Constitution Making - Conflict and Consensus in the Fed Convention of 1787 - Tapa dura

Looking closely at the roll-call voting records, the author examines the patterns of cooperation and conflict among individual delegates and their state delegations as voting units; analyzes the changes in voting coalitions and the implication of those changes for the resolution of critical substantive issues before the Convention; and shows how these major issues were addressed, modified, and resolved from the opening of the Convention on May 25, 1787, to its final adjournment on September 17. The result is a conceptually sophisticated and empirically accurate understanding of the politics of constitution making in the Federal Convention that the author hopes will allow us to see the democratic politics of our own age in clearer perspective.

This distinguished study bridges the gulf in the literature on the Constitutional Convention between those analysts who stress the influence of philosophical principles and those who stress the influence of political and economic interests.