Recreating the American Republic: Rules of Apportionment, Constitutional Change, and American Political Development, 1700-1870 (review)

Abstract

Apportionment rules establish the basis upon which a political institution exists. Charles A. Kromkowski, a lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, places the issue of apportionment at the center of an institutional analysis of the United States from 1700 to 1870. He examines three periods—the Revolutionary Era, the Constitutional Era, and the Civil War and Reconstruction Era—as pivotal periods of apportionment conflict, reassessment, and consensus. Within these time frames, his study "define[s] constitutional rule change as an alteration of the capacities and practical limits that define the formal or customary content and uses of collective authority" (423). When apportionment rules became controversial and in need [End Page 300] of re-assessment, apportionment changes usually "entail[ed] the abandonment of the existing rule of apportionment and the creation of a new rule" (423).