The ideological origins of American federalism /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:LaCroix, Alison L.
Imprint:Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2010.
Description:312 pages ; 25 cm
Language:English
Subject:American Revolution (1775-1783)
Federal government -- United States -- History.
Federal government.
Politics and government.
Föderalismus.
Federalisme.
Politieke ideologie.
Föderalismus.
Federalism -- historia -- Förenta staterna.
United States -- Politics and government.
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783.
United States.
USA.
Verenigde Staten.
USA.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/7933180
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780674048867
0674048865
9780674062030
0674062035
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:In this book, the author traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue.
Standard no.:40017700566
Review by Choice Review

LaCroix (Univ. of Chicago Law School) has written a delightful book on the ideological origins of American federalism. Rather than rely on the often-examined influence of the self-interest of the American founders, LaCroix transcends that confined scholarship. The founders were not bound by such straits. In the process, the author brings "ideology back into the discussion." As LaCroix asserts, ideas "played a crucial role in defining the contours first of the colonial and then of early national government." The development of federalism was thus an ideological development, and it represented a change from, rather than continuity with, British thought. The path Americans took to rethinking government arrangements occurred because of a long process of grappling with conflicts between the king and Parliament. Many American founders hit the books, reading Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, Lord Kames, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui to craft an argument modifying the relationship between the mother country and the colonies. The founders ended up assenting to an old English, but rejected, tradition of imperium in imperio. This empire within an empire is, through much thought and practical example, what came to be known as American federalism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and above. E. S. Root West Liberty State College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review