Representative Government in Evolution

Charles A. Beard and John D. Lewis

American Political Science Review, 1932, vol. 26, issue 2, 223-240

Abstract: Representative government on a national scale did not originate in the psychology of primitive Teutons, as English historians long contended; nor is it a mere bourgeois institution of passing significance, designed to delude the masses, as Fascists and Bolsheviks have alleged. Its vast historical complications conform to no such simple thesis. On the contrary, representative government began its career as an instrument of political power, in a given complex of social and economic circumstances, to serve the purposes of ruling monarchs; and it has played a bewildering rôle, in form, spirit, and authority, for more than five hundred years. Flexibility has been its prime characteristic. As a means, not an end in itself, it has served an infinite variety of causes, and has displayed both adaptability and survival power. In form, it has not been a political stereotype. Rather, it has been amazingly variable. In spirit, in the ideas associated with its evolution, and in the uses to which it may be put, representative government is subtle and adaptable, offering to statesmen who have imagination and manipulative capacity a tool of inexhaustible utility.

Date: 1932
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