can Be Governed? Constituting Policy Authority
- 7 How Is the Nation Governed? Constituting the Policy Process
- 8 Our Inheritance: The Constitution and American Politics
- Index
3 - James Madison's Plan for the Constitutional Convention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Politics and the Constitution
- 2 The Policy Crisis of the 1780s
- 3 James Madison's Plan for the Constitutional Convention
- 4 The Political Landscape of the Constitutional Convention
- 5 Who Governs? Constituting Policy Agency
- 6 What Can Be Governed? Constituting Policy Authority
- 7 How Is the Nation Governed? Constituting the Policy Process
- 8 Our Inheritance: The Constitution and American Politics
- Index
Summary
The new nation's mounting problems deepened American leaders' anxiety for the nation's future. Support for far-reaching institutional change was growing in all parts of the nation by 1787. Many American political leaders discussed pathbreaking remedies for the nation's economic and political troubles. Nearly all the states endorsed a convention to grapple with these issues. James Madison, already an accomplished policy strategist, constitutional expert, and experienced legislator, seized this opportunity to plan a thorough reconstitution of American economic policy making.
Madison's plan to structure America's political future began with a thorough critique of the states' handling of economic policy. He warned that the state governments' economic policies were menacing not only America's future prosperity but also the potential of republican government itself. The states, he concluded, must no longer govern the American economy. Authority over economic policy must be transferred to a reconstituted national government. Madison proposed to restructure the national government and to empower national policy makers to pursue the economic interests of the nation as a whole, independent of the interests of individual states or coalitions of states. His proposals aimed to (1) make the national government the presumptive, sovereign economic policy maker for the nation; (2) create a national policy-making process that would motivate national officials to focus on the pursuit of national interests instead of state interests; and (3) enable national policy makers to monitor and veto any state policies at will.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Constitution and America's Destiny , pp. 64 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005