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An Economic Model of Voting Behaviour over Specific Issues at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert A. McGuire  and
Robert L. Ohsfeldt
Robert A. McGuire
Affiliation:
Associate Professor and Assistant Professor of Economics at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306.
Robert L. Ohsfeldt
Affiliation:
Associate Professor and Assistant Professor of Economics at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306.
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Abstract

Despite hundreds of studies of the influence of economic interests on the formation of the U.S. Constitution, no consensus has been reached. Our study of the Constitutional Convention differs from previous ones by offering an explicit theoretical model of delegates' voting behavior and employing multivariate statistical techniques. We extend our earlier work by analyzing new information on constituents' economic interests and ideology. Further our econometric results on individual roll-call votes strongly suggest delegates who owned slaves or represented slaveowning constituents were more likely to oppose issues favoring a national form of government.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 79 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

1 For a discussion of the movement for constitutional reform, see the excellent survey of the maneuvering that led to the Philadelphia convention in Kelly, Alfred H. and Harbison, Winfred A., The American Constitution: Its Origin and Development(4th ed., New York. 1970), pp. 110–13.Google Scholar

2 For a record of the debates, see Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven, 1911), 3 vols.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 586–90.Google Scholar

4 The data for the analysis are taken from several sources. For experience in the Continental Congress and for Revolutionary War rank, see Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1928–1958), selected vols. For economic interests and primary occupations,Google Scholar see McDonald, Forrest, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago, 1958);Google ScholarMain, Jackson Turner, “Charles A. Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Review of Forrest McDonald's We the People,” William and Mary Quarterly, 17 (01. 1960), pp. 86–110;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKelly and Harbison. The American Constitution, pp. 114–21;Google ScholarBrown, Richard D., “The Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787: A Collective View,” William and Mary Quarterly, 33 (07 1976), pp. 465–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The following information on securities and slaveholdings is contained in McDonald, We the People; and Main, “Charles A. Beard and the Constitution.”.Google Scholar

6 Kelly and Harbison, The American Constitution, pp. 115–16.Google Scholar

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8 Beard, An Economic Interpretation, pp. 31–51.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 26–30.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 16.Google Scholar

11 Kenyon, Cecelia, “Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, 12 (01. 1955), pp. 3–43;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCommager, Henry Steele, “The Constitution: Was It an Economic Document?” American Heritage, 10 (12. 1958), pp. 58–61, 100–103;Google ScholarBrown, Robert E., Charles Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Analysis of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (Princeton, 1956);CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcDonald, We the People.Google Scholar

12 McDonald, We the People, p. 110. McDonald did not argue economic interests had no influence at the convention. He argued the issue was too complex to put into Beard's dichotomy of personalty versus realty interests or any other specific interests. He concluded, nevertheless, there was no measurable relationship between specific interests and delegates' voting behavior at Philadelphia.Google Scholar

13 See Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, (Ann Arbor, 1962);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969);Google ScholarBrownlee, W. Elliot, Dynamics of Ascent: A History of tile American Economy (2nd ed., New York, 1979);Google ScholarPoulson, Barry W., Economic History of the United States (New York, 1981);Google ScholarHughes, Jonathan, American Economic History (Glenview, 1983). The authors, in our view, overstate the weight of the empirical analyses of Brown and McDonald, particularly, the empirical work of McDonald.Google Scholar

14 Benson, Lee, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered (Glencoe, 1960);Google Scholar and Main, “Charles A. Beard and the Constitution.” Also, for a detailed discussion of the intellectual history of Beard's thesis, focusing on common misperceptions among Beard's critics and supporters over the fundamental nature of Beard's interpretation, see McCorkle, Pope, “The Historian as Intellectual: Charles Beard and the Constitution Reconsidered,” American Journal of Legal History, 28 (10. 1984), pp. 315–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18 Ibid., p. 127.Google Scholar

19 Rossiter, Clinton Lawrence, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York, 1966), pp. 294–95.Google Scholar

20 McDonald, Forrest, E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic, 1776–1790 (Boston, 1965).Google Scholar

21 See Main, Jackson Turner, The Antifederalists: Critic's of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (Chapel Hill, 1961);Google ScholarLynd, Staughton, Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York (Chicago, 1962);Google ScholarRutland, Robert Allen, The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787–1788 (Norman, 1966).Google Scholar

22 See Calhoun, Daniel, “Continual Vision and Cosmopolitan Orthodoxy,” History and Theory, 18 (No. 3, 1979), pp. 257–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDiggins, John P., “Power and Authority in American History: The Case of Charles A. Beard and His Critics,” American Historical Review, 86 (10. 1981), pp. 701–30;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHutson, , “Country, Court, and Constitution”; Goldwin, Robert A. and Schambra, William A., eds., How Democratic is the Constitution? (Washington, D.C., 1980);Google ScholarHutson, James H., “The Creation of the Constitution: Scholarship at a Standstill,” Reviews in American History, 12(Dec.. 1984), pp. 463–77;CrossRefGoogle Scholar McCorkle, “The Historian as Intellectual; Riker, William H., “The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787, with Comments on Determinism and Rational Choice,” American Political Science Review, 78 (01. 1984), pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard,” this Journal, 44 (06 1984), pp. 509–19. Elsewhere, we examine in detail voting patterns over the general issue of the formation of a stronger national government at the Philadelphia convention and voting behavior at the state ratifying assemblies.Google Scholar See McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “A New Economic Interpretation of the Formation of the United States Constitution” (unpublished manuscript, Ball State University, 1985);Google Scholar and McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “Self-Interest, Voting Behavior, and the Ratification of the United States Constitution” (unpublished manuscript, Ball State University, 1985). Our analysis of voting patterns over the more specific issues presented here provides more detail regarding the influence of specific economic interests on voting for issues affecting the specific interests more directly. More analytical difficulties, however, are encountered in an analysis of individual roll-call votes.Google Scholar

24 For an argument that the economic theory of legislative and political voting is not well developed, see Peltzman, Sam, “Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting,” Journal of Law and Economics, 27 (May. 1984), pp. 181–210. To the extent scholars have attempted to model legislative voting behavior, the models have been either simple principal-agent models, where the legislator is the agent of the principal (the constituent) who elects or supports him, or the models have been based on a personal self-interest maxim. For detailed discussion of the principal-agent models,CrossRefGoogle Scholar see Peltzman, , “Constituent Interest”; Joseph P. Kalt and Mark A. Zupan, “Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics,” American Economic Review, 74 (06 1984), pp. 279–300;Google ScholarPeltzman, Sam, “An Economic Interpretation of the History of Congressional Voting in the Twentieth Century,” American Economic Review, 75 (09. 1985), pp. 656–75.Google Scholar For detailed discussion of personal self-interest models, see Tollison, Robert, “Rent Seeking: A Survey,” Kyklos, 35 (No. 4, 1982), pp. 575–602;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Welch, Susan and Peters, John G., “Private Interests and Public Interests: An Analysis of the Impact of Personal Finance on Congressional Voting on Agriculture Issues,” Journal of Politics, 45 (May 1983), pp. 378–96. Our model integrates the two approaches to the issue of voting behavior.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 As a practical matter, because a delegate's personal interests and his constituents' interests probably coincided in many cases, isolating the impact of personal interest from the impact of constituent interest on the voting behavior of the delegates may be a difficult empirical task. The problem is discussed in more detail later.Google Scholar

26 Farrand, Records, vol. 3, pp. 559–86.Google Scholar

27 The statement of economic conditions and perceptions summarizes the work of Bjork, Gordon C., “The Weaning of the American Economy: Independence, Market Changes, and Economic Development,” this Journal, 24(Dec.. 1964), pp. 541–60;Google ScholarFerguson, , The Power of the Purse;Google ScholarJensen, Merrill, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation (NewYork, 1950);Google ScholarShepherd, James F. and Walton, Gary M., “Economic Change After the American Revolution: Pre and Post War Comparisons of Maritime Shipping and Trade,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (10. 1976), pp. 397–422;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Walton, Gary M. and Shepherd, James F., The Economic Rise of Early America (New York, 1979), chap. 9.Google Scholar

28 Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric, “The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolution,” Political Science Quarterly, 76 (11. 1961), PP. 181–216;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Main, The Antifederalists.Google Scholar

29 Hutson, “Country, Court, and Constitution”; Libby, The Geographical Distribution of the Vote; Main, The Ant ifederalists.Google Scholar

30 Jillson, Calvin C., “Constitution-Making: Alignment and Realignment in the Federal Convention of 1787,” American Political Science Review, 75 (09. 1981), Pp. 598–612;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jillson, Calvin C. and Eubanks, Cecil L., The Political Structure of Constitution Making: The Federal Convention of 1787,” American Journal of Political Science, 28 (Aug. 1984), Pp. 435–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 See Riker, “The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making.”Google Scholar

32 See Kalt and Zupan, “Capture and Ideology,” pp. 288–89. For sophisticated discussion on the problem of strategic behavior,Google Scholar see Farquharson, Robin, Theory of Voting (New Haven. 1969);Google ScholarEnelow, James M. and Koehler, David H., “Vote Trading in a Legislative Context: An Analysis of Cooperative and Noncooperative Strategic Voting,” Public Choice, 34 (Issue 2, 1979), pp. 157–75;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShepsle, Kenneth A. and Weingast, Barry R., “Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Institutions,” American Journal of Political Science, 28 (11. 1984), pp. 49–74. The authors indicate the multitude of possible voting outcomes given strategic voting behavior in a majority rule context and appear to offer no empirical solutions to the logrolling problem.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The only attempt to empirically estimate logrolling, to our knowledge, is James Kau, B. and Rubin, Paul H., “Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting,” Journal of Law and Economics, 22 (10. 1979), pp. 365–84. They estimate votes on issues as a function of each other. The efficacy of their methodology is dubious.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Riker, “The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making,” pp. 6–12.Google Scholar

34 Buchanan and Tullock. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, chaps. 9. 10.Google Scholar

35 See Farrand, Records, vol. I, pp. 7–17.Google Scholar

36 See ibid.; Jensen, The Making; Kelley and Harbison, The American Constitution; McDonald, We The People and E Pluribus Unum; Rossiter, 1787. Several important compromises were discussed.

37 Of the three most recent papers in the economics literature on single-issue voting, only one (Kalt and Zupan, “Capture and Ideology”) even mentions the issue of logrolling but offers no solution. The other two (Peltzman, “Constituent Interest” and “An Economic Interpretation”) completely ignore the issue.Google Scholar

38 The attendance records, including dates of known absences; the diaries, including recorded votes of individual delegates; the votes of each state; and other information are contained in Farrand, , Records. The maximum number of votes for any issue is 53 because McDonald did not include any votes for Houston (New Jersey) and Wythe (Virginia) who departed the convention early. The two delegates are, therefore, not included in our analysis.Google Scholar

39 McDonald, We The People, p. 100.Google Scholar

40 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, pp. 245–56.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., pp. 621–22, 629–31.Google Scholar

42 On the importance of the form of ratification, see Kelly and Harbison, The American Constitution, chap. 5; and Jensen, The Making, pp. 96–105. On the importance of the amending process, see Jensen, The Making, pp. 96–105; and Rossiter, 1787, chap. II.Google Scholar

43 For the analysis, we scrutinized all documents contained in Farrand, Records.Google Scholar

44 See Farrand, Records, vol. 2, pp. 517, 582. Farrand stated it was virtually impossible to determine numerous votes on two different occasions—between roll call 455 and roll call 472 and between roll call 511 and roll call 569. Others also argued that only a half dozen or so important votes took place during the last four days of the convention when there were almost 60 roll calls.Google Scholar See Jensen, The Making, pp. 118–21; and Rossiter, 1787. chap. II.Google Scholar

45 The examples of other minor votes can be found in Farrand, Records, vol. 1, pp. 29–32 (roll call 1), 209–13 (roll call 56), 575–91 (roll calls 137–39 and 141–44); vol. 2, pp. 321–24 (roll call 317) and 396–99 (roll call 364).Google Scholar

46 On the importance of these issues, see Kelly and Harbison, The American Constitution, chap.5; Jensen, The Making, pp. 45–95; Rossiter, 1787, chaps. 10, 11. To quote Jensen on what was “the bitterest fight in the whole Convention: that between the North and South over export duties, slavery, and navigation acts. So violent was it that both northerners and southerners threatened to break up the Convention by walking out” (p. 88). And Jensen later concluded: “Many of the delegates were probably more concerned with placing restraints upon the state legislatures, particularly in economic matters, than with the details of government” (p. 95).Google Scholar

47 Compare Vote 1 and Vote 3 in McDonald, We the People, pp. 102–103, to roll call 30 and roll call 74 in Farrand, Records, vol. 1, pp. 130–47, 369–80.Google Scholar

48 Compare Vote 5 in McDonald, ibid., to roll call 228 and roll call 230 in Farrand, ibid., vol. 2, pp. 116–28.

49 Personal correspondence with McDonald, Forrest, 05–06 1984.Google Scholar

50 A detailed discussion of logit analysis is provided in Hanushek, Eric and Jackson, John E., Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (New York, 1977), chap. 7.Google Scholar

51 These variables are primarily contained in McDonald, We the People, with some corrections suggested by Brown, “The Founding Fathers”; and Main, “Charles A. Beard and the Constitution.”Google Scholar

52 These variables were obtained from the Dictionary of American Biography.Google Scholar

53 Elkins and McKitrick, “The Founding Fathers”; Main, The Antifederalists; Jensen, The Making; Rutland, The Ordeal of the Constitution.Google Scholar

54 We estimated average state wealth for each state as a population-weighted average of the county wealth estimates for the state reported in Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation To Be (New York, 1980), pp. 377–79.Google ScholarBecause no counties in New Hampshire or Georgia are included in Jones's estimates, we used her estimates of average wealth for the New England and southern regions as estimates of average wealth in New Hampshire and Georgia, respectively. We use her 1774 estimates because contemporaneous measures of each state's wealth are not available. The estimates should be reasonable proxies for the relative wealth positions of the states to the extent significant changes in price levels or real wealth levels across states did not occur from 1774 to 1787. We do not place much importance on the results for the variable but use it as an attempt to control constituents' wealth across states.Google Scholar

55 The data on net public debt at settlement in 1793 are from Ferguson, The Power of the Purse, pp. 331–33. Obviously, the variable leaves much to be desired as a measure of public creditor interests, but measures of the level of net public debt for each state in 1787 are not consistently available for all 12 states represented at the convention. Use of this variable serves the same purpose as use of state wealth estimates (see fn. 54).Google Scholar The measures of slave population and the ancestry of the population are from A Century of Population Growth (New York, 1969), pp. 116–20, 135–40, 271–90.Google Scholar

56 For distance calculations, see Cappon, Lester, ed., Atlas of Early American History: The Revolutionary Era, 1770–1790 (Princeton, 1976).Google Scholar For populations, see U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975). As alternatives to distance from the delegate's home to the nearest body of navigable coastline, we also calculated three other distance measures: 1) distance from home to the Atlantic coast, 2) distance from home to the nearest major city, and 3) distance from home to Philadelphia. In all four cases, distance is measured using a straight-line method. With the exception of distance to Philadelphia, all measures produced similar logit results. Results for the other three measures, therefore, are not reported.Google Scholar

57 See Libby, Geographical Distribution; Hutson, ‘Country, Court, and Constitution’; Jillson, “Constitution-Making”; Main, The Anlifederalists;Google ScholarNadelhaft, Jerome J., The Disorders of War:The Revolution in South Carolina (Orono, 1981);Google ScholarRisjord, Norman K., Chesapeake Politics 1781–1800 (New York, 1978);Google ScholarSpaulding, E. Wilder, New York in the Critical Period: 1783–1789 (New York, 1932).Google Scholar

58 Farrand, Records, vol. 3, pp. 586–90.Google Scholar

59 George Read (Delaware) actually signed for himself and for John Dickinson (Delaware) who was not present,Google Scholar see ibid.

60 We imputed the vote under this assumption for only two of the three non-signing delegates, William Houstoun (Georgia) and Alexander Martin (North Carolina). The third, William Churchill Houston (New Jersey), was excluded from our analysis because of a lack of information. See fn.38.Google Scholar

61 Both sets of estimates produced similar results. The issue is discussed in greater detail in the next section. Also, because of different sizes of state delegations, a losing issue that had a majority of the states against it could have had nearly a majority or even an actual majority of individual delegates voting in favor of it. It does not follow, therefore, that the delegates, who left the convention because they were in the minority, could have stayed and passed the losing issues.Google Scholar

62 Over 20 alternative specifications involving different combinations of personal and constituent interest variables were used to estimate voting behavior for each of the issues. The votes were also alternatively adjusted or unadjusted for not voting as described earlier. The signs of the statistically significant logit coefficients generally were not sensitive to specification, with the exception of the last three issues. In Table 4, the entry Y* (or N*), for example, indicates that the logit coefficients of the corresponding variable for the issue in question were consistently positive (or negative) and significant at the .05 level or better.Google Scholar

63 See McGuire and Ohsfeldt, “A New Economic Interpretation.”Google Scholar

64 For studies that concluded slaveholding interests were pro-national, see Main, The Antifederalists;Google ScholarRisjord, Norman K., “Virginians and the Constitution: A Multivariant Analysis,” William and Mary Quarterly, 31 (10. 1974), pp. 613–32 and Chesapeake Politics;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNadelhaft, The Disorders of War. Main, The Antifederalists, is the only author who makes an issue of ancestry as an indicator of political views.Google Scholar

65 All estimates reported in Table 5 are based on the strong assumptions regarding delegates who did not vote. Logit coefficients are reported in the Appendix.Google Scholar

66 These elasticities are calculated as (P/P)(Xi/Xi) = βiXi(l−P), where P is the predicted probability of a yes vote, Xi is a particular explanatory variable, and βi is the estimated logit coefficient for that variable. All elasticities are evaluated at the means of the explanatory variables. All elasticities are evaluated at the means of the explanatory varibales. Hanushek and Jackson, Statistical Methods, chap. 7.Google Scholar

67 The predicted probability of a yes vote is calculated as P = 1/[[1 + exp (−a − Σ iβi)], where α is the estimated constant, βi is the estimated logit coefficient for variable Xi and Xi is a particular value of Xi (for example, the mean of Xi). See ibid.

68 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, pp. 95, 220–23, 364–74, 415–16.Google Scholar

69 McDonald, E Pluribus Unum, pp. 289, 321–25.Google Scholar

70 Farrand, Records, vol. 1, P. 168. All quotations of speeches are from James Madison's “Notes” contained in Farrand and are Madison's summary of what was actually said.Google Scholar

71 Farrand, Records, vol. 1, p. 166.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., p. 167.Google Scholar

73 On the importance of export tariffs at the convention, see fn. 46.Google Scholar

74 McDonald, We The People, chap. 3.Google Scholar

75 McDonald, E Pluribus Unum, p. 289.Google Scholar

76 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, pp. 360–74.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., p. 364.Google Scholar

78 Walton and Shepherd, Economic Rise of Early America, chap. 9.Google Scholar

79 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, p. 515.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 439.Google Scholar

81 Farrand, Records, vol. 1, p. 165.Google Scholar

82 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, p. 306.Google Scholar

83 See Kelly and Harbison, The Amercian Constitution and Jensen, The Making. On the significance of the two-thirds provision at the convention, see fn. 46.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., pp. 448–51, 631.Google Scholar

85 See Buchanan and Tullock, Calculus of Consent.Google Scholar

86 On this point, see Rossiter, 1787, chap. 12.Google Scholar

87 Rossiter, ibid., concluded that if a dozen backcountry farmers had attended the Philadelphia convention, there would have been no nationalist charter.