2
In the first session of the first Congress, Madison played a pivotal role, trying to build a
centrist coalition supportive of economic nationalism based on agricultural development. When,
in early 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed a shift toward centralized,
commercially-oriented public finance, Madison shifted tactics. When Hamilton then advocated
banking and manufacturing policies that downgraded the importance of export commodities and
acceded to British economic hegemony, Madison was forced to broaden his oppositional tactics.
He broke decisively from his former nationalism and counterattacked Hamilton’s agenda by
using the Constitution, federalism, and populism to organize an interstate political coalition to
defend his broader policy objectives. Madison’s adjustments illuminate the way a perceptive
policy strategist learned to adapt tactically to the institutional opportunities and constraints of the
American policy-making system when it was newly established. They also illuminate how
populism, merit and states’ rights naturally became complementary planks of the emerging
Democratic-Republican platform.
Policy Strategy and Madison’s Consistency
Policy strategists like James Madison provide the indispensable link between the
circumstances that press government to act, and the specific policies that governments actually
pursue. Policy strategy refers to the set of related premises about goals, expectations,
assumptions, and other ideas that individuals employ when they seek to use government.
1
Public officials or private actors forge policy strategies from their knowledge, experience,
aspirations and inventiveness. These individuals influence the way government uses its power
by creatively interpreting circumstances, coupling problems and policy solutions, framing the
structure of choice, and building political support.
2
Policy strategists aim to satisfy multiple goals:
outcome goals, organizational goals, and personal goals.
3
Their written records, along with
records of their actual behavior, provide the empirical evidence necessary to reconstruct their
strategic premises. Because policy strategists dedicate themselves to making government work,
Convention