Federalist No. 70: Can the Public Service Survive in the Contest Between Hamilton’s Aspirations and Madison’s Reality?

• Published date: 01 December 2011
• Date: 01 December 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02469.x

Peri E. Arnold is a professor of political

science at the University of Notre Dame.

He works on the presidency, the executive

branch, and American political development.

His book Making the Managerial Presi-

dency won the National Academy of Public

Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. His

recent work Remaking the Presidency:

Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson examines

the presidents of the Progressive Era and

was selected as a Choice Outstanding

Academic Book for 2010.

E-mail: parnold@nd.edu

Can the Public Service Survive? S105

Peri E. Arnold

University of Notre Dame

Federalist No. 70 is widely viewed as a sweeping

description and defense of the need for energy in the

executive.  is essay begins this detailed examination of

Federalist No. 70 by comparing Alexander Hamilton’s

ideals with James Madison’s more cautionary

exposition on separated powers. According to the

author, Hamilton’s notion of a public service driven

by honor eventually was undermined by partisanship

and congressional prerogatives expressed in the rise

of a “businesslike” path away from corruption and

waste.  e essay concludes with a brief description

of a “counterfactual” revision to Federalist No. 70

containing a conception of good public service with

a capacity to resist the incursions of expanding

democratization and political parties.

In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton wrote,

“A government ill executed, whatever it may be in

theory, must be, in practice, a bad government”

(1941, 455). Hamilton made ef‌f ective public admin-

istration a prerequisite for the Constitution’s ability

to establish good government. Hamilton explained

that the Constitution was conducive of both repub-

lican safety and executive energy.  e former would

preserve liberty, and the latter promote ef‌f‌i cacy.  at

safety and ef‌f‌i cacy would coexist

was, in ef‌f ect, a promise that

Madisonian checks would not

undermine Hamilton’s proposi-

tion that “energy in the execu-

tive is the leading character in

the def‌i nition of good govern-

ment” (1941, 454; Wills 1981).

Despite its durability, the

Constitution has not fulf‌i lled

Hamilton’s promise that it

would achieve well-executed

government. Daily news reports

detail administrative failures

of the federal government,

from uncontrolled spending to

zombie programs, important

functions contracted out and beyond accountability,

and, not least, an ageing, dispirited public service.

As Paul Light writes, “the federal service is suf‌f ering

its greatest crisis since it was founded … At best it is

running out of energy  At worst, it is already un-

able to faithfully execute all the laws” (2008, 4).

 e Constitution is not the only source of these mod-

ern problems. But its structure made it likely that the

federal public service would be caught between the

poles of executive authority and congressional powers.

 e Federalist presents an ideal of public service for ef-

fective administration that was short-lived in practice

because the Constitution contained no institutional

means to maintain it against the contradictory forces

within separate institutions sharing powers. Conse-

quently, by the early nineteenth century, American

public administration was on a developmental path to

a place far dif‌f erent from  e Federalist’s ideal.

In what follows, we shall describe  e Federalist’s ideal

public service and identify the forces that undermined

it. We shall see that the Constitution did not locate

responsibility for execution within a single branch.

 e executive power is vested in the presidency, but

Congress substantially con-

trols administration through

lawmaking, appropriations, and

(Senate) conf‌i rmation authority.

With the emergence of partisan

politics and mass-based parties,

the public service became a sat-

ellite of congressional interests

and party requirements.

Hamiltonian Theory,

Washingtonian Practice:

A Public Service of Honor

Federalist No. 70 identif‌i es

four characteristics of “energy”

required for well-executed gov-

ernment: “f‌i rst, unity; second,

duration; thirdly, an adequate

Federalist No. 70: Can the Public Service Survive in the Contest

Between Hamilton’s Aspirations and Madison’s Reality?

Despite its durability, the

Constitution has not fulf‌i lled

Hamilton’s promise that it

would achieve well-executed

government. Daily news reports

detail administrative failures

of the federal government,

from uncontrolled spending to

zombie programs, important

functions contracted out and

beyond accountability, and,

not least, an ageing, dispirited

public service.