Somewhere out there is a mythical button that you can push to create a stateless, or nearly stateless, society overnight. Now set aside the question of if you would push it or not, and why, and consider a button next to it that would change history so that the United States never adopted the Constitution. I'm not just talking about the Constitution as libertarian myth but trying to get at two, or more, potentially exclusive notions about the spread of liberty and freedom. On the one hand you have the belief in competition between governments acting as a check on expanding state power. That should argue against the United States under the Constitution and other large nation-states. The other idea is a sort of hegemonic liberty created when you have a dominate world superpower with a vested interested in trade, such as the British Empire and the United States. The latter certainly overlaps with some strains of "liberventionism" that advocate in favor of state action to promote liberty, such as the invasion of Iraq. The former . . . well, I think the former is a constant theme of this blog.

A large part of modern day libertarianism is built on undermining the theoretical political models invented by the Founding Fathers. Instead of balancing each other out factions tend to work together for their own mutual benefit, for example. We have empirical real world examples of the failures of government. What if we could have an real world example of what would happen without the Constitution? A sort of test model for the idea that international competition between different systems of taxation and regulatory encourages more limited government. Would the area of the United States be more free and more prosperous without the Constitution?

Consider the factors that contributed to the adoption of the Constitution. The process was largely elite driven and I doubt that it would have been adopted in anything resembling a popular referendum, except under the most limited systems of suffrage. Fear of internal rebellion and mob rule certainly played a large role following Shay's Rebellion. But the solution, in the eyes of most then Federalists like Madison, Hamilton, and even at the time Jefferson, was to focus on the opportunities for growth, either commercially or territorially, made possible by a stronger centralized government. The emphasis at the time was on how a more centralized government would be in a better bargaining position in clearing the British out of the Northwest, in gaining commercial access to the Mississippi River and New Orleans, in the "removal" of Indians," and in trade agreements for the benefit of American merchants.

The decade or so following the adoption of the Constitution saw the outbreak of war between France and Britain. This international conflict, in many ways a continuation of the European fights during the American Revolution, was almost certain to draw in the nations of the North American continent, with or without the Constitution. The Citizen Genet Affair saw France attempt to use Americans, including Revolutionary hero George Rogers Clark, to seize New Orleans from the Spanish with a base of operation in South Carolina. The Spanish Empire had important figures James Wilkinson on their payroll as "Agent 13," a spy within the American government. And then you had ambitious politicians like Aaron Burr looking to found their own Western Empire. Take away the centralizing influence of the Constitution and the attempted neutrality of George Washington and it is easy to see how this could spiral out of control.

So what happens under the Articles of Confederation as the various states are torn in different directions by their own interests in foreign policy? Taking away the Constitution doesn't remove the foreign policy debate that went on during the Washington and Adams administrations, it only weakens the ability of the national government to craft a coherent and consistent foreign policy with the backing of the states. It hampers the ability to raise revenue and fund a United States Navy to levy war against France. It almost certainly removes the ability of a national government to create the "Legion of the United States" that defeated a tribal confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Without the ability to project that sort of military force I question if Britain would have been willing to remove itself from the Northwest Territory.

Once foreign policy interjects itself into the domestic debate over the Constitution in the 1790s I don't know if another Constitutional Convention would be possible. The European Wars actually fueled a strong economic boom, particularly among the coast, that would dampen the domestic demand for a stronger centralized government. And foreign pressures can work both ways, either uniting the states in support of a stronger negotiating position or dividing them as they bicker over priorities. Politically, New England was far more interested in a stronger Navy to fight off France and privateers than in conquering the Northwest from the British and Indians. If a filibustering American like George Rogers Clark sets off against Spain on behalf of the French and draws the Southern States into the Napoleonic Wars what is in it for New England to join?

In the end, I think the result of this counterfactual is a regional system of confederations. It probably creates a power vacuum that temporarily empowers the British on the continent, particularly if the lack of a Louisiana Purchase allows them to seize New Orleans and the Mississippi River basin. This brings up long term questions about British-Mexican relations involving Texas and California. I'll pull back the counterfactual at this point and bring it back to my questions about the development of liberty and freedom. What real world examples are there to develop our predictions of centralized states vs. multiple states?