I did not set out to write a book about the U.S. Constitution. I set out to write about the obstacles that American political institutions have placed in the way of American businesses, workers, and other economic interests. But to write that book, I had to start by working out the institutional foundations of American government. I had to understand the design of the Constitution as thoroughly as I could. I knew the Constitution was a solution, but precisely what was it a solution to? What pressing policy problems were the founders trying to solve? How did they think the Constitution's provisions would address these problems? What policy results did they expect the government to achieve? Whose interests did they expect policy makers to serve?

I expected to find answers in the many books written about the Constitution, but I was disappointed. None of these books had tried to provide a systematic political explanation for all the Constitution's provisions. Instead, many authors seemed to be bogged down in a hopeless effort to determine the relative impact of abstract principles and personal interests on the Constitution's design. Few books seriously examine the politics of provisions that now seem relatively unimportant, although the delegates to the Constitutional Convention considered many of them important enough to fight about at length. I was especially surprised to find that, with a couple of exceptions, social scientists in the field of American political development had largely ignored questions about the Constitution's original design.