Voting for a founding: Testing the effect of economic interests at the federal convention of 1787

Jeremy C. Pope, Shawn Treier

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Previous work measuring the voting patterns of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention largely focused on either individual delegate positions for a handful of key votes or on state delegation positions for a far broader set of votes. We remedy this limitation by modeling the key first two months of the Convention including both some individual-level and all delegation-level voting, while simultaneously estimating the effect of various economic interests on that voting, controlling for various cultural and ideological factors. The findings suggest that economic factors mattered a great deal at the Convention. The effect of such interests vary however by the dimension of debate-representation, national institutional design, or federalism. We conclude that economic interests exerted a powerful influence on the deep structure of voting at Convention, though not consistently by issue or dimension. Specific interests only mattered on specific dimensions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)519-534
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of Politics
Volume77
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2015
Externally publishedYes

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