The Adaptability Paradox: Constitutional Resilience and Principles of Good Government in Twenty-First-Century America

Abstract

Faith in the resilience of the US Constitution prompts many observers to discount evidence of a deepening crisis of governance in our day. A long history of success in navigating tough times and adapting to new circumstances instills confidence that the fundamentals of the system are sound and the institutions self-correcting. The aim of this article is to push assessments of this sort beyond the usual nod to great crises surmounted in the past and to identify institutional adaptation as a developmental problem worthy of study in its own right. To that end, we call attention to dynamics of adjustment that have played out over the long haul. Our historical-structural approach points to the “bounded resilience” of previous adaptations and to dynamics of reordering conditioned on the operation of other governance outside the Constitution’s formal written arrangements. We look to the successive overthrow of these other incongruous elements and to the serial incorporation of previously excluded groups to posit increasing stress on constitutional forms and greater reliance on principles for support of new institutional arrangements. Following these developments into the present, we find principles losing traction, now seemingly unable to foster new rules in support of agreeable governing arrangements. Our analysis generates a set of propositions about why the difficulties of our day might be different from those of the past in ways that bear directly on resilience and adaptability going forward.

Comparative Historical Analysis

“…There were, unfortunately, no articles submitted in this time frame in the American political development tradition. Over the course of our editorship, however, we have published several articles in this vein that would have fit nicely in this section, such as Skowronek and Orren (2020), Shafer andWagner (2019), Jacobs, King, andMilkis (2019), Lieberman et al (2019), and Weir and Schirmer (2018).…”

Frontline Bureaucratic Attitude toward Administrative Integration: Does Organizational Configuration Matter?

“…Although public agencies are often confronted with multifaceted challenges and competing policy agendas, administrative integration is launched to navigate these difficulties by managing turbulence and accepting ambiguity as a governing process (Olsen, 2007;Shapiro et al, 2006). Unfortunately, organizational structures designed for professionalization may hinder this approach (Skowronek & Orren, 2020). As a result, there may exist a negative relation between frontline bureaucratic expectations of professionalization and attitudes toward administrative integration.…”

The Search for an Anchor: Living Constitutionalism from the Progressives to Trump

“…In short, reviving again the canon of legal liberalism or expecting a new regime to materialize on time does not seem up to the challenge of the political moment. Contemporary legal liberalism has few compelling answers to meet the building political stress on our (constitutional) politics (Skowronek and Orren 2020). This does not mean Progressive, New Deal, and Great Society constitutionalism has nothing to teach us.…”