Whatever you might think of the United States Constitution, the Framers certainly get points for durable workmanship. The U.S. is probably the only country on Earth that still has the same fundamental system of government it had in 1789. Many of the states that existed in 1789 no longer exist in any form, and many existing states are entirely new. Of those states that have endured from 1789 to the present, all have been through revolutions, regime changes, and/or periods of foreign rule. The only arguable exception is the United Kingdom – and their system has been through so many reforms in the past two centuries that it now bears very little resemblance to what it was during the reign of George III. Back then, it was a real, if constitutional, monarchy, both formally and effectively controlled by the landed gentry; today it’s more of a “crowned republic.”
Why is this? Is there something especially resilient about the U.S. Constitution? Or is it just luck and the accidents of history that have protected our system from major upheavals?
I think there are some smaller countries/groups that have older constitutions/governments (Iceland? the Iroquois Confederacy?), but of the large countries, the US has the oldest.
…Which makes it a bit annoying when people talk about how young, immature, and “adolescent” our country is compared to its supposedly wiser, stabler predecessors. There was a line in The Economist once that pointed out that since the US constitution came about, France has gone through however many revolutions, counterrevolutions, kings, emperors, governments, etc. Yet we’re the adolescents??
The Iroquois Confederacy no longer exists as an independent sovereign state. And Iceland was a Danish colony in 1789 – the present republic dates from 1944.
I think it’s a combination of wisdom and complete luck.
On the wisdom part: the Consitution is very specific on certain points, but generally pretty darned vague on most points, which has allowed each successive generation to interpret what is allowable or not. (Many of the rights we take for granted would horrify someone from 1860, and vice-versa.) Likewise, the Constitution is amendable, but not easily; therefore, we’ve only had one “really stupid” amendment (Prohibition) but many that were good reflections of the direction the country wished to move or the necessities of changing times (13th-16th, 22nd, 24th, etc.).
On the complete luck part: There were plenty of periods in American history where incompetence on certain people’s parts, or competence on others’, would have doomed the government. Had Abraham Lincoln not been a brilliant politician and completely unskilled in war; or had Jefferson Davis not been a poor administrator and very versed in Napoleonic techniques, then the Civil War could easily have ended up with a seperation of the CSA. (Yes, yes, BG, I know you’d prefer that. Hush up.)
Likewise, had the Democrats nominated a party hack in 1932 rather than FDR, there’s no telling what might have happened by 1936 if there hadn’t been a great orator in the White House who was willing to embrace radical innovations to end the Depression. Or, conversely, what might have happened if Huey Long hadn’t been assassinated before the '36 elections.
The fact that, during our worst crises, some of the greatest Americans have shown themselves, means either that we have a system that fosters such greatness when times are tough, or that we’ve been incredibly lucky. I think it’s a mixture of the two.
I think the answer to the first part of the question is ‘yes’. I haven’t looked it up but I recall reading that the US is the oldest government continuously in existance in the world today.
As for why, I’m not sure I have a good reason for that. Part of it might be our mix of different races, classes, religions, etc…all blended together. Part of it certainly would be the self correcting nature of our government…as well as the transitory nature (with term limits and such). Part of it is probably that the founding fathers, flawed as they were, were pretty brilliant and put in enough wiggle room to allow the government to grow and breathe while still making sure our citizens kept their basic rights. Some of it was luck…especially early in the Republic. There were several times when things could have come unglued early on (especially during the war of 1812 IIRC), yet we managed to keep things from flying apart.
What will be interesting to see is how many current governments in the world today are still intact and viable in the years to come…and what state the US is in towards the end of my lifetime (say 40-50 years down the pike).
Just a factual question - what event is the British government dated from that makes it younger than the USA? The main candidates that I can see are the restoration of Charles II after Cromwell’s Protectorate (1660) or the adoption of the Bill of Rights following the Glorious Revolution (1689) - only a matter of decades, true, but still before 1776.
The British government has changed by gradual evolution. We can’t really point to any one transformative event in the past two centuries. There have been a series of reforms (e.g., expanding the voting franchise by stages, reducing the House of Lords to near-irrelevance, etc.), and after each, Britain appeared still to have the same constitution as is had before that particular reform. But, add them all up, and we can’t really say Britain has the same constitution as it had in 1789; it has changed beyond recognition. Unlike the U.S. (And I know there are some states’-rightsers who might dispute that last point; but I still think our system is closer to what it was in 1789 than the British system is.)
Without having an objective criterion, it’s difficult to decide. The basic structure of both states is more-or-less unchanged, and both have undergone similar major alterations (universal adult suffrage, abolition of slavery, etc). It could be argued that the USA of 1950 was more different from today’s USA than the UK of 1900 was from today, especially considering the Civil Rights issue, but I wouldn’t say that either country has undergone a major constitutional change over the past 100 years.
Are there any other candidates? Iceland has been mentioned, but they only became officially independent from Denmark in 1918.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_Kingdom
Maybe the founding of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 means something. But really, they’re right about the Act of 1707 being the real foundation of the modern UK.
I’d say that the United States as framed by the Constitution was toppled by Abraham Lincoln when he didn’t allow the south to secede and forced people fresh off the boat to fight for the northern corporate interests.
We’ve had the same government since 1865, it very closely resembles the one we had before that but states rights have pretty well been eliminated, so its not the same government as it originally was. If it were, I’d be able to smoke pot in some states but not in others.
Basically the fact that they shelled New York so that they could force people to fight in a war they didn’t believe in did major damage to this country. It might be possible for it to recover, but people would have to know on a widespread basis that the myth of Lincoln as a great man and protector of America is almost entirely false.
Mmmm…we "did: this in GQ just a few days ago. But a “constitution” in political science does not mean a piece of paper with “Constitution” written at the top, but rather the set of conventions by which a country governs itself. In particular, with reference to “constitutional monarchies” and the like, it means government by such a set of conventions instead of the despotic whim of a monarch or dictator. The Soviet Union under Stalin had a constitution, one substantially more “liberal” in the political-philosophy sense than the U.S., but nobody would argue that it was governed, RealPolitik-wise, by that constitution rather than the decisions of Stalin.
Probably Britain’s “present contitution” dates from 1911, when the emasculation of the House of Lords as a significant part of the governing framework began. There are other possible dates, but that one marks a sea-change from the aristocratic system of 1689-1910 to the present “democratic” system (in the old Greek sense of “democratic”).
But, if “constitution” simply means an amalgomation of customs, then every state that ever existed had a “constiution” and word ceases to have any distinguishing meaning wrt governments.
The Althing has roots that go back over a thousand years, although there are some gaps in there (1800-1845), but it has changed functions (from sovereign parliament to advisory body to the Danish king and back) and structure as well (it has been bicameral in the past but is now unicameral). The present constitution of Iceland only goes back to 1944.
This got me thinking if in fact the US is more mature… and I think the answer is no. You might have a very well written or balanced constitution for sure. Yet that doesn’t necessarily reflect society and how power is used for example. Another thread showed there was significant criticism of the Constitution not having reference to God. I bet that as a whole the founding fathers were far ahead of their time than their countrymen. (easy no ?) So the US Constitution managed well to be above petty politics and religion of its time.
The British Government and the laws that govern it certainly don’t date back as long as the US constitution… but that is not the determining factor on how things get done and governed. Their country has existed since many centuries before and that is not lost every time you scribble a new set of laws or a Constitution.
So back to the “adolescent” America… I tend to agree with that criticism actually. This “adolescent” aspect is tied more to the strong tendency of appealing to “emotional” or “idealistic” reasons when acting outside their borders. Europeans and Asians are much more pragmatic in their foreign dealings. Idealism is the virtue of the young as they say. As far as internal politics and governance I don’t think the “adolescent” tag is as relevant. Yet you still see american politics driven by non-issues like abortion and gay marriage.
Final Note: I still don’t understand how the founding fathers managed to avoid the pit fall of petty competition and religious meddling. How the balancing act that is the US Constitution was so well done. I include myself as a great admirer of the founding fathers… and I pity that my country never managed to get its act together even when we had men of great stature like them.