The Narrowing of Federal Power By the American Political Capital

Introduction 734I. What Kind of Metropolitan Area Houses the American Federal Government? 737A. Washington as Capital 737B. What Kind of Metropolitan Area Is Washington? 738II. How a Political Capital Narrows Federal Power 743A. Federal Officials in a Political Capital 744B. The Networks of Federal Officials in a Political Capital 747III. The Implications of Narrowing of Federal Power by the Political Capital 750A. Democratic Responsiveness 750B. Stability and the Political Capital 7541. Constraining Private Forces in the Political Capital 754a. Existing Threats 754b. Constraining New Threats 7552. Constraining the Government in the Political Capital 756Conclusion 757IntroductionIn the years before and during the creation of the American Republic, the location of the federal government was a crucial and controversial issue. In The Federalist Papers, there are many discussions of how the metropolitan area to house the federal government should operate, led by James Madison's discussion in Federalist 43} The Constitution itself addresses the issue in Article I.1 2 In the first Congress of the United States-between 1789 and 1791-one-third of the recorded votes in the first Congress of the United States were about where key parts of the federal government would be located.3The location of the federal government evoked such passionate concerns because the nature of the metropolitan area housing the federal government was thought to play a significant role in shaping how that federal government would operate. Constitutional design was important to the Founders, and urban (capital) design was seen as a form of constitutional design. A generation concerned about the "science of politics"4 was also convinced that the "science of the capital" would shape the nature of federal power in the new American Republic.Competing visions of the metropolitan area to house the federal capital emerged among early political leaders. On one side were those who wanted the federal government located in a metropolitan area like London or Paris-a metropolitan area that was an urban Noah's Ark, with two of every social force.5 On the other side were those who wanted a federal capital to be located in a less substantial and more focused metropolitan area.6 Was the federal capital to be a diversified capital, or a capital limited to those working in government-in other words, a "political" capital?7 The Compromise of 1790 meant that the latter perspective triumphed. Since metropolitan areas have important path-dependent dynamics,8 the best way to ensure that federal power was to be located away from other social forces was to create a new metropolitan area, one specializing in government. In the years to come, the American Republic might make the American capital city a new London or Paris, but for many years the hope was that it would become a single industry town.9The argument of this Essay is that the federal capital today is still a political capital, and that this has an important influence on how the federal power being exercised in that federal capital operates. A political capital narrows the federal power that derives from that political capital. The federal government is not as capable of producing as diverse a range of policy outputs as the American constitutional system otherwise contemplates because of the metropolitan area10 in which most of those policy outputs are produced. The federal officials entrusted to create and enforce federal law-from elected officials to other important federal officials-will be a narrower slice of the American population because of the incentives generated by the political capital to focus on a single industry. …