Book Review

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 196 words from this article are provided below; about 342 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Covenant & Constitutionalism: The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracy. By Daniel J. Elazar. (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998. xii, 287 pp. $44.95, isbn 1-56000-235-2.)

This book is volume 3 in the series the Covenant Tradition in Politics. Volume 1 dealt with biblical foundations and volume 2 with Christian separation and the Protestant Reformation. The author, Daniel J. Elazar, has been a distinctive presence in American political thought about federalism and things constitutional. He is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in Israel and director of the Center for the Study of Federalism in Philadelphia. 1

The Center for the Study of Federalism is an influential source for ideas and scholarship about the vitality in a system of many governing levels. Like the book under review, the center and its activities mix faith and reason to a degree that is a little unusual in the academy. For years, the idea that federalism had a future gained few converts in the American polity. That changed with the Reagan administration and the Supreme Court's shift toward forceful, if occasional, protection of the states from the seemingly inevitable incursions of the federal government. . . .

There are about 342 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.