1 A government of limited powers List of illustrations ix
powers
The Constitution of the United States is little more than two hundred years
old. It has survived civil war and the territorial expansion from thirteen
largely agricultural former colonies on the eastern seaboard to an industrial
nation of fifty states that stretch across the continent to Alaska and to Ha-
waii. It has overseen the emergence of the most powerful democracy in the
world. The American political system was subjected to severe strains in the
twentieth century: the need to mobilise for two world wars, the depression of
the 1930s, the changing role of government since the Second World War, the
challenge of the civil rights movement, the impact of the Vietnam War and
the shock of the Watergate affair which resulted in the resignation of Presi-
dent Richard Nixon. In the first years of the twenty-first century the chal-
lenges seemed to multiply rapidly: the terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center in New York and on the Pentagon, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The major challenge to American soci-
ety, however, has been developing since the end of the war in Vietnam. That
war jolted the faith of Americans in the inevitability of progress, and in the
superiority of their system of government. It also brought to an end the era of
the ‘melting pot’, the assumption that all Americans, whatever their origin,
would assimilate to American values, adopt English as their first language,
and necessarily revere the institutions embodied in the Constitution of the
United States. In other words, America has had to face the fact that it is a
multicultural society.
In spite of these challenges, superficially the most striking characteristic
of the American Constitution is its continuity and stability, the unchanging
shape of its major structures. Within this apparently stable framework, how-
ever, deep and significant changes in the nature and working of the American
political system have taken place: the changing character of the system of
federalism; the continuously fluctuating relationship between Congress and
the presidency; the transformation of the system of political parties; the rise
of the mass media and their impact upon the political system; the changing
role of the Supreme Court; these and many other factors affect the working
of politics in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century.