A Politician Pondering: The Artistic Thoughts of James Madison (Quantity 14) (The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Collection)

James Madison offered his most celebrated and studied political concepts in his contributions to
The Federalist, the essays that he, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote in 1787–1788 to safe ratification of the U.S. Structure. As Jack N. Rakove reveals in
A Politician Pondering, nevertheless, these essays don’t illustrate the complete complexity and vigor of Madison’s considering. On this e book, Rakove pushes past
what Madison thought to look at
how he thought, exhibiting that this founder’s political genius lay much less within the content material of his revealed writings than within the methods he turned his inventive thoughts to fixing actual political issues.

Rakove begins his evaluation by inspecting how Madison drew upon his experiences as a member of the Continental Congress and as a Virginia legislator to develop his key concepts. Madison sought to derive classes of historical past from his studying and his personal expertise, however he additionally thought of politics by way of what we now acknowledge as sport principle. After discussing Madison’s method to the problem of constitutional change, Rakove emphasizes his strikingly trendy understanding of legislative deliberation, which he handled because the defining drawback of republican authorities. Rakove additionally addresses Madison’s deliberation about methods to guard the rights of people and political minorities from the rule of “factious majorities.” The e book closes by tracing how Madison developed methods for sustaining long-term constitutional stability and adjusting to the brand new realities of governance underneath the Structure.

Partaking and accessible,
A Politician Pondering affords new perception regarding a key constitutional thinker and the foundations of the American constitutional system. Having a extra thorough understanding of how Madison solved the issues offered within the formation of that system, we higher grasp a singular second of political innovation.