James Madison Rules America

The Constitutional Origins of Congressional Partisanship

William F. Connelly Jr.

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780742599673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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 "the broken branch" or the "Second Civil War," 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 – whether to be part of the "government" or part of the "opposition" – provides evidence of how concretely James Madison's 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.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Congressional Party Strategy
• 2 House Democrats: The Wilderness Years
• 3 House Republicans: Newt the Anti-Federalist?
• 4 Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government
• 5 Alexis de Tocqueville’s Congress
• 6 The Federalist Revisited
• 7 Practical Consequences of Constitutional Principle: The 1790s
• 8 Practical Consequences of Constitutional Principle: The 1980s and 1990s
• 9 James Madison Rules America: Just Ask Newt and Nancy
• Appendix: Research Interviews
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author