The Lovers' Quarrel: The Two Foundings and American Political Development

The United States has had not one, but two Foundings. The Constitution produced by the Second Founding came to be only after a vociferous battle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists favored a relatively powerful central government, while the Anti-Federalists distrusted the concentration of power in one place and advocated the preservation of sovereignty in the states as crucibles of post-revolutionary republicanism -- the legacy of the First Founding. This philosophical cleavage has been at the heart of practically every major political conflict in U.S. history, and lives on today in debates between modern liberals and conservatives. In The Lovers' Quarrel, Elvin T. Lim presents a systematic and innovative analysis of this perennial struggle. The framers of the second Constitution, the Federalists, were not operating in an ideational or institutional vacuum; rather, the document they drafted and ratified was designed to remedy the perceived flaws of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. To decouple the Two Foundings is to appreciate that there is no such thing as "original meaning," only original dissent. Because the Anti-Federalists insisted that prior and democratically sanctioned understandings of federalism and union had to be negotiated and partially grafted onto the new Constitution, the Constitution's Articles and the Bill of Rights do not cohere as well together as has conventionally been thought. Rather, they represent two antithetical orientations toward power, liberty, and republicanism. The altercation over the necessity of the Second Founding generated coherent and self-contained philosophies that would become the core of American political thought, reproduced and transmitted across two centuries, whether the victors were the neo-Federalists (such as during the Civil War and the New Deal) or the neo-Anti-Federalists (such as during the Jacksonian era and the Reagan Revolution). The Second Founding -- the sole "founding" that we generally speak of -- would become a template for the unique, prototypically American species of politics and political debate. Because of it, American political development occurs only after the political entrepreneurs of each generation lock horns in a Lovers' Quarrel about the principles of one of the Two Foundings, and succeed in justifying and forging a durable expansion or contraction of federal authority.

About the Author :
Elvin T. Lim is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He is also the author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency.

Review :
"In this remarkable book, Elvin Lim rethinks American political history as an endless debate between two intertwined positions: power to the national government versus power to the states, effective administration versus rising democracy, federalism versus anti-federalism. The Lovers' Quarrel is powerful, elegant, meticulous, sweeping, brilliant, optimistic, and altogether exciting. It should be required reading for political historians, political theorists, and any reader interested in understanding the American past, its present and its future." --James A. Morone, author of The Democratic Wish, Hellfire Nation, and The Devils We Know "By probing the ways Americans' deep but conflicting commitments to decentralization and nationalism have shaped American political development and American political thought, Elvin Lim provides stimulating insights that will spark valuable debates and shape future scholarship." --Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania "Elvin Lim's The Lovers' Quarrel is a very important book because he has self-consciously and comprehensively sought to integrate the two fields of American Political Thought and American Political Development, both of which have attained a level of maturity, but which have proceeded in ignorance of, or at least by largely ignoring, each other. After Lim, this should no longer be possible." --Michael Zuckert, Editor-in-Chief, American Political Thought "There is a Renaissance in federalism studies and Elvin Lim has made a singular contribution to it by reviving a serious analysis of the Anti-Federalists and their tradition (as well as much more). This is a compelling and important book which should be read by all scholars of federalism and American political theory." --Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley