Charles Beard's (1913) An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States has long been a focal point for scholarly debate on the motivations of the American Founders. Beard argued that each of the Founders could be classified as merchants with “personalty” interests or as farmers with “realty” interests and that political conflict during the Founding could be interpreted through the prism of conflict between these two classes. This work came to be greeted with growing disdain by scholars who found his “Marxist” interpretation of the Founding inadequate, but given the rise of rational choice theory as an important analytic tool for political scientists, another look at Beard's theory through modern conceptual lenses is long overdue.

To Form a More Perfect Union breathes new life into accounts of the Founding premised on the assumption that the Framers were rational, self-interested actors whose preferences over constitutional provisions were motivated by personal economic interests. Robert McGuire decomposes Beard's classification of delegates as personalty and realty agents into more specific categories to better understand which economic motivations were relevant to behavior and which were not. Specifically, he argues that delegates with merchant and commercial interests, with holdings of public or private securities, or with western landholdings were more likely, ceteris paribus, to support a strong national government and the Constitution. Alternatively, delegates with agricultural interests, with debt, or with slaveholdings were less likely, ceteris paribus, to support the Constitution.

For quantitatively oriented political scientists, McGuire's approach to testing these competing theories will be refreshing. In contrast to previous research, his work is not based on case studies of one or a few Founders or simple cross-tabulations of votes with delegate circumstances. Instead, choice models from applied econometrics are used to study the voting behavior of delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and to the various state ratifying conventions. The value of the econometric choice model is that it controls for the possibly confounding effects of delegate ideology and constituents' interests, allowing the author to identify the partial effects of delegates' economic interests.

Data for McGuire's analyses are drawn from an impressive variety of sources documented throughout the book and in a detailed appendix. A close examination of the debates at the Constitutional Convention is used to identify 16 crucial issues put to a recorded vote. Important issues included prohibitions on export tariffs (passed) and an absolute federal veto over state laws (failed). Because votes at the convention were based on state delegations, rather than delegate counts, substantial detective work goes into teasing out the choices of individual delegates. Roll call data are also collected for state ratifying conventions where the Constitution was put to a final “yes” or “no” vote.

For each delegate at the Constitutional Convention and approximately 75% of the more than 1,600 participants at state ratifying conventions, measures of economic interests are identified in addition to control variables for delegate ideology and constituents' economic and ideological interests. Needless to say, these data are extraordinary. However, I must admit that I am somewhat unsatisfied with the interpretation of many theoretical concepts in the model. For example, such variables as ownership of public securities may provide evidence of delegates' ideological commitments through investments important to the development of a strong national state, rather than purely economic considerations. To the author's credit, he demonstrates an awareness of these limitations, but these alternative interpretations raise concerns about the validity of the statistical inferences.

Having identified the key variables of interest, McGuire presents the results of an extensive series of analyses of voting behavior at the Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions. By my count, the book presents coefficients for more than 250 logistic regressions, and while reading, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information.

For the Constitutional Convention, McGuire finds in support of his core theoretical claim that at least one personal economic variable is statistically significant for all 16 votes; however, there is no personal economic variable consistently significant across issues, and on many votes, the p-value for the lone significant economic variable is only p < .20. While the author is correct that it may be appropriate to set the bar a bit lower, given the small case count (n = 53), with 20 predictors the models seem badly overparameterized, and I am not confident that the asymptotic properties necessary for reliable standard error estimates are satisfied. In contrast, variables related to constituency characteristics seem to have been more influential across a range of votes than the personal economic variables. For example (despite my reservations), it appears that veteran officers from the American Revolution were much stronger supporters of provisions for a strong national government than were other delegates.

Stronger evidence for an economic interpretation of the Founding is found in the state ratifying conventions, especially in models where votes across states are pooled together. In this case, McGuire finds that delegates who were merchants, western landowners, private creditors, and farmers were significantly more supportive of ratification, holding constant personal ideology and constituent interests; and that opponents of the Constitution were debtors and slave owners. McGuire is careful to qualify his claims because his analyses of individual ratifying conventions suggest that there was some variation in behavior across states. Nevertheless, one cannot help but be impressed by the basic stability in the coefficients for the personal economic interest variables nationally, providing good evidence that the political cleavages were grounded on common economic interests nationwide.

The book's analysis of the economic interests of the individuals who drafted and ratified the Constitution makes an important contribution to the study of the American Founding. Future research on the motivations of the delegates in Philadelphia and the state ratifying conventions will certainly have to wrestle with McGuire's conclusions. Taking seriously these motivations is crucial for understanding the particular institutional bargains struck in the United States, and more generally, for understanding the conditions under which rational agents cede authority to national governments during periods of state formation.