The Adaptability Paradox : Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience / Stephen Skowronek.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Skowronek, Stephen.

Series:

Chicago Studies in American Politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constitutional history--United States.

Constitutional history.

Democracy--United States--History--20th century.

Democracy.

United States--Politics and government.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (294 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2025.

Summary:

"Faith in the resilience and adaptability of the American Constitution rests on a long history of finding new ways to make the system work. In The Adaptability Paradox, Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek subjects that history to critical scrutiny. He revisits the rearrangements that regenerated American government in the past and reconsiders the lessons we might draw from those efforts today. Chief among those lessons is how a constitution framed in writing some 230 years ago might run into serious difficulties directly related to its long and impressive history of adaptation. Skowronek shows that questions about the Constitution's adaptability and resilience have always been bound up with problems of democratization. For most of American history, serial rearrangements of constitutional relationships widened the government's purview as national democracy without giving either nationalism or democracy free reign. Auxiliary institutions were improvised to manage the wider range of interests, but each adaptation steadied itself on the social exclusions that still remained. Skowronek argues that the politics of adaptation shifted fundamentally in the 1960s and 70s. With the "Rights Revolution," American national democracy approached full inclusion, and the Constitution lost the social grounding that had originally inspired it. No longer a socially bound framework for national action, the Constitution became an abstract matrix of possibilities, a disembodied opportunity structure open to starkly different and mutually unacceptable futures. Rather than being liberated by this unbound Constitution, the American people now appear entrapped by it. Mutual forbearance has been eclipsed by mobilization and countermobilization, each wave bent on rearranging authority for itself. Is it possible that the development of American democracy has exhausted the adaptive capacities of the Constitution? A timely reminder that constitutional democracies do not survive on faith alone, The Adaptability Paradox is a sober appraisal of the unfamiliar ground on which we now tread"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

I. How adaptable is the American Constitution?

II. Bounded resilience

III. The constitution unbound

IV. Constitutional democracy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-226-84487-0

978-0226-84486-2

OCLC:

1534311731