Early American Politics--The Search for Ideology: An Historiographical Analysis and Critique of the Concept of "Deference"

Abstract

T he historian, like any interested student of politics, is influenced by the political theories and conceptions that have become accepted as standard explanations of the past as well as the present. Scholars not only interpret the past in light of contemporary values but they seek from history ideas and beliefs that help to explain the present. In a recent discussion of democratic institutions, Leonard J. Fein noted that while we are all aware of the vast transformations that have occurred in the last two centuries, and especially in the last fifty years, many of our expectations regarding the way democracy ought to work are based on an and understanding of that world.' It is the historian's job to describe the earlier world of the American political experience, and the conclusions he reaches as to the nature of that experience will often have an importance that extends well beyond the narrow confines of his historical curiosity. Although few historians are overtly concerned with writing political theory, their analysis of political ideas, values, and institutional structures often becomes the raw material by which political philosophers develop such theories. An historian's account of a specific era is frequently influenced by the interpretative analyses and the terms used to describe periods that either preceded or followed his major interest. In his book, The Revolution of American Conservatism, David Hackett Fischer was led to a reinterpretation of early nineteenth-century Federalist party politics by way of the revisionists' works of Bernard Bailyn, Richard McCormick, and J. R. Pole whose studies dealt with political experiences both before