An Economic Interpretation of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Revisited

Abstract

Empirical studies of delegate voting at the Constitutional Convention have relied on the same 16 roll call votes. This article re-examines various assumptions used in the collection of these data. We first create a baseline regression. We then consider the effect of dropping delegates not in attendance, re-inferring the votes from primary sources, examining various subsamples of the roll calls, and reconstructing constituency variables to include state districts. Our findings suggest that personal interests were indeed important for decision making at the Constitutional Convention, but constituent interests were less important than previously claimed.

Personalty interests at the Constitutional Convention: new tests of the Beard thesis

“…Rather, our estimates suggest that on the key votes related to money and debt issues delegates were indeed influenced by their own personal economic considerations. These findings are consistent with many of the conclusions reached by McGuire and Ohsfeldt (1986, 1997), McGuire (2003, and Heckelman and Dougherty (2007) who analyzed the same set of 16 disparate clauses. Furthermore, the lack of significant state characteristics in our regression analysis supports Heckelman and Dougherty's (2007) finding that state constituency interests may have been less important than previously claimed Ohsfeldt 1986, 1997;McGuire 2003).…”

“…They also imputed the votes of delegates not in attendance using additional assumptions. As shown by Heckelman and Dougherty (2007), both McDonald's initial inferences and McGuire and Ohsfeldt's additional imputations may have biased the results in favor of state factors and away from personal delegate factors. By limiting the sample to actual voters, and making new inferences on the original data, Heckelman and Dougherty (2007) found that the importance of delegate economic interests increased and the importance of state interests decreased.…”

“…It posits that the personal economic interests of the delegates should affect voting behavior, at the margin, when other effects on delegate behavior are controlled. Only the broad version has been subject to rigorous testing Ohsfeldt 1984, 1986;McGuire 2003;Heckelman and Dougherty 2007). However, these tests have been limited to the same set of 16 diverse clauses, many of which appear unconnected to Beard's thesis.…”

Voting on slavery at the Constitutional Convention

“…They concluded that both personal economic interests and constituent interests affected delegate voting behavior at the margin. Heckelman and Dougherty (2007) presented a detailed critique of the inferences made by McDonald (1958) and Ohsfeldt (1986, 1997), re-inferred the same 16 votes using primary source data, and concluded that personal interests were more important than constituent interests. Although these more recent studies represent the most advanced empirical work on the motivation of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention, they do not include any issues related to slavery.…”

“…Thus, there is good reason to expect strategic "talking" to be rare. Our inference of delegate level votes proceeded in three basic steps, similar to the steps outlined by Heckelman and Dougherty (2007). We implement a fourth step in the Appendix to obtain additional observations used in supplemental regressions.…”