We, the Volk: Modern and Radical Constitutionalism from the American Revolution to the German Direct-Democracy Debate

Abstract

This chapter will explore radical constitutional thought during the American Revolution and assess whether or not it has influenced German debates on the subject. Its origin is anecdotal: reading a newspaper editorial on the risks of introducing direct democratic mechanisms on a national level in Germany sparked something of a transatlantic deja vu. The arguments bore an uncanny resemblance to those in pamphlets, articles, and letters surrounding state and Federal constitutional debates of the founding era. The author warned of the limited intellectual and experiential horizons, the irrational passions, and the manipulability of the people, as well as the principal danger to minority rights without massive checks on the popular will. My curiosity awakened, I conducted a LexisNexis search for major mentions of the term ‘American Revolution’ in the German press, with predictably meager results: a report on a new Harley Davidson model, some reviews of Mel Gibson’s 2000 movie The Patriot, and a comment on Joseph Ellis, but only two detailed references to American Revolutionary politics. Interestingly, both hits stemmed from conservative newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt) and both were comments on the conservative nature of American Revolutionary thought.