| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Recreating the American Republic: Rules of Apportionment, Constitutional Change, and American Political Development, 1700–1870. By Charles A. Kromkowski. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xxxiv, 451 pp. $70.00, ISBN 0-521-80848-0.)

This ambitious theory-informed study investigates major constitutional changes in the representation allocated to the states in Congress during the three periods of the Revolution and confederation (1774–1781), the Constitution (1781–1788), and the Civil War (1860–1870). According to Charles A. Kromkowski, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, apportionment rule changes take place when political expectations about decision-making capacities and governmental authority "are either unfulfilled by the existing constitutional framework or when there is a divergence of expectations within the set of politically relevant actors" (pp. 22, 425). The author applies this proposition to each period through an analytical famework that combines both "macrolevel" background summaries and "microlevel" actor-centered narratives. Throughout, Kromkowski finds existing historical scholarship deficient and holds that his own "game theoretic" cost/benefit analysis yields a "new" and "more credible account" for each episode (pp. 18–19, 108, 143, 146, 193, 202, 315, 385).

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