… the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.  

James Madison  in Federalist No. 10

… it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 1

Seems fitting in this presidential election year that we revisit what the Founding Fathers envisioned in crafting their new nation.

I was fortunate to study under and work with Vincent Ostrom at Indiana University. As a professor of political policy and administration, he led me in a close examination of the logic underpinning the Federalist, a series of historic papers that argued for the passage of the proposed Constitution. His resulting book, The Political Theory of a Compound Republic (1971), and later volumes presented a much different understanding of the workings of democracy in the United States than I had found in the more conventional, top-down perspectives. He dubbed the overlapping jurisdictions a polycentric system, or a “compound republic” in the words of the Federalist, and found in it flexibility as well as layers that ultimately enhance democracy.

Through the coming year, the Red Barn will present weekly excerpts from the arguments written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay but at the time attributed to the nom de plume Publius.

Let me admit that it’s been years since I last opened my thoroughly marked up copy of the collected papers, a trade paperback I bought for $2.45 back in 1968. I’ll probably be embarrassed by some of my notes in the margins and perhaps also surprised by some of the phrases and sentences I underlined while overlooking more profound insights on the same page.

In this round, we’ll stick with the original text, apart from the titles I’m applying. The prose looks quite different to me than it did more than a half-century ago, even without all the recent political turmoil we’re seeing.