Henry Jones Ford on the Development of American Institutions

Extract

American political scientists in the 1890s were deeply divided on the central question they had chosen to address: Where to place government in the United States in the larger scheme of Western political development. The “idealists,” led by John Burgess of Columbia University, argued that the American Constitution had “perfected the Aryan genius for political civilization” by “emancipating it from the remaining prejudices of European Teutonism.” Late-century America was, in their view, “the cosmopolitan model for political organization in the world” (Burgess 1895, 406). By placing the U.S. in this advanced position, the idealists mounted a strong case against demands for structural reform. Burgess himself thought that the proper American response to the new governmental challenges of the industrial age was more of the same. He urged a strengthening of the separation of powers, a further bolstering of the judicial and executive branches to counter the increasingly radical impulses of the states and Congress.