F. H. Buckley, a law professor at George Mason University, recently has published a timely and comparative study: The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. In it, Buckley compares and examines past and current political systems in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada.
The book points out that American Framers preferred a more congressional, or parliamentary, form of government rather than today’s executive-dominated presidential system. The Constitution, writes Buckley, has led to the unexpected consequence of an “elective monarchy,” as George Mason predicted. Buckley contends that during the colonial period a monarchical government existed, and during the Founding Era, a congressional polity was championed.
During the early to mid-1800s, an unintended emphasis on separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches evolved, as a product of the democratization of America. Over time, a strong executive has emerged to break governmental gridlock.
This series of events has returned America to Crown government. This return, Buckley writes, is in great part because Americans misunderstood the Framers’ original intent and erroneously emphasized separation of powers.
Although Americans boast that they live in the world’s freest country, Buckley continues, presidential regimes are more prevalent in less free societies. Unlike the Canadian and British forms of government, the American head of state is also the head of the government. The executive has gained more power by increasing regulation via the administrative state — to name only one example.
A prime minister’s authority, however, is more precarious. He or she can be removed whenever Parliament is dissatisfied enough to take action. And a prime minister’s message cannot be as orchestrated as a president’s; for instance, the British prime minister must withstand rigorous , unpredictable, and televised question-and-answer sessions before Parliament.
Americans’ adherence to a separation-of-powers doctrine, Buckley argues, tends to increase presidential power. To limit what will be a constant growth of executive power, Buckley contends, congressional power must expand.
He suggests, for instance, a willingness to allow national referendums, frequent congressional impeachments, the cessation of congressional earmarks, and the return of a congressional concern for the public good as the Founders defined it. Congress would need to have some backbone.
Buckley seems to assert that many of the Framers preferred a more parliamentary system, such as the Virginia Plan, which would have made Congress the pre-eminent branch of the federal government. It must be remembered, however, that those Founders negotiated, as Buckley acknowledges, with Founders from other colonies and made compromises at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Shortly after the delegates drafted a document, proponents of the Constitution — known today as Federalists — and opponents of the Constitution — known nowadays as Anti-Federalists — started political conversations in broadsides and in newspaper essays. Literate and semiliterate Americans read Anti-Federalist and Federalist perspectives, and politically aware yet illiterate Americans overheard these arguments, read aloud in public spaces.
Meanwhile, the Constitution was submitted to state ratification conventions for approval. Delegates debated the meanings of various phrases, and their respective conventions gave the document its authority.
Buckley’s work dismisses these conventions, but James Madison, known by many as the “Father of the Constitution,” remarked later in congressional speeches and in personal correspondence that the state ratification conventions provided the “key” to understanding the Constitution.
A study of the ratification conventions also reveals the reasons for the creation of the Bill of Rights, and is a reminder that the separation of powers adopted in the Constitution included actual physical space and divided authority between the national and state governments.
Although I have my criticisms, anyone interested in reversing, or at least containing, what Buckley calls “Crown government” should read this important book.
Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project. Author F.H. Buckley discussed his book Monday during a presentation for the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society. Watch that presentation here.