Self-interest, Agency Theory, and Political Voting Behavior: The Ratification of the United States Constitution

Abstract

Two hundred years ago the United States Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the fundamental law of the land when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution on June 21, 1788. The document represented the successful culmination of a movement to strengthen the national government. Scholars long have debated the possible causes for this important change in political institutions (see James Hutson, 1984), a change which was to have major consequences for the development of the nation (Douglass North, 1981, ch. 14). Despite the intense debate, few scholars have either offered any theoretical model of the delegates' voting behavior or employed formal statistical analysis to test their hypotheses about voting behavior at the 13 state ratifying conventions. These omissions are surprising, particularly since Charles A. Beard (1913) long ago stated that the contest over ratification represented the ultimate test of the role of economic interests in the making of the Constitution, a test he never conducted. Given the recent interest exhibited by economists in explaining political behavior, the absence of a rigorous analysis of voting at the 13 ratifying conventions is even more surprising. Economists and economic historians have all but ignored the ratification process. In a progress report on our study of the making of the Constitution, we (Robert McGuire and Robert Ohsfeldt, 1984) recently provided a tentative theoretical model and summarized preliminary indications, drawn from incomplete data, of delegates' voting behavior during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. More recently, we (McGuire and Ohsfeldt, 1986; McGuire, 1988) presented the final results of our econometric studies of the voting behavior during the drafting of the Constitution at the Federal Convention of 1787. In the present paper, we offer a principalagent model and econometric tests of voting behavior during the ratification of the Constitution at the 13 state conventions. An analysis of voting at the ratification stage allows for a stronger test of the factors influencing voting behavior than an analysis of the Federal Convention of 1787, because of a greater number of delegates (over 1200 versus 55) and a more straightforward voting process.' The paper not only addresses an important and controversial issue in economic history (the role of economic interests in the ratification of the Constitution), it also advances our general understanding of polit-

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