The impact of political parties on political life in the United States has long been a subject of much interest to political scientists and other scholars.Works, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1881), comprise a good many political science classics. Below I will refer to James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1983); Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); John H. Aldrich, Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and Sarah A. Binder, Minority Rights, Majority Rule: Partisanship and the Development of Congress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). In pursuit of a general theory of political parties, some scholars have focused on the origins of parties, believing that to understand their goals and actions, one must first understand why parties form. In particular, the rational-choice view of party formation has been the most prevalent view in recent years.John F. Hoadley, “The Emergence of Political Parties in Congress,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 757–79; John F. Hoadley, Origins of American Political Parties, 1789–1803 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986); Joseph A. Schlesinger, Political Parties and the Winning of Office (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991); Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838–1893 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); John H. Aldrich and Ruth W. Grant, “The Antifederalists, the First Congress, and the First Parties,” Journal of Politics 55 (1993): 295–326; Aldrich, Why Parties?. To rational-choice scholars, parties are “endogenous” institutions, extralegal instruments created by political office seekers to further their goals and ambitions by solving various collective-action and social-choice problems.Thomas Schwartz, The Logic of Collective Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Thomas Schwartz, “Why Parties?,” Research Memorandum, Department of Political Science, University of California at Los Angeles, 1989; Cox and McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan; Aldrich, Why Parties?. Stated another way, parties are a rational response by politicians to the complexities they face in the political world.

Let me begin by saying there is a great deal of merit to Professor Jenkins's idea. We have long known that many policies have been placed in constitutions because they would be relatively hard to change. In some cases, divisive policies have been placed in constitutions because framers wished to enact a durable compromise that they hoped would discourage future contention.The archetypal example would be the “great compromise” over the apportionment of members in the Senate and House of Representatives at the Constitutional Convention. See, for example, Broadus Mitchell and Louise Mitchell, A Biography of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 66–77. However, slavery may present an even better case. See William M. Wiecek, “The Witch at the Christening: Slavery and the Constitution's Origins,” in Leonard W. Levy and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 167–84. In other instances, constitutions have recorded the uncompromising victory of one set of political principles over another.With respect to the Founding, the classic version of this thesis remains Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913). In still other respects, constitutions have been repositories for consensual political creeds.See, for example, Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal: The Story of the Making and Ratifying of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1948). The framing of constitutions have thus been motivated by a number of goals at the same time: dampening political conflict through a durable and authoritative adjudication of contentious issues, bolstering the regime's commitment to a class or social group through the imposition of a particular policy agenda, and increasing the legitimacy of the regime through the enactment of a societal consensus. To this list, Professor Jenkins adds a fourth possibility: that a particular political party, as an opportunistic organization of ambitious professionals, might dominate the framing of a new constitution in such a way as to disadvantage an opponent in otherwise free and open electoral competition. This is a very important suggestion and should not be lost while we, I think appropriately, set aside the historically specific description and claims in which he outlines the idea.

In his response to my essay on the connection between partisan machinations in the Confederate Constitutional Convention and the disappearance of Democrat-Whig divisions in the Confederacy, Professor Richard Bensel raises a number of interesting arguments as to why partisanship was not a factor during the making of the Confederate Constitution. Additionally, Professor Bensel suggests a different avenue to examine the link between partisanship and constitution-building, specifically state-level constitutional conventions in the South where parties were known to be active and played a crucial role in decision-making.

On December 8, 1896, the Supreme Court heard arguments in United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association.166 U.S. 290 (1897). The defendant was an association of 18 railroads locked in competition for traffic between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean. By memorandum of agreement, member railways had voluntarily agreed to cease all price-based competition and abide by a common schedule of rates. Attorneys for the railroads maintained that the effects of ruinous competition upon solvency justified the imposition of competitive restrictions. The rates set by the association, they argued, afforded the roads a fair return on their investments, simultaneously offering the public both reasonable rates and adequate facilities. In addition, uniformity of rates facilitated compliance with the Interstate Commerce Act's prescription that charges be nondiscriminatory as to person and place.

This article attempts to examine the processes by which the United States was transformed from an “isolationist” power to an “internationalist” one in the World War II period, focusing on the role of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an influential and controversial foreign policy organization.It is clear, however, that the internationalist-isolationist dichotomy is too simplistic; it has been demonstrated, notably by corporatist historians (on whom more below), to be at odds with the historical record. It is also of some importance, however, to take seriously the fact that the participants in the seismic foreign policy shift that did occur - even if there were interconnections and continuities between the two eras - categorized the past as “isolationist” and the future as “internationalist.” Their reading of the past - or at least of the interwar years - that they had all lived was that it was blighted by isolationism, even if the Hoover and other administrations had encouraged private bankers and others to engage in various international efforts. Their hopes, or rather strategies, for the future were pinned on globalism as the guiding star of U.S. foreign policy, but only after the spectre of isolationism - as an organized force, an intellectual current, even, perhaps, as a prejudice or as common sense - had been exorcized. “Isolationism” may not withstand the test of history, but it was real because the main political actors of the day believed it to be so, and their political strategies were constructed on such beliefs. See the following studies of the CFR: Lawrence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977); Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs: History of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990); Inderjeet Parmar, “The Issue of State Power: The Council on Foreign Relations as a Case Study,” Journal of American Studies, (1995); for an extreme right-wing view, see Phoebe Courtney, Nixon and the CFR (New Orleans: Free Men Speak, 1971). In focusing on an organization, I certainly imply that the transformation process was not driven purely by the logic of world events - Nazi domination of Europe or Japanese aggression - but also by concerted efforts by people dedicated to a set of principles and ideas about America's place in the world – ideas which challenged the isolationist status quo, sought to undermine it and to ultimately replace it with an internationalist consensus.

Broad developments in the political economy, coupled with the effects of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) and its amendments, have weakened organized labor's position in campaign politics. The number of business-related political action committees (PACs) exploded at the end of 1975, and quickly dwarfed the number of labor PACs. More significant are trends in spending. In 1977–1978 business-related PACs outcontributed labor committees by approximately $5.6 million, and in 1979–1980 the gap grew to $17 million. In 1993–1994 business PACs outcontributed unions by $60 million, and in 1995–1996 the figure was around $68 million.The FEC's scheme for classifying PACs makes it difficult to account for all business spending. The figures presented here are based on the conservative approach taken by Edwin Epstein, who counted all corporate spending and half of the spending by PACs classified by the FEC as Trade/Membership/Health and Cooperatives as business-related. Edwin M. Epstein, “Labor's Eroding Position in American Electoral Politics,” in Charles Bulmer and John L. Carmichael, eds., Employment and Labor Relations Policy (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980), 151–78; Epstein, “Business and Labor Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971,” in Michael Malbin, ed., Parties, Interest Groups, and Campaign Finance Laws (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), 107–51. This approach is superior to the FEC's classification, but almost certainly understates business-related PAC spending. Makinson and Goldstein's method probably exaggerates business spending, but they found over $40 million more in business PAC contributions to candidates in 1991–1992 than I found using the Epstein approach. Larry Makinson and Joshua Goldstein, Open Secrets: The Encyclopedia of Congressional Money and Politics, 3d ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1994), 22. These figures are impressive, but they probably underestimate the full dimensions of the gap between business and labor PAC spending. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) uses a more inclusive definition of “business PACs” than the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and found that business committees outspent union PACs by $36 million in 1987–88, and nearly $100 million in 1995–1996.Larry Makinson, Open Secrets: The Dollar Power of PACs in Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1990), 19; Larry Makinson, Open Secrets: The Encyclopedia of Congressional Money and Politics, 2d ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1992), 21; Makinson and Goldstein, Open Secrets, 3d ed., 21; Center for Responsive Politics, “Business-Labor-Ideology Split in Donations from PACs,” http://www.crp.org/pubs/bigpicture/blio/bpbliopac.html. There is some dispute about the full magnitude of the differences between business and labor PAC contributions, but it is clear that there is a large and growing gap between direct contributions to candidates from business and from labor.