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This essay examines competing visions of accountability expressed in the u.s. Ratification debates. The Federalists believed accountability and good governance would be best realized if citizens are kept at a distance from government. The Anti-Federalists believed republican accountability depends upon the active participation of diverse citizens.
This essay examines competing visions of accountability expressed in the u.s. Ratification debates. The Federalists believed accountability and good governance would be best realized if citizens are kept at a distance from government. The Anti-Federalists believed republican accountability depends upon the active participation of diverse citizens.
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This essay examines competing visions of accountability expressed in the u.s. Ratification debates. The Federalists believed accountability and good governance would be best realized if citizens are kept at a distance from government. The Anti-Federalists believed republican accountability depends upon the active participation of diverse citizens.
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Craig T. Borowiak Haverford College Motivated by an interest in contemporary debates over global governance, this essay examines competing visions of accountability expressed in the U.S. ratication debates. Whereas the Federalists believed accountability and good governance would be best realized if citizens are kept at a distance from government, the Anti-Federalists believed republican accountability depends upon the active participation of diverse citizens, a type of participation that is undermined when government grows distant. These different perspectives challenge conventional oppositions between concentrated power and democratic legitimacy and between popular participation and effective govern- ment. They also illustrate how republican forms of accountability can serve conicting agendas. Drawing from these debates can help clarify challenges faced today by those seeking to create global governance institutions that are both effective and legitimate. I n recent years, accountability has become a central concept in debates over democracy and global governance. With globalization amplifying inter- dependence and insecurity across nations, and with global inequalities exacerbating perceptions of injus- tice in the global system, both the capacity and the legitimacy of existing global governance regimes have come under scrutiny. In these debates, anxiety over global democratic decits is frequently accompanied by widespread skepticism about extending conven- tional democratic forms of legitimation beyond the nation-state. When it comes to the transnational level, there is clearly a need for innovative approaches to governance design. In this context, accountability has become both normatively indispensable and politi- cally contested. One nds it being deployed in general discussions of abuses of power in world politics (Grant and Keohane 2005; Held and Koenig- Archibugi 2005; Nye et al. 2003), as well as in specic studies of global capital markets (Sassen 1996), inter- national nancial institutions (Birdsall 2005; Fox and Brown 1998; Kahler 2004; Woods 2001); the European Union (Caporaso 1999; Moravcsik 2005), and multi- national corporations (Koenig-Archibugi 2005), among other places. Much of this literature seems to assume a connection between accountability and some form of democratic legitimacy. And yet this con- nection is often undertheorized. No one, it appears, from international institutions to civil society groups to capitalists to governments, wants to be deemed unaccountable. To be accountable is to garner legiti- macy; to be unaccountable is to be in the company of tyrants. Yet while accountability might be desired all around, not all forms of accountability are the same. As Grant and Keohane (2005) have recently observed, democratic accountability is only one of many pos- sible forms of accountability, and democracy is only one source of legitimacy. While accepting this point that democratic accountability needs to be contextu- alized within a wider set of accountability types, one might also pose questions about the different forms democratic accountability itself might take. On this issue, the existing literature tends to lack historical depth, restricting its discussions to the current geopo- litical context. There is, however, at least one instruc- tive historical precedent: The place of accountability in government was a major theme in the U.S. constitu- tional debates between the Federalists and Anti- Federalists. The ratication debates can add to current discussions by illustrating how even if one accepts democraticor more precisely republican standards of accountability as a basis for legitimacy, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 4, November 2007, pp. 9981014 2007 Southern Political Science Association ISSN 0022-3816 ,,8 the details of institutional structure are of great importance for whether and how those standards are realized. The ratication debates are noteworthy in that at the same time that they gave expression to a very particular set of accountability issues unique to postindependence America, they also raised more general issues associated with representative govern- ment and the perils of institutional design. In this way their discussions of accountability have continu- ing relevance for comparative studies of democrati- zation on the national level, as well as for students of American politics and political theory. Their useful- ness, however, also extends beyond the domestic level to include lessons for global governance. Not unlike the present political context in which sovereignty, democracy, and political community have been put into question by globalization, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were debating in a context of major institutional transformation, expansion, and political reconstitution. Sharing a political horizon shaped by the question of whether popular sovereignty could be compatible with an expanded political sphere, both groups of authors embraced popular accountability as a standard of government legitimacy. And yet their respective approaches to accountability differed sig- nicantly, reecting differing outlooks on the perils of concentrated power, on the role of citizen partici- pation, and on the need for energetic and effective government. In this essay I paint a picture of two visions of democraticor rather republicanaccountability. One, the Federalist vision, emphasized the importance of concentrating governmental power and of keeping citizens at some distance from government both for the sake of well-managed government and so that accountability mechanisms might be effective. In con- trast, the other, Anti-Federalist, vision highlighted the dangers of concentrated power and pointed to how republican accountability depends upon the active and meaningful participation of citizens, a type of participation that would be undermined if govern- ment were to grow distant. Both perspectives illumi- nate dangers and possibilities for realizing accountable and legitimate governance. Among other things, they complicate simple oppositions between government accountability and government efcacy. Given the complexity of their debates, I devote the bulk of this essay to a discussion of the Federalist and Anti- Federalist perspectives. I reserve my discussion of their contemporary relevance for the end, where I offer some suggestions for how the anxieties of the early Americans can heighten our awareness of democratic decits and the stakes involved in different account- ability frameworks. Before proceeding further, I wish to make two caveats regarding my use of language across historical periods. In the eighteenth century, democracy was generally associated with the republics of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, and not with what we today call representative democracy. Correspondingly, neither the Federalists nor the Anti-Federalists would have described themselves as advocating democratic accountability, even if we would describe them in that language today. For the sake of historical accuracy and to avoid confusion, I hereafter restrict my use of the word democratic to the sort of direct democratic practices associated with those early republics. I will use the more historically appropriate word republi- can where today we might use the worddemocratic, as reecting the principle that governmental legiti- macy is derived from the authority of the people, whether directly or through representation. While this use of republican avoids problems of anachronism, it does carry dangers of its own, especially given that the concept of republic was itself hotly contested in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 1 I do not believe it is possible to completely avoid the ambiguities that stem from this shifting conceptual and linguistic terrain. I will, however, strive to be consistent in my own usage so as to avoid further confusion. My second caveat relates to the language of accountability. Eighteenth-century Americans used many words to describe what we would typically char- acterize as accountable government. The semantic barriers between words like accountable, responsible, answerable, punishable, and amenable were much more uid than they are today. The specic word accountability was in fact scarcely used in the rati- cation debates. This observation needs to be qualied, however, with the additional observation thatat least according to the Oxford English Dictionarythe 1 Whereas some authors drew a clear distinction between a republic and a democracy, others, in what was arguably the more standard usage of the period, treated democracy as a species of republic. In Federalist 10, for example, Madison describes a republic as a form of government involving a scheme of representation. He contrasts this with a pure democracy in which citizens assemble and administer government in person (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay 2003, 4344; Compare Brutus, 2.9.1314, in Storing 1981a). Con- trast this with John Adamss claim that {a} democracy is as really a republic as an oak is a tree, or a temple a building (Adams 1856, 37778; quoted in Ball 1988b, 173n51). See also The Federal Farmer, 2.8.7172, Storing 1981a. For commentary on the shifting meaning of republic during the period, see Ball (1988b) and Hanson (1985). .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs ,,, word was just appearing in the English language around the same time. The ratication debates may actually have helped introduce the word. 2 This having been said, the words etymology does not, as Dubnick (2002) has noted, encompass the history of the concept. For these reasons, while some linguistic imprecision is unavoidable in my discussion of the ratication debates, I do not believe it presents an intractable problem for my project. This essay thus draws upon references to the specic words account- ability and accountable, as well as upon references to related words when they are used in a manner reective of the concept of accountability as it is com- monly understood today. Central to this understand- ing is the idea that to be accountable is to have to answer for ones actions and to face sanctions depend- ing upon that answer and ones performance (Grant and Keohane 2005; Schedler 1999). Representative Government and Accountability The principle that government should be accountable to citizens was vital to the founding generations effort to reconcile republican principles with the need to concentrate governing power. Representative govern- ment may be a way to make popular sovereignty com- patible with a large society, but the distances created when authority is delegated to representatives also makes popular sovereignty a problem. Put simply, rep- resentation created power-laden gaps between the sov- ereign people and the drafters of their laws. Among other things, the relationship between representative and represented is constituted by: spatial gaps char- acterized by the distance between the locales in which people live and the location of government; scalar gaps characterized by the proportion of representa- tives to constituents; temporal gaps characterized by the authorization of the representative in the past and his present and future behavior; epistemological gaps characterized by constituents ignorance about what the representative is doing and the representatives ignorance about the needs, interests, and desires of constituents; competence gaps characterized by differ- ences in governing capabilities; and identity gaps characterized by differences in class, character, and experience. These gaps create opportunities for repre- sentatives to abuse their power and to create laws transgressing the liberty of the very citizens who authorized them. The founding generation regarded governmental accountability to the great body of the people as a principal way to protect against such abuses of power. They perceived governments that lack such accountability to citizens as invitations to tyranny. This having been said, neither the Federalists nor the Anti-Federalists sought to use accountability to establish a system of direct popular rule along the lines of then existing democratic orthodoxy. Rather, they sought to use it as part of a system of popular control in which potential abuses of governmental power could be avoided by making government dependent upon citizens, even as government was afforded degrees of autonomy so that it might govern effec- tively. 3 Popular accountability would thus generate a further connection to the people and introduce some constraint to government power without completely overriding the governing authority of policymakers. For both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, account- ability served not to completely collapse the gaps between rulers and ruled, but to regulate them. And yet accountability can be implemented in many differ- ent ways with very different effects. The ratication debates can be viewed as a struggle over how the afore- mentioned gaps would be regulated and how account- ability would be congured around degrees of dependence and autonomy. Federalist Accountability The Federalist writings include works by a broad range of authors supportive of the proposed constitution. Although the Federalist perspective is most often asso- ciated with the essays by Publius collected in The Federalist, it is important to acknowledge that these essays do not exhaust the corpus of Federalist writings, nor dothey cover the entire range of Federalist views on the constitution. The Federalist authors did not speak with one voice or with one set of concerns. This diver- sity of opinion notwithstanding, and even though exceptions certainly exist, one can identify clear pat- terns in their writings on accountable government. For the Federalists, the issue of governmental accountability turned both on the question of how to 2 While the word accountable has a longer history, the rst refer- ence to accountability noted in the OED is in a history of Vermont published in 1794. That the word actually appeared seven years earlier in the ratication debates (Centinel 2.7.22, 2.7.24, in Storing 1981a) is suggestive of how crucial the concept was for the debates. 3 For a discussion of the difference between popular control and popular rule, see Grant and Grant (1981, 36). :ooo cv.ic r. vovowi.x make accountability mechanisms procedurally effec- tive and on the question of how to make government good. More than the Anti-Federalists, the Federalists argued from the perspective of power. They used a concern over stability, energy, and efciency in government to justify concentrating power in the hands of ofcials and to resist efforts by the Anti- Federalists to tighten the dependence of government on local communities (See Federalist 1, Federalist 37, and Federalist 63, Hamilton, Madison and Jay 2003). 4 To be sure, the Federalists accepted the republican principle that government should be accountable to the people, but they also believed that the zeal of jealous republicans needed to be checked lest it gen- erate onerous obligations of accountability that would hamper good government. 5 Such observations about the Federalists focus on good government should be familiar to students of this period. What has drawn less attention, however, is that the Federalists ratio- nale for concentrating power and distancing citizens also included claims about what is good for account- ability. 6 They tended to perceive centralized authority and enlarged distances between citizens and the gov- ernment as necessary to avoid muddled and ineffective forms of accountability that would abet abuses of power. Their defense of the constitution thus involved a two-pronged critique of decentralized accountability arrangements. Such arrangements were bad for good government, and they were bad for good accountability. The Problems with Accountability in Direct Democracies One of the ways Federalist authors demonstrated the problems with decentralized and participatory forms of accountability was by distinguishing their republic from earlier models of direct democracy (hereafter democracy). Madison famously characterized these democracies as spectacles of turbulence and conten- tion perishing under the mortal disease of insta- bility, injustice, and confusion (Federalist 10, 44, 40). Fisher Ames described democracy as a volcano, which conceals the ery materials of its own destruction (1998, 199; see also Fabius 1998, 48791). Noah Webster described democracy as inconsistent with the peace of society, and the rights of freemen (A Citizen of America 1998, 378). Similarly, Hamilton heaped scorn on the Greek and Italian republics: It is impossible to read the history of the petty Republics of Greece and Italy, without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were con- tinuously agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolu- tions, by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration, between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. (Federalist 9, 35) For Hamilton, the science of politics provided pow- erful means by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided (36). These imperfections that Hamilton described are imperfections in political order. The Greek and Italian republics were imperfect because they were disorderly. And the improvements the constitution offered were considered improve- ments because they would limit the chaotic excesses of participatory politics found in small republics, and by extension, in the decentralized power arrangements of the Articles of Confederation. Viewed in terms of accountability, one might say that participatory forms of democratic accountability are key sources of disor- derliness. It is the very ability of diverse, small com- munities to hold government to account that generates the agitation Hamilton and others regarded with horror and disgust. Popular accountability is dangerous. Part of what the science of politics offers is a way to rationalize government accountability by pacifying the distractions andperpetual vibrations of an active citizenry. In addition to perceiving popular accountability as a potential threat to effective and orderly rule, the Federalists, and Madison in particular, also expressed concern that democracy per se might actually be in tension with governmental accountability. Not only is democratic accountability bad for governance, but democracy may be bad for accountability. For Madison, the communication and concert of citizens can easily lead to majorities that are all too willing to freely sacrice their fellows (Federalist 10; Federalist 63, 30910). History has shown how democratic ide- ology provides cover for unaccountable majorities. In the name of the demosthe nal authority to whom all other concentrations of power are presumably accountablemajority factions were able to tyrannize over minorities without having to account for their actions. In short, a government accountable to the demos acting collectively would not be accountable to the demos at all, but would instead be beholden to fac- tional interests. It is difcult to overestimate the 4 All subsequent references to The Federalist are taken from this edition and will be indicated with the essay number and, where relevant, the page number(s). 5 For one example of this perspective, see A Foreign Spectator (1998), 408. 6 See Grant and Keohane (2005), Grant and Grant (1981), and Zuckert (1992) for three interesting exceptions. .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :oo: importance of this point for the Federalist position. While much has been written on the topic, it is none- theless worth reiterating. The Federalists were deeply concerned about the way efforts to bring government close to the people might only result in drawing gov- ernment into the inuence of factions, which, parti- san by nature, would fail to serve the interests of the people as a whole. Such partisanship, they believed, was more likely to take hold at the local or state level than at the federal level (for an example, see A Citizen of America 1998, 384). The problem with popular accountability was thus not just its tendency towards disorder, but also the potential for the public interest to be thwarted. Whether one attends to the disruption caused by democratic accountability or to the unaccountable majorities generated by democracy, the Federalist solution was to prevent the demos from acting collec- tively (see Federalist 63, 309). In designing institutions of accountability for representative government one needs to address how to control government. But, for them, one also needs to address how citizens can be controlled. Had they been seeking to approximate democracy, the Federalists might have sought wher- ever possible to draw citizens further into governmen- tal accountability processes. But for them, republican government does not approximate democracy. It rather improves upon democracy with a vision of limited citizen participation in which sovereignty is retained by the people, but is exercised at a safe dis- tance. 7 From this perspective, the value of accountabil- ity derives as much from the way it limits citizen involvement in government as it does from the way it draws government closer to the people. The Unaccountable British Monarchy With their push for a stronger national government rubbing against the grain of still prevalent antimonar- chical revolutionary sentiment, leading Federalist authors like Madison and Hamilton were eager to dis- tance themselves from the former British rulers. 8 Shrewdly, they used the unaccountability of the British monarchy, with its tendency towards aristocratic usurpations and tyranny, as a foil to illustrate the accountability inherent in the proposed constitution. With regard to the legislative branch, Madison, for example, referred to the British House of Lords as an hereditary assembly of opulent nobles. He observed further that to the extent that there was a system of electoral accountability in place at all in the House of Commons, it pertained to merely a fraction of govern- ment, was plagued by corruption, and was composed of ofcials elected only at large intervals in a very great proportion by a very small proportion of the people (Federalist 63, 311; see also Federalist 41, 198). 9 With regard to the executive branch, the more authoritarian Hamilton contrasted the presidential model with the British monarch, whom he portrayed as a perpetual magistrate unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred (Federalist 70, 346). Under the monarchy, rather than the executive being accountable for his behavior, as would be the case with the U.S. President, it was citizens and councilors who were accountable to the king. In opposition to such depic- tions of an unaccountable British system, the Federal- ists characterized the constitution as embodying a republican standard in which every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in ofce and where dependence on the people was the primary control on the government (Federalist 70, 346; Federalist 51, 252; See also Federalist 39, 182). And yet even while they afrmed the importance of accountable government, these authors ultimately did so in a fashion that worked to further centralize federal power and to distance citizens from the execu- tion of government. In their rationales, both Madison and Hamilton emphasized good government and the need for effective accountability. Madison used his characterization of the unaccountable House of Lords not to illustrate the need for more dependence on citizens, but rather to rebut Anti-Federalist arguments that the Senate would be dangerously far removed from popular accountability. He made his case by pointing to the dangers of an overly responsive legis- lature: If even the hereditary House of Lords was over- whelmed by the populism of the House of Commonsand the House of Commons was only marginally responsible to citizensjust imagine how much weaker the elected Senate would be in the face of the more thoroughly populist House of Representa- tives (Federalist 63, 311)! 7 See Madisons Speech in the Federal Convention on the Senate, June 26, 1787; Letter to George Washington, April 16, 1787; Letter to Jefferson, October 24, 1787; Vices of the Political System of the United States, in Madison 1999, 11012, 8088, 14257, 6979. 8 Dickinson, Wilson, and the pseudonymous A Democratic Feder- alist (possibly Tench Coxe) also stand out for the way they con- trasted the constitution with the British system. See Fabius 1998, 497; Wilson 1998b, 77; A Democratic Federalist 1998, 351. 9 Compare Madisons January 18, 1800 letter to Jefferson (Madison 1906, 388). :oo: cv.ic r. vovowi.x For his part, Hamilton used his observations about the unaccountable British monarch not to warn about the dangers of centralized power, but rather to argue against a plural executive and to emphasize the importance of having an energetic executive, which he regarded as a leading character in the denition of good government (Federalist 70, 341). Diffusing power across an executive council would sap energy from the executive while at the same time obstructing executive accountability. He argued that rather than centralized power being anathema to republican accountability, it was in fact its condition of possibil- ity. Whereas in the British system an executive council was needed to at least partially offset monarchical unaccountability, in the American republic where the executive was to be held to account, spreading execu- tive power across an executive council would merely obscure individual responsibility (34448). For Hamilton, it was only by further concentrating power in the hands of a single executive that responsibility could be clearly demarcated and blame could be more easily assigned. Leadership, Electoral Accountability, and Identity Gaps Elections have a special place in these accountability debates, as they are the signature vehicle of account- ability in representative government. Both the Feder- alists and Anti-Federalists generally regarded electoral accountability at regular intervals to be indispensable for republican government and crucial for preventing and correcting poor and corrupt rule. As Madison wrote, The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people. (Federalist 57, 277) The vulnerability of elected ofcials at the ballot box helps to foster a dependence and sympathy with the people (Federalist 52, 25657; Federalist 21, 9596). In short, the prospect of being held accountable at the ballot box in the future disciplines representatives to habitually recollect their dependence upon the people. As Madison continued, Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have estab- lished their title to a renewal of it. (Federalist 57, 279) This dislocability, as Bentham later called it, of rep- resentatives presumably helps to ensure that the public interest does not stray too far from the legislators mind (Bentham [1843] 2005, 63, 103, 118, 155). But just how dependent should a representative be made? And how reliable are elections for generating such a dependency? 10 Elections serve a double function. On the one hand, they authorize leaders to rule with some autonomy. On the other, they hold leaders to account and thereby generate dependence upon citizens. In their effort to strike a balance between autonomy and dependence, the Federalists clearly pushed for greater autonomy. The rst aim of every political constitution, Madison argued, ought to be to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society.And while he and the other Founders clearly also saw the need for effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust, those precautions come, notably, second (Federalist 57, 277; see also Wilson 1998a, 508). Too much emphasis on accountability and the dependence it creates would result in too little emphasis on good government and the selection of high-quality leaders. And yet, even as they downplayed the importance of popular accountability relative to the importance of authorizing leaders of high quality, the Federalist authors also expressed great faith that the procedures of electoral accounting alone would build sufcient sympathy with the people. In this respect their approach was more disembodied than that of their Anti-Federalist counterparts. They generally rejected the Anti-Federalists expectations that the represen- tative assembly should reect the diversity of the citizenry, farmers representing farmers, merchants representing merchants, mecanicks representing mecanicks, and so forth (Ball 1988a; Manin 1997; Storing 1981b). Evincing more than a little distrust of the competence of ordinary citizens, they tended to believe representatives neither would nor should be like their constituents (for an example of this view, see Federalist 35). Qualitative differences between 10 Recent scholarship within the public choice eld of political science has emphatically demonstrated how tenuous and impre- cise elections can be. While this literature is far more developed and more cynicalthan the writings of the ratication debates, many of the themes are similar. For explicit discussions of accountability within this literature, see Przeworski, Stokes, and Manin (1999) and Hardin (2000). .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :oo, representative and constituent were not only accept- able; they were desirable insofar as such differences allowed for those of superior talents to be chosen. From their perspective, what matters is the competence gap, not the identity gap. Forms of populist account- ability that aim to collapse such qualitative gaps risk jeopardizing good government by removing capable leaders from ofce. It would also have perverse effects on governmental accountability by holding ofcials accountable for the wrong things. Elections should authorize and hold leaders accountable for what they do, not for what they are. While there was some dis- agreement among the Federalist authors over the rela- tion between competence and economic class, they tended to agree that when highly competent represen- tatives know that come election time they will be judged by constituents for their behavior (and not their identity), they will have sufcient incentive to adjust their behavior to serve their constituents inter- ests. 11 The dependence so produced, along with a well- designed system of checks and balances, would allow for safe government without jeopardizing government competencies. In Defense of Long Election Cycles The Federalist vision of a more distant citizenry is also reected in their perspective on the frequency of elec- toral accounting. In their criticisms of the constitu- tion, leading Anti-Federalists had argued for shorter terms in ofce than the two-year terms for the House and the six-year terms for the Senate, both of which they thought were of too long a duration to ensure a proper responsibility to citizens. In response, Federal- ists like Madison, Dickinson, and Ames defended the need for longer election cycles as appropriate for safe and effective government (Ames 1998, 196, 200; Fabius 1998, 62; see also A Foreign Spectator 1998, 49). Madisons argument is particularly interesting. If accountability (or responsibility) is to be reasonable, he wrote, it must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party. And if it is to be effec- tual, it must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents (Federalist 63, 306). Seen in this way, short election cycles risk making accountability both unreasonable and ineffective. Madison argued that more frequent electoral accounting would be bad for government competence. No man, he wrote, can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the sub- jects on which he is to legislate. While much can be learned in private life, some knowledge can only be acquired by actual experience in the station which requires the use of it. Consequently, [t]he period of service ought . . . in all such cases, to bear some pro- portion to the extent of practical knowledge requisite to the due performance of the service (Federalist 53, 261). Short election cycles would not only, as another Federalist author put it, keep the nation in perpetual electionary ferment (Socius 1998, 166). They would also create gaps in the institutional knowledge base of the legislature and would thereby undermine compe- tence. As Madison continued, The greater the propor- tion of new members and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt will they be to fall in to the snares that may be laid for them (Feder- alist 53, 26364). Subjecting government to short cycles of accountability with a relatively rapid change of leadership would signicantly impede its capacity to perform effectively, throwing obstacles in the way of longer-term performance. Madison went on to argue that short election cycles would impede processes of government accountability that require a longer time horizon. He described, for example, how government ofcials must be in ofce a minimum amount of time if elec- toral fraud is to be discovered and controlled for with accountability procedures (Federalist 53, 264). Gener- alizing, one might say that in order for accountability to be effective, one needs to be able to correctly iden- tify improprieties. If the process is too swift, it may result in accountability failures as investigations that require more time are made obsolete. In a related fashion, Madison defended the Senate by discussing how frequent elections tend to remove from ofce those ofcials who were responsible for policies that have long-term effects. Here he linked institutional responsibility to individual responsibility and pointed to the injustice of holding legislators accountable (or answerable) for others long-term policies. 11 For Hamilton, the actual representation of all classes of citizens was unrealizable and substantively unnecessary. For him, interests mattered more than identity. While he insisted that the door ought to be equally open to all to enter government so as to allow for exceptional cases, he nonetheless believed that representatives would appropriately tend to resolve into just three categories: mer- chants, landowners and members of the learned professions. While these classes might not resemble their constituents, each represen- tatives dependence on the suffrages of his fellow-citizens for the continuance of his public honors would lead him to take care to inform himself of their dispositions and inclinations and should be willing to allow them their proper degree of inuence upon his conduct (Federalist 35, 161). :oo, cv.ic r. vovowi.x . . . it is evident that an assembly elected for so short a term as to be unable to provide more than one or two links in a chain of measures, on which the general welfare may essentially depend, ought not to be answerable for the nal result any more than a steward or tenant, engaged for one year, could be justly made to answer for places or improvements which could not be accomplished in less than half a dozen years. (Federalist 63, 306) Accountability requires the assigning of agency. It is difcult enough to preserve personal responsibility in a numerous body where decisions have immediate and palpable effects on constituents. But this is made exceedingly difcult when the responsible parties are no longer around to be identied or no longer in a position of being sanctioned. Along similar lines, Fed- eralist author Nicholas Collin described how a member who but comes and goes, is less responsible for bad public measures, and consequently less ani- mated by a sense of duty and honor (A Foreign Spec- tator 1998, 4950). On this reasoning, in order to promote accountability and a sense of responsibility, the duration of power needs to be lengthened to keep responsible parties around. This becomes a rationale for bicameralism. The proper remedy for the Houses frequent electoral accounting, Madison argued, would be the Senate, which having sufcient permanency to provide for such objects as require a continued atten- tion, and a train of measures, may be justly and effec- tually answerable for the attainments of those objects (Federalist 63, 306). Here again an expressed concern with accountable government entails further distanc- ing citizens from government. Constituencies and the Problems of Scale The size of government also factors into the Federal- ist vision of accountability. In his defense of a smaller sized House of Representatives, Madison drew atten- tion to both the governance and the accountability problems that result when a governing body becomes too populous and populist. As though anticipating Michels Iron Law of Oligarchy, 12 he observed how large groups tend to be controlled by organized fac- tions and leaders. [I]n all legislative assemblies, he writes, the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings (Federalist 58, 285). He explained this in terms of passion and incompetence. The more numerous an assembly becomes, the greater is the tendency for passion to dominate over reason in its proceedings (see A Citizen of America 1998, 377). And as the number of representatives grows, so too does the ratio of members lacking the requisite knowledge and capabilities to govern well. The large numbers would, as one Federalist put it, clog the wheels (A Democratic Federalist 1998, 42). This, in turn, creates a situation ripe for the eloquence and address of a few to dominate over the others, and thereby opens avenues for well-organized parties to gain precisely the sort of undue inuence that the Federalists so intently sought to prevent. This oligar- chic tendency of large bodies not only undermines good government, it also offsets the disciplinary effects of electoral accountability as representatives are duped by the cunning and sophistry of their peers. The people can never err more, Madison wrote, than in supposing that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few. On the contrary, after securing a sufcient number for the purposes of safety, of local information, and of diffu- sive sympathy with the whole society, increasing the size of the representative assembly further would counteract the republican intention (Federalist 58, 286). Republican accountability apparently has its limits. One can defeat the purpose by multiplying the number of accountable agents too far. The Federalists correspondingly showed resolve at preventing pas- sionate, less competent leaders from serving in ofce, and at designing institutional dynamics that would prevent well-organized partisans from dominating policymaking in ways that would diminish the efcacy of representatives accountability to their constituents. Ive been arguing that even as the Federalists defended the constitution as embodying accountable government, they construed accountability in ways that involved institutionalizing more, not less concen- tration of power, and more, not less distance between government and citizens. Although they perceived accountability institutions as an indispensable way to make government dependent on the people, their con- strual of accountability worked to serve the needs of power by limiting the participation of citizens within a series of regulated distances. They sought to make government dependent on the people, but not too dependent. They wished citizens to be active and involved, but not too active and involved. On one hand they criticized populist and more decentralized accountability arrangements as detrimental to good 12 The German sociologist Robert Michels argued in his 1911 book Political Parties that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may initially be, will eventually develop into oli- garchies (Michels 1978). .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :oo, governance. On the other hand they argued that the new constitution would embody more, not less, accountability than the alternatives, not despite its concentrated power, but because of it. This view stands in sharp contrast to that of the Anti-Federalists, who charged the Federalists with putting forward an unsafe form of government shockingly devoid of accountability to citizens. Anti-Federalist Accountability Even more than the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists 13 were a disparate group, spanning many strands of opposition to the proposed constitution. And yet taken collectively these authors gave expression to both a tradition of dissent in American politics and a very basic distrust of concentrated political power. In their dissent, one can identify patterns related to accountability and to the need to enhance governmen- tal dependence upon citizens. Like the Federalists, they were concerned about preventing the abuse of govern- mental power. And like the Federalists, they believed accountability to citizens was a vital precautionary mechanism in republican government. As Brutus (probably Robert Yates) wrote, When great and extraordinary powers are vested in any man, or body of men, which in their exercise, may operate to the oppression of the people, it is of high importance that powerful checks should be formed to prevent the abuse of it. Accountability to the people offers just such a check. As he continued, Perhaps no restraints are more forcible, than such as arise from responsibility to some superior power.Hence it is that the true policy of a republican government is, to frame it in such manner, that all persons who are con- cerned in the government, are made accountable to some superior for their conduct in ofce.This responsibility should ultimately rest with the People. (Storing 1981a, 2.9.197) 14 When power is concentrated, as it surely is in an extended republicand as it certainly is today in global governance regimesthere is a need for pow- erful checks (compare Smith 6.12.29). In a republican government where citizens are considered the highest authority, they are the ones to whom ofcials should ultimately be accountable. As Centinel (probably Samuel Bryan) put it, a governments responsibility to its constituents is the only effectual security for the liberties and happiness of the people (2.7.10). While comments such as Centinels and Brutuss bear a supercial resemblance to those of Federalist authors, underlying this similarity is a rather sharp disagree- ment about the place of accountability in the proposed constitution. The Anti-Federalists rejected claims that the con- stitution offered an accountable alternative to the British regime. They in fact denounced the constitu- tion for its accountability failures, branding it an aris- tocratic usurpation of popular government. Centinel was particularly outspoken on this point. So far as he was concerned, the constitution was devoid of all responsibility or accountability to the great body of the people (2.7.24). So being, it amounted to an attempt by the well-born to establish a despotic aris- tocracy among freemen (2.7.10) through which tyranny may glut its vengeance on the low-born (2.7.67). Similar sentiments were expressed in the inuential Pennsylvania Convention Minority Address, where it was asserted that the strongest of all checks upon the conduct of administration, responsi- bility to the people, will not exist in this government (3.11.48). Elsewhere, Patrick Henry asked Where, Sir, is the responsibility? On his reading it was the con- stitution, and not the British monarchy, that embod- ied unaccountability. This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibilityand that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves. In the country from which we are descended, they have real, and not imaginary, responsibilityfor there, maladmin- istration has cost their heads, to some of the most saucy geniuses that ever were. (5.16.8) In the eyes of Henry, Brutus, Centinel, and other Anti- Federalists like them, the constitution failed abysmally to protect the liberty of citizens in large part because it failed to provide effective provisions for those citizens to hold government to account. In the end, the Anti- Federalists had a different understanding of what accountability entails. Unlike the Federalists, the Anti- Federalists perceived accountability as a way to resist concentrations of governing power and to decentralize authority in a manner that would bring it closer to 13 I follow Storing in my use of the term Anti-Federalists rather than the alternatives Antifederalists, which suggests more agree- ment than there actually was, and anti-Federalists, which sug- gests that the group found unity only in opposition. Like Storing, I am trying to make a case that the Anti-Federalists were for something. See Storing (1981b), 79n6. 14 Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent references to the Anti- Federalist writings (including Brutuss essays) are drawn from Storings seven volume set, The Complete Anti-Federalist (Storing 1981a). For these, I identify the Anti-Federalist author followed by the three-part reference number (Volume. Place in Volume. Para- graph) assigned by the editors. :ooo cv.ic r. vovowi.x local communities, without whose meaningful input government would be anything but good. Constitution and De-Constitution The new constitution may indeed have been a found- ing, but not ex nihilo. It was, as Sheldon Wolin has observed, also a de-constitution, most immediately of the Articles of Confederation, but also of the varied state constitutions (Wolin 1989, 87). In objecting to the unaccountability of the newconstitution, the Anti- Federalists were not denying that there were problems with the existing confederation, or even that a greater concentration of power may be necessary. There was in fact wide acceptance that the situation in the country was critical (Storing 1981b, 26; for examples, see An Old Whig 3.3.18; The Federal Farmer 2.8.1, 2.8.70; Candidus, 4.9.5; Centinel, 2.7.3). While the span of their opinions was considerable, the Anti- Federalists did, however, tend to believe that the Fed- eralists were overstating the crisis, that the problems were contextual more than institutional, and that the Articles could in fact be reformed without having to adopt the radical solution of creating a new constitu- tion with its drastic shift away from the confederal framework (See Centinel 2.7.7993; Candidus 4.9.13 39; Address by A Plebian 6.11.127; Antifederalist No. 15 1965, 40). The Articles, which might be regarded more as a set of treaties than as a centralized system, had hardly been a pinnacle of accountability. They were never subjected to popular ratication. Given that Congress was appointed by state legislatures, there was no way for voters to hold legislators accountable at elections. There was no executive branch at all, and consequently there was no body to hold to account for the carrying out of decisions. At the same time, states were not held to account for their commitments. Congress did not reect the diversity of the American people within states or, given that each state had one vote regardless of population, among states. And Congresss sessions were often so sparsely attended as to lack a quorum, which made decision making difcult and account- ability elusive. Even so, in the confederation there was a system of accountability that was noteworthy for its state-centeredness and for the frequency with which ofcials were held to account. Whats more, for all of its accountability problems, the Articles had the virtue of weakness (a virtue that was, of course, also its undoing). The prospect that Congress would form a tyrannical central government that would usurp local and state authority was very unlikely given the limits of its coercive power and given how much authority was vested in the individual states. By proposing to concentrate power in a national government, the Fed- eralists were raising both the stakes and the danger. They thereby also intensied the need for vigorous accountability mechanisms to instill a strong sense of responsibility among ofcials. This having been said, for the Anti-Federalists the problem extended beyond the fact that the new gov- ernment would be strong. It also included the fact that the new government would be further detached from local communities. The Anti-Federalists tended to follow the conventional republican wisdom of their day that associated principles of popular sovereignty with the homogeneity of small republics. And even though they, like many others of the age, were skeptical about the viability of a small republic in an age of growing commerce and warring nation-states, they nevertheless believed government needed to maintain close ties to small communities. So while most of them accepted the need for some form of union and for a more energetic government than had been provided under the Articles (especially when it came to issues of debt and defense), 15 they also advised great caution about concentrating power at too great a distance (on multiple dimensions) from the diverse communities it was expected to serve (see Address by A Plebian 6.11.12; Elbridge Gerry 2.1.3; An Old Whig 3.3.18). Unlike the Federalists, for whom diversity within and between states posed an obstacle to the organiza- tional needs of federal power, for the Anti-Federalists the challenge was not to manage diverse communities but rather to empower them. They were particularly wary that electoral institutions would be manipulated in ways that would allow a class of urban elites to use a seemingly popular mandate to assume power against the interests of lower and middling classes and agrar- ian communities (as embodied in the gure of the virtuous yeoman farmer). These heightened anxieties reected an awareness that systems of accountability can themselves be made to support elitist forms of control. The Importance of Timely Accounting Consider the Anti-Federalist approach to the fre- quency of electoral accountability. When it comes to accountable government, timing matters. As noted previously, Madison argued that governing and accountability problems result if accountability cycles are too short. The Anti-Federalists, in contrast, 15 One might compare attitudes today toward the concentrated powers of the World Bank and Security Council. .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :oo, pointed to the problems that result when electoral cycles are too long. Defending the practice of holding annual electionssomething done both within state governments and under the Articlesthe Anti- Federalists tended to believe that the two-year term in ofce for representatives and the six-year term in ofce for senators are simply too long to ensure, in Centinels words, a due dependence and account- ability to their constituents (2.7.22; See also The Federal Farmer 2.8.147). When terms in ofce are long, representatives have incentives to discount future electoral accountings and to pursue interests other than those of their constituents. Brutuss remarks about the Senate are characteristic: Men long in ofce are very apt to feel themselves independent [and] to formand pursue interests separate fromthose who appointed them (2.9.200). While regular elec- tions might in the abstract induce a recollection of the peoples interests, when there is too much time between elections the disciplinary effect is confounded as representatives become weaned from their constitu- ents. In contrast, shorter terms compel legislators to become better acquainted with their constituents while allowing constituents more frequent opportuni- ties to hold these legislators to account for their performance. In addition to shorter election cycles, many Anti- Federalists also argued that states should retain the authority to recall senators (see Smith 6.12.29; Agrippa 4.6.45; Brutus 2.9.201; The Federal Farmer 2.8.147; Address by A Watchman 4.22.4; Amicus 1965, 15254). Such an institution had existed under the confederation as well as within some state consti- tutions, and its removal under the constitution reected the shift of accountability away from states. The idea of the recall had come up briey in the con- stitutional convention of 1787, and then again as proposed amendments in the New York and Massa- chusetts ratifying conventions. In reaction to Hamil- tons assertions that the recall would render the senator a slave to all the capricious humors among the people (Kurland and Lerner 1987, 225), the recalls Anti-Federalist supporters countered that not only had the recall never been deployed under the confederation, but also that even if it had, too much dependence was hardly the greatest danger. As The Federal Farmer warned, Men elected for several years, several hundred miles distant from their states, possessed of very extensive powers, and the means of paying themselves, will not, probably, be oppressed with a sense of dependence and responsibility (2.8.147). The Anti-Federalists feared that senators, on account of their long appointments, would lose their respect for the power from whom they receive their existence, and consequently that they would disre- gard the great object for which they are instituted (Kurland and Lerner 1987, 222). As an accountability mechanism, the recall option would help states ensure that representatives perform well. Again in the words of The Federal Farmer, the principle of responsibility is strongly felt in men who are liable to be recalled and censured for their misconduct.Additionally, the recall option would help empower local actors to keep an eye on the federal government: Where there is a power to recall, trusty centinels among the people, or in the state legislatures, will have a fair opportunity to become useful (2.8.147). This concern over the con- dition of vigilant citizens is characteristic of the Anti- Federalist approach to accountability. For some Anti-Federalists, the very presence of the Senate, with its long terms in ofce, was an obstacle to accountability. For these, the Senate marked a depar- ture from the responsibility one nds in an idealized simple and small republic. Centinel was particularly outspoken on this point, The highest responsibility is to be attained, in a simple structure of government, for the great body of the people never steadily attend to the operations of government, and for want of due information are liable to be imposed on. If you complicate the plan by various orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the source of abuses or misconduct, some will impute it to the senate, others to the house of represen- tatives, and so on, that the interposition of the people may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive. The argument is an epistemological one about the challenge of accountability where responsibility is spread across a multipolar authority structure. A bicameral legislature would interfere with government accountability not only by extending the term of leg- islative ofce beyond reasonable limits, but also by muddling the ability of constituents to correctly deter- mine who should be held to account for legislative action. A better form of government would simplify representation with only one legislative chamber. Cen- tinel continued, if . . . you vest all the legislative power in one body of men (separating the executive and judicial) elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and sur- prise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility for them, whenever the people feel a grievance they cannot mistake its authors, and will apply the remedy with certainty and effect, discarding them at the next election. This tie of responsibility will obviate all the dangers apprehended from a single legislature, and will the best secure the rights of the people. (2.7.10) :oo8 cv.ic r. vovowi.x Centinels argument resembles Hamiltons defense of a singular executive in that it justies concentrating power in a single body, only in this case it is the House rather than the presidency. This difference is, however, signicant. Unlike Hamilton, Centinels purpose was to draw power closer to the people rather than to concentrate it at a further distance. While Centinels outright rejection of bicameralism was not shared by all Anti-Federalists, 16 his effort to maximize clarity while minimizing time delays between accountings is illustrative of the way the Anti-Federalists more gen- erally sought to congure accountability institutions so as to empower citizens and intensify governmental dependence upon them. Communication and the Scale of Government This approach was also reected in their critique of the size of government. The Anti-Federalists generally believed the representative body should be large enough to ensure that the different classes of society have meaningful opportunities to hold government to account if their interests are abused. As Melancton Smith put it, enlarging the legislature would be the most effectual as well as natural security against cor- ruption in government. For Smith and others, the House of Representatives offered a mere shadow of representation. Reason revolts at the idea, he declared, of the liberties of three million people being entrusted to so few men (6.12.19). Centinel expressed similar sentiments about the House: The number of the representatives (being only one for every 30,000 inhabitants) appears to be too few, either to communicate the requisite information, of the wants, local circumstances and sentiments of so extensive an empire, or to prevent corruption and undue inuence, in the exercise of such great powers. . . . (2.7.22) Such characteristic emphasis on diverse local circum- stances within a large republic displayed a concern that governments great powers might be misused not only because representatives would have less inclina- tion to serve the interests of particular communities, but also because they wouldnt know better. This is important. Accountability institutions are bound up with the production and transmission of knowledge. Whatever their skills and good intentions, leaders depend upon citizens to detect abuses and to mobilize political energies around rectifying them. The scale of representation affects the nature of such citizen participation. A relatively small number of rep- resentatives would mean a greater knowledge gap between individual citizens and their representatives, as each representative would be responsible to more (and more diverse) constituents. A high citizen- representative ratio would thus diminish the capacity and incentives of particular individuals and groups of citizens to make government register and answer for the injustices that are done to them and their neigh- bors. If, for example, constituencies were congured to numerically disadvantage yeoman farmers vis--vis urban elites, as the Anti-Federalists believed was occurring, that class would be ill-situated to effectively hold their representatives to account even when they suffer abuses. While electoral accountability might still create some dependence on the people, it would be a watered down dependence that would risk becoming a ruse for aristocratic dominance as the voices of smaller, often rural communities would be pushed out of earshot of a distant government. Unlike the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists did not seek to create governmental dependency on the people in a general sense. Rather, they tended to believe that representatives in a republican government should, in George Masons words, know and sympathise with every part of the community (Madison 1966, 39). Responding to Hamiltons rejection of the claim that all interests of the community should be represented, Melancton Smith, for example, argued that the knowl- edge necessary for the representation of a free people extends beyond that which is acquired by men of rened education, who have leisure to attain high degrees of improvement. Rather, it should also com- prehend that kind of acquaintance with the common concerns and occupations of the people, which men of the middling class of life are in general much better competent to, than those of a superior class (6.12.15; see also The Federal Farmer 2.8.14347; Aristocrotis 3.16.119). Enlarging the size of the legislature would result in men of the middling class having a better chance at entering government, and it would enable commoners to demand that their experiences and needs be addressed. While this was precisely what the Federalists sought to avoid, as it signaled the introduc- tion of less competence and more passion into gov- ernment, for the Anti-Federalists this was a condition of truly accountable government. Political Culture and Democratic Accountants For the American founding generation, accountability constituted part of a politics of control through which 16 Compare A Maryland Farmer, 5.1.75. .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :oo, the concentrated power of delegated authority would be checked and guided by the periodic exercise of popular sovereignty. But, as I have already suggested, government is not the only object of control: account- ability institutions can also have controlling effects on citizens. While this might be useful for the organiza- tional needs of institutional power, such effects might also undermine the very popular energies that govern- ment accountability requires as its conditions of pos- sibility. Accountability is part of the process through which citizens help shape the ends of government. Consequently, evaluating accountability mechanisms requires assessing how effectively they enable and transmit diverse citizens feedback. This is to suggest that even from the perspective of institutional efcacy and good governance, maintaining a culture of citizen involvement is crucial. In the quest for institutions of accountability that reect the spirit of popular sovereignty, the accounting capacity of the citizenry matters. Repub- lican accountability depends, in short, upon republi- can accountants. In this vein, one might see the Anti-Federalists efforts to narrow the gaps between representatives and citizens as efforts to defend the diverse political cultures in which citizen activity provided the structure for government accountabil- ity. To be fair, the Anti-Federalists were not alone in recognizing the importance of an enlightened and vigilant citizenry. In his New York ratication speeches, Hamilton, for example, identied an enlightened citizenry as an indispensable check against tyranny. And Madison showed considerable concern in his later writings over the general ten- dency towards citizen complacency. 17 And yet the Federalist authors, with some major exceptions such as Jefferson (see Yarbrough 1998), tended to be less attentive than the Anti-Federalists to the inuence that institutions have on the capacity of citizens to be enlightened, awakened, and united. For the Anti- Federalists, it was a mistake to rely upon a vigilant citizenry abstracted from the institutional context in which they live. As Smith declared in response to Hamilton, To say, as this gentleman does, that our security is to depend upon the spirit of the people, who will be watch- ful of their liberties, and not suffer them to be infringed, is absurd. It would equally prove that we might adopt any form of government. (6.12.20) Crucially for Smith, the issue was not only how the spirit of the people operates on government, but also how the government operates on the spirit of the people. The two are thoroughly intertwined. Account- ability institutions have effects upon citizens. They can cause them to engage or disengage from politics, and they can develop or leave undeveloped the skills of collective political action. Following Wolin, one might say that the wherewithal to hold government to account constitutes a member skill developed in par- ticular political cultures, cultures that both affect and are affected by political institutions (Wolin 1989, 85). By superseding local and state governance institutions through the consolidation of federal authority, the proposed constitution involved a deactivation of the political cultures of accountability surrounding those institutions. While the new institutions of federal gov- ernment would generate new cultures of accountabil- ity around federal elections, the Anti-Federalists were skeptical about the sort of citizen capacities they would generate. When citizens are expected to engage with government only by voting once every two or four years, the skills of demanding that government account for its activities go underdeveloped. Within the Anti-Federalist framework, republican account- ability requires institutions that not only depend upon a republican spirit, but also encourage it, in diverse communities, among commoners as well as among the political, economic, and indeed natural elite. From this perspective, some disorder is to be expected and even encouraged as part of vibrant public life in a diverse republic. When it comes to institutional design, history has been kinder to the Federalists perspective. Theirs was a vision of accountability conceived for an expanded sphere of governance. The Anti-Federalists vision, in contrast, emerged out of a concern over what would be lost as the political sphere expanded and as govern- ments power intensied. With their wedding of accountability to participatory politics, they put forward standards that become increasingly difcult to realize the further one moves fromthe local level. While they did offer some concrete suggestions for insti- tutionalizing greater accountability on the national levelexamples include annual elections, the recall, and larger assembliesthese were losing propositions arguably intended less as suggestions for perfecting the national order and more as rationales for rejecting the Constitution as inherently unsafe and unaccountable. I dont believe, however, that this makes their vision of accountability any less important today, especially if one attends to the anxieties they expressed rather than to the specic institutions they proposed. 17 See Consolidation, National Gazette, Dec. 5, 1791 andWho are The Best Keepers of the Peoples Liberties?, National Gazette, Dec. 20, 1792, in Madison 1999, 53233, 49899. :o:o cv.ic r. vovowi.x Lessons for Global Governance This essay has centered on the place of accountability in the U.S. ratication debates. And yet as I implied at the beginning, my analysis is motivated in part by my interest in current debates over democracy and global governance. While a full discussion of the global gov- ernance literature and the relevance of the ratication debates would require another essay, I would like to offer a few suggestions about how viewing the ratication debates through the lens of accountability or, more precisely, competing conceptions of accountabilitymight offer insights for contempo- rary politics. It is not difcult to draw analogies between the ratication debates and global governance debates today. Global governance discussions center on the prospect of expanding the sphere of governance beyond traditional boundaries, not unlike the way the ratication debates centered on the prospect of expanding governmental authority beyond the indi- vidual states. During the ratication debates, there was skepticism about the possibility and desirability of extending direct democracy beyond the local level, and accountability served a crucial role mediating republican principles and the concentrated powers of a distant government. Today, there is considerable skepticism about the possibility and desirability of extending representative democracy beyond the nation-state, and accountability seems to offer a similar mediating role between republican/democratic principles of legitimacy and the apparent need for authoritative governance structures. Other parallels could surely be drawn. Some authors have, with reason, even compared the Feder- alists to cosmopolitan democrats and the Anti- Federalists to Westphalian realists or communitarian critics. 18 Nevertheless, as tempting as such compari- sons may be, I do not wish to suggest that the Feder- alists and/or Anti-Federalists provide a model that necessarily can or should be simply extended to the global level. Like others, I am skeptical about simple analogies between domestic and transnational poli- tics, and I believe it is necessary to attend to the his- torical, cultural and geopolitical specicities of the U.S. case, a case that is exceptional more than exem- plary in many if not most respects. My point is not to make the U.S. republic into the model for the world. What I do nd helpful are the Federalist and Anti- Federalist sensitivities to many of the dangers that sur- round accountability and governance. Ive described the ratication debates in terms of a series of gapsspatial, scalar, temporal, epistemologi- cal, competence, and identitythat separate commu- nities and individuals from government. Ive argued that how such gaps are viewed and managed has major implications for how safe, effective, and legitimate government will be. Today too one nds different per- spectives on the relative merits and dangers of partici- patory politics and concentrated power as well as on the need for controlled government and for controlled publics. And as in the ratication debates one can identify several gaps separating those who make major governance decisions from those who are affected by those decisions. There are epistemological gaps separating the bulk of the worlds population living in the global South from the dominant centers of knowledge produc- tion in the developed North, where most of the ideology and research that guide international insti- tutions are generated. While globalization might be collapsing distances, it does so differentially such that there are meaningful spatial gaps separating those who have access to the geopolitical centers of international decision making and those who do not. One might consider, for example, how the choice of location prevents rather than facilitates access to decision making, such as is the case with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, and was the case with the WTO ministerial meeting held in Doha in the wake of the failed Seattle meeting. One nds scalar gaps that result from the way inter- national policymaking power is indexed to wealth and might rather than population, and from the fact that so few people are making global governance decisions that affect so many, even accepting that global governance is constituted by more of a patch- work of diverse institutions and key actors than by a centralized structure. Temporal gaps, both large and small, plague inter- national policymaking. Among other things, such 18 There is a history of attempts to draw lessons from the ratica- tion debates for discussions of supranational governance. Analo- gies between the U.S. founding and international governance were being drawn at least as early as the 1910s around the formation of the League of Nations (Wells 1918). Since the 1930s, advocates of a world federalist state have drawn support from the Federalists writings (Van Doren 1948). More recently, some international relations scholars have pointed to the early U.S. republic, with its divided sovereignty and pacic foreign relations, to suggest a unique Philadelphian alternative to the Westphalian paradigm with its singular logic of undivided sovereign authority (Deudney 1996; Inoguchi 1999). John Tomasi has provided a sophisticated discussion of this literature as well as of the contemporary rel- evance of the politics of the borderlands of the early American republic (Tomasi 2003). .ccouwr.viiirr nzv.rzs. ruz vznzv.iisrs, ruz .wri-vznzv.iisrs, .wn nzmocv.ric nzvicirs :o:: gaps pertain to environmental policy, where long- term ecological sustainability is often subordinated to short-term material interests. Rapidly shifting capital markets involve another sort of temporal gap. Capital ight can induce devastating social con- sequences so quickly that it interferes with domestic processes of social regulation and democratic accountability. Competence gaps are found where the need for expertise and leadership is used to legitimate the concentration of power in elite institutions (regard- less of whether they are governmental, corporate, or nongovernmental) as well as to justify technocratic hierarchies within such institutions. One might con- sider how much weight trade ministers carry in the WTO even though WTO decisions have wide social effects. One might also nd competence gaps in the way activists who mobilize in unruly, contradictory, and passionate ways to demand accountability by which they often mean the democratization of global powerare critiqued for naively dis- rupting, disorganizing, and obstructing good governance. Finally, today one can nd something akin to iden- tity gaps reected in the major differences in life experience and social position separating most of those who hold major decision-making power (who often have a rather homogenous background) from those affected by their decisions. This listing of contemporary gaps is not meant to be complete. Nor is it meant to correspond on a one-to- one basis with the ratication debates. It is rather meant to be suggestive of some of the challenges con- temporary governance faces. All of these gaps might be construed more generally as forms of democratic decit that trouble the current order. These are pre- cisely the sort of gaps for which accountability is an issue and for which the Federalists and Anti- Federalists might offer some lessons. How are those who make far-reaching decisions going to be held accountable across such distances? How are those who are on the far side of governance decisions going to be able to hold decision makers to account? To what extent are these gaps necessary? Among other things, the ratication debates complicate any simple opposition between efcacy and accountability, an opposition that frequently appears in todays discussion of how to address democratic decits. It is not simply the case that par- ticipatory politics interfere with good governance. Nor is it the case that concentrated power will nec- essarily tend towards abuses of power. As the Feder- alists illustrated, some of the concentrations of power that presumably enhance government efcacy can also facilitate government accountability, whereas some of the decentralizations of power often associ- ated with greater popular accountability can actually undermine both the efcacy and accountability of government. On the other hand, as the Anti- Federalists illustrated, concern over efcacy needs to be accompanied by the question Effective for what? Popular accountability has an important role in giving shape to the ends government should pursue and it conveys vital knowledge of social needs and of government failures. In this vein, more participatory and decentralized forms of accountability contribute to good government, and without an active public itself enabled by participatory institutionsaccount- ability will be stunted. There is another, more cautionary, lesson to be taken from the ratication debates. This I can discuss only in passing. Both the Federalists and the Anti- Federalists were dealing with the question of how citi- zens would be included in processes for holding government accountable. Yet both groups were ulti- mately dealing with populations that were in a larger sense already included. Citizenship was a background assumption. The notion of popular sovereignty that animates both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist visions of republican accountability is premised upon an antecedent accounting that determines or pre- sumes who is and is not a legitimate participant. Yet the club-like nature of citizenship has historically also been a source of injustice. The legacies of slavery and gendered exclusion haunt the ratication debates. Through assertions of sovereign (and therefore unaccountable) power, institutions of republican/ democratic accountability have been complicit in, among other things, disenfranchisement along race, class, and gender lines. These exclusions have in turn been bound up with the production and maintenance of racialized and gendered international political economies. Unlike the ratication debates, todays global governance debates, by virtue of their globality, cannot afford to operate with exclusive citizenship as a background assumption. The Federalists and Anti- Federalists thus offer a cautionary tale about the importance of interrogating background assump- tions, about the need to build receptivity to the griev- ances of extra-institutional actors, and about how the distances that constitute accountabilitys internal dynamic are accompanied by distances that separate those who do participate fromthose who do not. More than this, however, the Anti-Federalists in particular illustrate how addressing the injustices that can (and :o:: cv.ic r. vovowi.x often do) take place across such gaps of exclusion would also require developing political cultures that cultivate the capacities of the excluded to demand accountability from power. This may in the end be the greater challenge for any form of global governance aiming to derive legitimacy with claims that it is accountable. Conclusion Accountability has come to straddle the anxieties and the hopes unleashed by globalization. As the sites of power and governance shift within a globalizing world, gaps are being produced, democratic practices are being transformed. In an age in which globaliza- tion has induced considerable anxiety about the loss of control (democratic and otherwise), accountability is frequently posed as the solution. This discussion has hopefully also illustrated how accountability is also a problem. It is perhaps obvious that not all accountability dynamics foster republican legitimacy. Less obvious is the observation that not all republican accountability regimes foster republican legitimacy. Rereading the ratication debates can help us realize the importance of identifying the distances that separate the agents of governance from those who are governed. As impor- tant, rereading these debates can help sensitize us to how identifying such gaps is only the beginning of a republican accountability project. It is not enough to point to legitimacy problems and demand account- ability. Nor is it adequate to respond to demands for accountability by illustrating the mere fact that accountability dynamics are in place. Which dynamics are in place and what ends they are implicitly or explicitly serving can make all the difference between accountability regimes that help generate legitimacy and those that provide normative cover for abuses of power. 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