The Coming of the Fourth American Republic
By James V. DeLong
Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Special Interest State that has shaped American life for 70 years is dying. What comes next is uncertain, but there are grounds for optimism.

The United States has been called the oldest nation in the world, in the sense that it has operated the longest without a major upheaval in its basic institutional structure.

From one perspective, this characterization is fair. The nation still rests on the Constitution of 1787, and no other government can trace its current charter back so far. Since then, France has had a monarchy, two empires, and five republics. England fudges by never writing down its constitutional arrangements, but the polity of Gordon I is remote from that of George III. China’s political convolutions defy summary.

Shift the angle of vision and the continuity is less clear, because we have had two upheavals so sweeping that the institutional arrangements under which we now operate can fairly be classified as the Third American Republic. Furthermore, this Third Republic is teetering (these things seem to run in cycles of about 70 years) and is on the edge of giving way to a revised Fourth Republic with arrangements as yet murky to our present-bound perceptions.

This prediction should be seen as optimistic, not pessimistic, despite the stresses the transition puts on those of us standing on the ice as it cracks. At the risk of practicing “Whig history”—a term applied to the interpretation of history as a story of progress toward the enlightened present—the infelicities of the Third Republic grow tedious, and reform is needed to clear space for the progress of American, and world, civilization.

Understanding the current upheaval is aided by a brief description of the earlier ones.

The first was the Civil War and its aftermath, which established that sovereignty belongs to the nation first and the state second, and that the nation rather than the state claims a citizen’s primary loyalty. When the United States was founded, this ordering was not so clear. James Madison assumed the opposite in Federalist 46 and a generation of southern West Point graduates followed their states into secession in 1861. The shift was traumatic and took decades to complete, but eventually the states became largely instruments of federal policy, except for a few areas in which conformity is unnecessary or special interests have managed to preserve state autonomy for their own purposes.

The upheaval of the Civil War era resolved a second issue, the relationship between the government and the onrushing technological and industrial revolution. The newly dominant federal government would not cripple private action in pursuit of national markets and industrialization, and would not allow the states to do so. Much of this agenda was administered by the Supreme Court—as the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Greve documents in a superb recent lecture, “Commerce, Competition, and the Court: An Agenda for a Constitutional Revival”—but it represented a clear political agenda supported by the dominant forces of the time.

The later historians of the New Deal and the Great Society sneered that the idea of “laissez faire” was an abdication of governmental responsibility, but this was propaganda. The best translation of the term is the activist “let us do,” not the passive “let us be,” and the societal quid pro quo was dynamic economic expansion, not the easy life of the rentier. To a large degree, the ideology of laissez faire was designed to protect interstate commerce from rentiers in the form of government officials extorting payments.

The Special Interest State

The next great institutional upheaval was the New Deal, which radically revised the role of government. The process of economic growth was tumultuous, and the losers and dislocated were constantly appealing against the national political commitment to “let us do.” The crisis of the Great Depression provided a great opportunity, and it was seized. Starting in the 1930s, the theoretical limitations on the authority of governments—national or state—to deal with economic or welfare issues were dissolved, and in the course of fighting for this untrammeled power governments eagerly accepted responsibility for the functioning of the economy and the popular welfare.

Like the primacy of federal over state sovereignty, the shift continued even after the watershed event. Remaining limits on governmental authority were eliminated by the dialectic of the civil rights revolution, in which the federal power over commerce was expanded to meet moral imperatives, and the new standards were then fed back into regulation of commerce.

The combination of plenary government power combined with the seizure of its levers by special interests constitutes the polity of the current Third American Republic.
Inherent in the expansion of governmental power was the complicated question of how this unbridled power would be exercised. As the reach of any institution expands, especially anything as cumbersome as a government, it becomes impossible for the institution as a whole to exercise its power. Delegation to sub-units is necessary: to agencies, legislative committees and subcommittees, even private groups.

The obvious issue is how these subunits are controlled and directed. The theoretical answer had been provided by the Progressive movement (the real one of the early 20th century, not the current faux version). Much of the Progressive movement’s complaint was that special interests, often corporate, captured the governmental process, and its prescriptions were appeals to direct democracy or to administrative independence and expertise on the theory that delegation to technocrats could achieve the ideal of “the public interest.”

The real-world answer imposed by the New Deal and its progeny turned out to be special interest capture on steroids. Control comes to rest with those with the greatest interest or the most money at stake, and the result was the creation of a polity called “the Special Interest State” or, in Cornell University Professor Theodore Lowi’s terms, “Interest Group Liberalism.” Its essence is that various interest groups seize control over particular power centers of government and use them for their own ends.

It is this combination of plenary government power combined with the seizure of its levers by special interests that constitutes the polity of the current Third American Republic. The influence of “faction” and its control had been a concern since the founding of the nation, but it took the New Deal and its acolytes to decide that control of governmental turf by special interests was a feature, not a bug, a supposedly healthy part of democratic pluralism.

And so the Special Interest State expanded, blessed by the intelligentsia. And it feeds on itself; the larger and more complex the government becomes, the higher the costs of monitoring it. This means that no one without a strong interest in a particular area can afford to keep track, which leaves the turf to the beneficiaries. And as existing interests dig in to defend their turf, new interests require continuing expansions of governmental activity to stake a claim on.

http://www.american.com:80/archive/2009/april-2009/the-coming-of-the-fourth-american-republic


James V. DeLong is a former research director of the Administrative Conference of the United States and a former book review editor of the Harvard Law Review.


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Interesting artile. I read the whole thing and agree with much.

He could have picked on the Republicans I think on some issues but I do think this paragraph stands out...

*To pick on the Democrats: basically sensible financial operators will not challenge the climate changers. Now, the climate changers are asserting a power and a duty to control (i.e., shut down) the economy. At the moment, the financiers simply trust that their own inside-government people will somehow manage to control the situation, even if they get no public support from the other elements of the Democrat coalition. This is unlikely, so either the financial operators will wind up losing big or they will have to confront the issue directly. (Of course, many of them have joined the climate changers, and hope to profit from the issue, but this is not an infinitely large bandwagon.)*

I think we live in "interesting" times.

- Peter.

__________________
2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

What we are seeing is the birth of Social Democracy in America, the form of government used in the rest of the world. It is a response to the utter failure of pure capitalism for the second time in US history. People are fed up with the roller coaster ride and the emerging two class society. We want our middle class back.

There is no pure capitalism in the United states. Hasn't been since FDR. What's failed is precisely your social BS.

- Peter.

__________________
2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

Too bad for you the American people didn't buy THAT bs in the last election.

They bought somebody else's BS instead.

Not all americans were as stupid as those who voted for the second cumming. However. the article does make an interesting point which is that given the hijacking of the government by special interests subsequent to the 1930's, there is no consensus outside of ones own special interest group. And given that the dems are simply a coallition of special intereest groups (republicans are too though less so in my opinion) the government will lurch from one extreme to the other with no pretence of legitimacy to the country at large. Thus you have Bush and Obama regarded as illegitimate by about half the populace. There will be no meaningul co-operation, government is busted and one way or the other, revolution will eventually occur.

- Peter.

__________________
2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

I think what you are going to see over the next two elections is the shrikage of the right wing half, something that has been going on sinc 2004. In the elections of 2000 and 2004 it was a 50/50 split. In 2008 it was a 64/46 split. That will widen as time goes on, just as it did after the last Great Republian-caused Depression. This time around I will be surprised if the GOP survives it.

That's what happens when you have a stage full of idiots like Mitt Romney and Giuliani. Sure, maybe they did a good job as mayor / governor, but when you get up there and start talking all this nonsense about foreign policy that is completely one-sided, you are going to lose a lot of fanbase. What happened to "normal" republicans? I mean, I'm sure there are still a lot of them out there in office, but why not running for pres? Or did they all get kicked out in the first round of the primaries (which were a joke, btw. Apparently a presidential election has turned into a reality tv drama in this country)

__________________
Dan
2005 E320 CDI - 246k
1987 300SDL TD05-16g, Herlevi pump, Elbe manifold, 2.47 LSD - 213k
Past: 1987 300D - 264k

You could ask precisely the same question about Democrats. One look at the last few elections, including and especialy the latest, indicates exactly that. After all what "normal" person would even think of wasting their time running against Britney Spears?

- Peter.

__________________
2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

I agree..I do think that the democratic side was slightly less ridiculous, but still..Hillary..ugh. Actually, all of them. And Kerry..I voted for him for my first election- now I think he's an idiot too. The "Mitt Romney" of the democrats. WGAS if your wife is so and so Heinz. But I digress

I mean, why do all the cadidates have to be hard-liners? Did you notice how they all basically agreed with each other on everything? Then those who didn't never made it very far.

I think a third party would be great..we need some people who won't take crap from stupid influential groups..a party that is based on common sense, and the good of the people. I know that would be very hard to come across, but..
I hear the saying "one cycle they move to the right, the next they move to the left" for balance, etc. Well, why not move at all? I think we'd save a lot of time and money if we weren't constantly trying to outdo one side's work.

__________________
Dan
2005 E320 CDI - 246k
1987 300SDL TD05-16g, Herlevi pump, Elbe manifold, 2.47 LSD - 213k
Past: 1987 300D - 264k

Who was it who coined the term "Demopublican" and "Republicrat"?

What's the point? As long as the 3rd party is going to do the same as the current 2 parties, IOW, say pretty much the same thing, what is the difference? Kinda like Henry Ford saying "You can have any color you want as long as it is black".

I think of it as keeping each other in check.

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91 Vette with 383 motor
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03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
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04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

On a chess board, maybe but on a global scale, how would that be accomplished without the magic crystal ball to see what the ramifications of each action is?

I think it is more "Knee Jerk" than anything. Or just plain Jerk. If you were a visionary, why would you even want to serve in the political scene? Why not direct that vision somewhere else where you can make more money with less hassle?

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Interesting segregation - I agree the Civil War was simply a feature of the Industrial Revolution in many ways.

The US really has two distinct revolutionary spheres, the economic and the political. The first list is the political revolutions, yours is the economic. This time, we seem to be undergoing both....

If the Republican Party can successfully split into Fiscal Conservative and Religious Nut Case branches, the F.C. Party could rise as rapidly to power as the GOP did in 1860. It's the real problem the electorate has, a lot of moderate votes simply has no place to go and the Hobson's choice ends up falling to the Democrats. A fiscally conservative, socially liberal rightwing party would give the Democrats a race, especially if the F.C. party can jettison the anti-Hispanic xenophobes in the process of splitting.