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Grace Mallon, Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History, by Emily Pears, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Volume 52, Issue 4, Fall 2022, Pages e56–e60, https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjac025
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In Cords of Affection, political scientist Emily Pears squares up to a question that has seized the American imagination in the Trump era: how to restore a generalized respect for the democratic institutions that have defined the American project since the Revolution. In meditating on this important problem, Pears offers a synthesis of older and newer writing in history and political theory that will provide a useful starting point for students and other readers with an interest in the ties that bind—or fail to bind—citizens to their governments.
The central concept of the book is “political attachment,” an idea similar to but separate from ““civic virtue,” “patriotism,” “nationalism,” and “civil religion”” (p. 14). Attachment can theoretically be measured by how the members of a given political community feel about the institutions that govern them. The author lays out a set of identifying characteristics for periods of high and low popular attachment to American governing institutions. “In periods of high attachment,” she writes, “citizens exhibit high levels of trust in institutions of government. They willingly accept the outcomes of elections and the lawmaking process as legitimate, even when they disagree with those outcomes. Optimism about and commitment to democracy, capitalism, constitutionalism, and other principles that undergird American democracy are high.” By contrast, in periods of low attachment, “[p]eople’s commitment to their political party or to their personal or economic interests supersede those of their institutions such that they are eager to use unconstitutional or illegitimate actions that accomplish their policy goals” (p. 22). “Hypothetically,” she adds, “this framework allows us to identify a series of moments in American history when attachments seem to have been strong or weak,” but—aside from a brief discussion of major disruptions like the War of 1812 and the secession crisis (p. 24)—such an analysis does not entirely materialize.
