Customer Reviews

Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Dover Books on History, Political and Social Science)

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In the gutsiest political manifesto of American history, Woodrow Wilson dared to say that the Founding Fathers had it wrong. What's amazing is that his analysis holds up after 100 years. Wilson believed that "separation of powers" did not exist, and that the building impenetrable walls between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches produced abdication of responsbility. Wilson held up as a model the Westminster cabinet form of government as a model of clarity, openness, and responsibility. You can read Wilson's 1884 pages as if he wrote them today. The style is pure Victorian -- run-on sentences galore -- but the analysis is rapier-sharp. My opinion -- get this book, and have your mind changed. You will never see American government the same way again.

PATRICK McGRATH The Campaign for Responsible Government Stony Point, NY

This book is a classic. As a young academic with a keen interest in national politics, but without any experience, Wilson critiques the American governmental structure on a number of points, examines all of the branches (except judicial), the inner workings and character of each branch, and their inter-workings. Wilson is mostly critical of the system's deficiencies and has few words of praise for Constitutional government. Instead, his ideal model is the British system, with which he is constantly comparing the American. He also touches on the model of French government to provide a broader basis of comparison. The world's other great model Republic, Switzerland, is given passing mention. A broader discussion of the diversity of foreign models, including more discussion of the brilliant Swiss federal system, but also including the German system, would have added much to this book.

Wilson's principal complaints with the shortcomings of American government can be summed up with one word: disjoint. He states that there is no structure in the Congress that can be described as "leadership" in British sense, meaning that even the nominal "leaders" of the parties cannot claim to speak for the rank-and-file members, who may act on their own initiative, through committees, in the process of drafting legislation (instead of having legislation crafted by a central administration and having members vote or reject it). The result is that there is no cohesive policy, as the various committees draft legislation within their own domains that in the end can be contradictory or mutually abrasive.

Wilson also states that there is disjoint between the executive and Congress, largely due to the executive being independent from the legislature. This is almost unique to the American system; in most systems, the functions of administering law are subordinate to those of making law. The independent executive leads to a disconnection between the making of law and the making of policy, which makes forming a cohesive policy quite difficult.

Wilson offers more such examples of disjoint in the American government, including the disconnect between those who decide how to tax and those who decide how to spend, but the logic is similar. If one extends the line of Wilson's thinking, the implication is simple: the concept of checks and balances in our Constitution has been a failure. This conclusion harkens back to the spirit of Centinel, who in 1789 condemned checks and balances as snake oil, contending that human intellect is not equal to the task of checking the various interests through an elaborate counterbalancing system. A more effective alternative would be a simple and transparent system (the American system is not transparent but quite obfuscated) in which any attentive observer could determine the chain of events that produces results, and act directly to indicate his approval or dissent of that result. In contrast, Wilson states that in the American system, "the voter has no way of knowing how his ballot can any effect on the government or policy, even an infinitesimal one." Wilson's thesis is similar to Centinel's sentiment in his famous letters.

Noticeably absent from Wilson's dissertation is any mention of the judiciary (typically presented at the most basic educational level as one of three coequal branches), which in the United States, takes a role in crafting policy through the concepts of judicial review and the setting of precedents that are similar to legislation in effect. One may conclude that this absence is because the judicial branch has only become so prominent in the 20th century, but such a conclusion would be misinformed; the Supreme Court has been crucial to policy in America, since John Marshall. The absence of the judicial branch in this analysis is a minor deficiency, but an intelligent reader should be able to extend Wilson's logic of disjoint to the judicial branch. Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to see his thoughts on the matter.

In all, this book is quite informative, insightful, and worth reading. On a lighter level, it is interesting to see how some of Wilson's observations on government hold just as true 125 years later, and to see how some that he states as essential have come to change.

To correct the previous reviewer - Wilson did not think separation of power didn't exist, but that in reality they shouldn't exist. If you favor a historicist government unlimited in size and scope, and reject the universal truths espoused in the Declaration of Independence, then this is your book and Wilson is your man.