The Federalist Papers

The Federalist is widely considered to be one of the most influential political writings in the early United States. Consisting of eighty-five essays in total, the first seventy-seven essays were originally published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788, and the final eight appeared in the first collected edition of The Federalist in 1788, although they were later republished in New York newspapers as well. The Federalist was written collectively by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the newly drafted Constitution. In keeping with the conventions of 18th-century public political debate, The Federalist was published under the pseudonym “Publius” to present its arguments to the public in anonymous terms, focusing attention on the content of the essays rather than the personal views or personalities of the authors. Although Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would not be formally identified as the authors of The Federalist until the publication of a notice in The Port-Folio on 14 November 1807, their collective authorship was widely known by the 1790s, and their reputations as respected statesmen and innovative political thinkers brought considerable attention and credibility to their arguments. Through the voice of Publius, The Federalist explains and defends the core principles and structure of the new government outlined within the Constitution, while also identifying the flaws and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. In doing so, The Federalist provides substantive critical and philosophical discussions of federal governance and its relationship to the principles of plural sovereignty, national unity, republican representation, citizenship, national security, commercial interests, and the separation of powers, all of which had a profound influence, not just on the ratification debates, but also on subsequent interpretations of constitutional language and authority, from the founding period to the present. While scholars have endlessly debated the political, historical, philosophical, literary, and cultural impact of The Federalist, these essays continue to serve as foundational texts for studying the politics and culture of the early United States, as well as contemporary interpretations and revisions of constitutional principles in legal, legislative, and cultural spheres.

Rule by the Few in the Federalist Papers: An Examination of the Aristocratic Preference of Publius

The Federalist Papers are a set of eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the founding era of the United States, with the purpose of persuading the states to adopt the Constitution as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation. The Papers were some of the most impressive political writings of the time, and are still cited frequently today by the United States Supreme Court. The arguments set forth in the Papers attempted to defend the Constitution's aristocratic characteristics against its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, while also attempting to normalize an anti-democratic, representative form of government in the minds of the American people. The clever advocacy and skillful rhetoric employed by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution, and consequently the creation of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet. This paper examines the differences between the traditional forms of government, the political philosophies of the Papers’ authors, the anti-democratic, aristocratic nature of the government proposed by the Constitution, and the arguments for and against its adoption, as articulated in the Papers and various other writings.

Book Review | George Will’s Conservatism and Democracy in Crisis

Americans typically view the United States as a democracy and are rightly proud of that. Of course, as those of a more precise nature, along with smug college students enrolled in introductory American government classes, are quick to point out, the United States is technically a republic. This is a bit too clever by half since James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, defined a republic the way most people think of a democracy—a system of representative government with elections: “[The]… difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” What the framers thought of as democracy is today referred to as direct democracy, the belief that citizens should have more direct control over governing. The Athenian assembly was what the framers, Madison in particular, saw as the paragon of direct democracy—and as quite dangerous. While direct democracy has its champions, most Americans equate democracy with electing officials to do the business of government.

Peter Graf Kielmansegg im Gespräch

This book paints an intellectual portrait of Peter Graf Kielmansegg as a historian, political scientist and German intellectual, and rounds off his previous oeuvre. It focuses on a long conversation about his life and work, in which Graf Kielmansegg is as visible as a person as in no other text. Texts of various types from four decades supplement the conversation, some of which are published here for the first time: to begin with, there are five essays on intellectual history, more precisely on The Federalist Papers, Tocqueville’s theory of democracy, Kant’s influential essay ‘Towards perpetual peace’, Hannah Arendt’s book on revolution and the influence of European political thought in the world, followed by three portraits of Graf Kielmansegg’s companions Eugen Kogon, Wilhelm Hennis and Dolf Sternberger and an essay on the language of the social sciences. Finally, there is a selection of his public statements and interventions on current questions and problems of democracy.

The Author Problem: Bayesian Inference with Two Hypotheses

The “Author Problem” provides a concrete example of Bayesian inference. This chapter draws on work by Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, who used Bayesian inference to assign authorship for unsigned Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers were a collection of papers known to be written during the American Revolution. However, some papers were unsigned by the author, resulting in disputed authorship. The chapter provides a very basic Bayesian analysis of the unsigned “Paper 54,” which was written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. The example illustrates the principles of Bayesian inference for two competing hypotheses, including the concepts of alternative hypothesis, prior probability distribution, posterior probability distribution, prior probability of a hypothesis, likelihood of the observed data, and posterior probability of a hypothesis.

The Late Spanish Translation of The Federalist Papers and the concept of Federalism in Argentina at the time

Throughout the second half of the 19th century a process took place in Latin America in order to recover the original concept of federalism for the first time mentioned in the United States at the end of 18th century. This paper seeks to better understand how the Spanish translation of The Federalist-Argentina, 1868-would have been an attempt to look back at the North American model and to restore the original meaning of the concept, not only from the semantic perspective but also through its practical implementation as a political system in the specific case of Argentina.

Alexander Hamilton and the Early Republic in Edwardian Imperial Thought

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used the figures of Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of (modern) self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the US while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts were publicly presented as Washington and Hamilton reborn.