James Madison Rules America The Constitutional Origins of Congressional Partisanship

by Connelly, William F., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780742599659
• ISBN10: 0742599655
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-06-16
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

James Madison Rules America examines congressional party legislative and electoral strategy in the context of our constitutional separation of powers. In a departure from recent books that have described Congress as Othe broken branchO or the OSecond Civil War,O William Connelly argues that partisanship, polarization and the permanent campaign are an inevitable part of congressional politics. The strategic conundrum confronting both parties in the House of Representatives D whether to be part of the OgovernmentO or part of the OoppositionO D provides evidence of how concretely James MadisonOs Constitution governs the behavior of politicians to this day. Drawing on a two-hundred year debate within American political thought among the Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Alexis de Tocqueville and Woodrow Wilson, James Madison Rules America is as topical as current debates over partisan polarization and the permanent campaign, while being grounded in two enduring and important schools of thought within political science: pluralism and party government.

Author Biography

William F. Connelly, Jr., is John K. Boardman Politics Professor at Washington and Lee University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Congressional Party Strategy	p. 15
House Democrats: The Wilderness Years	p. 49
House Republicans: Newt the Anti-Federalist?	p. 85
Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government	p. 109
Alexis de Tocqueville's Congress	p. 125
The Federalist Revisited	p. 151
Practical Consequences of Constitutional Principle: The 1790s	p. 189
Practical Consequences of Constitutional Principle: The 1980s and 1990s	p. 207
James Madison Rules America: Just Ask Newt and Nancy	p. 233
Appendix: Research Interviews	p. 273
Notes	p. 275
Selected Bibliography	p. 321
Index	p. 329
About the Author	p. 339
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