Covenants, Federal Democracy, and Political Culture Essays in Memory of Daniel J. Elazar

9780765801685

076580168X

The central concerns of the late Daniel J. Elazar pertained to the relation between federalism, constitutional democracy and the political culture. Stitched into this set of concepts was the idea of the covenants that extended from the world of the ancient Hebrew prophets to the founding fathers of modern America. Elazar looked very closely at post-Holocaust Israel as well post-Vietnam America. Whether dealing with King David and King Saul, or such founding fathers of the United States as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, he sought the religious as well as political foundations of democratic culture.As many of the contributors to what initially appeared in three separate issues of Publius well appreciated, while there are problems and anomalies in Elazar's historic theological vision, his overall appraisal of the original impulse of the founding fathers and their present-day successors was remarkably on target. Indeed, Elazar's work has sparked not just a series of books, but a serious political framework and movement: federalism. Many of the contributions to this festschrift emphasize the federalist tradition and its place in the evolution of inter-governmental relations, state administration as a counterweight to government control, and how the federalist perspective plays out in education, health and welfare institutes.