A government of limited powers 13The Philippines have since gained full independence, but Hawaii followed
a different course and in 1959 it became the fiftieth state of the Union and
the first state to have Asians as the largest racial group in its population. In
the 1970s and 1980s there was an influx of Vietnamese and Koreans into the
United States. The most important change in the balance of the composition
of the population, however, has been the rapid growth in the population of
Hispanics, Spanish-speakers, mostly from Puerto Rico, Mexico and Cuba.
As we shall see, this development, in the view of some observers, signals a
fundamental change in the nature of the American polity. The problems that
face a political system and a society in attempting to assimilate different
nationalities and races on this scale are daunting to say the least. The influx
of immigrants brought with it the elements of diversity – in language, in
religion, in social customs and in attitudes towards social and political prob-
lems that provide the warp and woof of American life today. That the United
States has largely achieved the creation of a single nation from such varied
peoples is little short of a modern miracle. In an age when racial problems
are in the news from all parts of the world, it is as well to bear in mind the
American achievement, even though its success is by no means total.
Politics and the Constitution
The relationship of the political life of a country to the formal and informal
structures of its constitution is a matter of great complexity. For centuries
constitutions have been considered to be important for the maintenance of
freedom and the rights of the individual, as well as ensuring order and stabil-
ity in society. However, the view has been increasingly expressed that con-
stitutional provisions, and particularly the more formal, legalistic aspects of
the Constitution, have little or no importance in determining the outcome of
political struggles. It is argued that it is to ‘social forces’ that we must direct
our attention if we are to understand the working of politics. It is perhaps
surprising that this point of view has been expressed more forcibly in mod-
ern America than in most other countries of the world, in spite of the fact
that constitutions and constitutionalism would seem to have played such a
significant part in American history. In this work we shall attempt to give
full weight to ‘social forces’ in our description of the working of American
politics, but it would be pointless to attempt to describe American political
processes other than within the framework of the American constitutional
system. Social groups and movements are the raw material and the driving
force of the political process, but the exact form in which they operate, and
the precise results that they achieve, must depend to a considerable extent
upon the nature of the channels through which they have to work. More pre-
cisely, the channels through which the social forces must operate are part of
the whole complex of influences that have made these social forces of Amer-
ica just what they are.
It will become apparent during the course of the discussion that the