American Government - Foundations of US Democracy and Political Systems

The Constitution

Although the Declaration served as an inspiration for American democracy, it did not outline an actual system of government. In the years during and immediately after the Revolution, the US government operated under the Articles of Confederation, a government system that placed most power in the hands of state governments.

We’ll talk more about the specifics of the Articles of Confederation later on in this course, but for now, suffice it to say that by the late 1780s, it was clear that the Articles weren’t working. The United States needed a new, stronger blueprint for government.

In 1787, representatives from the states met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention. Their task was a difficult one: to create a government system that was powerful enough to meet the needs of the United States, but not so powerful that it would become tyrannical. Likewise, they wanted to balance the will of the majority with the rights of the minority, so that the powerful many could not trample the few.

Under the leadership of Revolutionary War hero George Washington, the delegates debated the elements of a new Constitution. The final version, influenced strongly by Virginian James Madison and New Yorker Alexander Hamilton, reinforced the idea that government derives from a social contract by citizens for their mutual advantage:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia more than two hundred years ago still forms the basis for US government today. Amended just twenty-seven times in that period (including the first set of ten amendments, or the Bill of Rights, which was passed immediately after the Constitution’s ratification), the US Constitution is the oldest functioning national constitution in the world. It serves as the blueprint for the unique form of political democracy found in the United States.