Articles of Confederation vs. the Constitution The intent the framers had of the executive was reflected in the Articles of Confederation. There were several problems with the Articles of Confederation, that Han and Heith mentioned in chapter two of “Presidents and the American Presidency, due to a lack of insight and political effectiveness. Since, the document did not allocate a head of state it caused the articles of confederation to be extremely weak. The confederation could not enforce laws, coordinate national defense, or handle foreign affairs. The states remained sovereign and independent meaning, that it had the authority to govern itself. States were clearly more powerful than the central government which often created conflict. …show more content…
A republic is a form of government in which rulers are elected by the rule and based on the principle of representative government. The framers referred to writings of Greek and Roman philosophers, to understand historical governments. The Constitution depended advancement and adjustment of these regimes ,and also taught the framers about excessive power within a single institution. One major goal of the framers of the constitution was to reverse the weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation. Framers began to focus on a presidency with sufficient authority to enforce laws, create national security, direct foreign policy and promote international commerce. The president was able to promote these duties by enacting federalism. Federalism ideology is the sharing of political powers between the national and state government. It promoted state specific duties more effectively. Furthermore, they limited popular sovereignty, the idea that people hold power and the government is subjected to the will of the people, by creating the electoral college with the goal of limiting the peoples power and creating constitutional stability. Similar, to the Articles of Confederation the framers intended to create a limited executive authority. This type of authority is specific powers that the executive have. The framers thinking behind this concept is that this would prevent any tyranny, because it would allow …show more content…
I believe the framers make a strong argument that the constitution will create a stronger government compared to the Articles of Confederation. Throughout the federalist papers the framers give various reason on why this constitution would be beneficial to the nation. First, Madison described the system of checks and balances and separation of powers, that would create a strong government, but not overly powerful Furthermore, during his paper he finds a problem of Congress becoming too strong. So he finds a solution to this issue by creating, bicameralism that will divide the power into separate houses. Madison goes into more detail about the checks and balance system describing how the president would be able to utilize this concept by vetoing legislation. However, there were several framers who were against the ratifying of the constitution. They argued that there were several problems. These Antifederalist papers contain complaints about the process of electing the president, the amount of representation each state received in the legislature, and the organization of the court system. One of the most notable is that the central government would be too strong. In the pacificus debate, there was controversy over the limits of the constitution after the Constitutional Convention failed to include in which legislative and executive authorities would share their divided