"More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England"
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“More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England” has the cool, clipped confidence of a historian trying to make federalism sound like an architectural choice rather than a political fight. Hart is sketching a divergence story: same Anglo roots, different pressures, different wiring. The key word is “thus” - a quiet causal claim that something upstream (distance, settlement patterns, weak central institutions, the sheer hassle of governing a sprawling place) didn’t just allow local power, it compelled it.
The subtext is that American democracy, from the start, was less a single national drama than a patchwork of town meetings, county courts, colonial assemblies, and later statehouses. Local government isn’t presented as quaint tradition; it’s framed as the practical unit where authority could be enforced, taxes collected, roads built, and social order maintained when London was an ocean away and central control was intermittent at best. Hart’s comparison to England does extra work: it implies England could afford a stronger center because its geography and institutions made coherence easier. America couldn’t, so it substituted proximity for bureaucracy.
There’s also a moral undertone Hart doesn’t fully spell out: localism as training ground for civic participation, but also as a seedbed for parochialism and inequality. “More emphasis” can read like praise for self-rule or like a warning that power devolved can mean power captured. In that ambiguity lies the line’s durability - it explains a structure while hinting at the recurring American dilemma: who gets to govern, and at what distance from the governed.
The subtext is that American democracy, from the start, was less a single national drama than a patchwork of town meetings, county courts, colonial assemblies, and later statehouses. Local government isn’t presented as quaint tradition; it’s framed as the practical unit where authority could be enforced, taxes collected, roads built, and social order maintained when London was an ocean away and central control was intermittent at best. Hart’s comparison to England does extra work: it implies England could afford a stronger center because its geography and institutions made coherence easier. America couldn’t, so it substituted proximity for bureaucracy.
There’s also a moral undertone Hart doesn’t fully spell out: localism as training ground for civic participation, but also as a seedbed for parochialism and inequality. “More emphasis” can read like praise for self-rule or like a warning that power devolved can mean power captured. In that ambiguity lies the line’s durability - it explains a structure while hinting at the recurring American dilemma: who gets to govern, and at what distance from the governed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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