by Cruz K. Marquis & Christopher J. Coyne
This article responds to Christensen (2021), who proposes to revive the Philadelphian System, the institutional and security equilibrium that prevailed in the United States between the ratification of the Constitution and the Civil War, and expand it to the democratic world at large. We find unresolved empirical and practical issues with the proposal that require further research to address. Empirically, we identify three stylized facts of the system’s only case study: It lasted less than one human lifetime, the catalyst for its demise was the American Civil War, and after the war, the state evolved into an unchained leviathan. The burden of proof is on the proposal’s advocates to demonstrate that the record of the system would not apply to an expanded version. Practically, we identify four issues: Possible lack of legitimacy among prospective members, institutional stickiness, crypto-imperialism, and military integration creating an armed behemoth. We then identify success conditions of interstate federalism: Robust safeguards against the centralization of power, legitimizing state power across heterogeneous groups, grounding the new institutions in local belief systems, and scaling military integration appropriately. It is unclear to what extent these conditions can be fulfilled, which points toward new avenues of research on international governance.
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Cruz Marquis is a PhD candidate in Economics at George Mason University. Send him mail: cmarqui4@gmu.edu. Christopher J. Coyne is, among other things, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Send him mail: ccoyne3@gmu.edu.
Isonomia Quarterly 