Does The Federalist have anything to offer in the postcommunist transition? Can this American reflection on constitutionalism make good, in a radically different context, "that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government"?1 The extraordinary events, and the arduous aftermath, of 1989 pose again Hamilton's great question, "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."2 What happens to us by accident and force is beyond our power to control, like the weather. Is it thus within human power to make self-government good government, or will the for ces and accidents of history bring the present endeavors to a disastrous conclusion? Must disorder and despotism come like bad weather?

It is not hard to find reasons for pessimism in The Federalist itself. The severity of the problem of faction is repeatedly made clear, indelibly so by Madison in Nos. 10 and 37:

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.3

The history of almost all the great councils and consultations held among mankind for reconciling their discordant opinions, assuaging their mutual jealousies and adjusting their respective interests, is a history of factions, contentions, and disappointments, and may be classed among the most dark and degrading pictures which display the infirmities and depravities of the human character.4

Jay emphasizes in Federalist 2 that--from the beginning and through no effort of their own--the Americans were free of precisely those divisions that have fueled violent conflicts in the former Soviet Bloc: "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government...."5 And the two non-European groups that did exist in early America, black African slaves and indigenous red Indians, continue to define social divisions recalcitrant to adequate solution. Slavery culminated in the American Civil War, a violent factional conflict, while the American Indians were killed off or marginalized on reservations by the advancing white majority. The American constitutional design--liberal democracy according to reflection and choic e--has been less than a complete success on its native soil.6 Is it not then mere American naivete to think that liberal constitutionalism can be transplanted in countries and societies with deep divisions and hostile neighbors? Must we not accept the sad fact that accident and force, not intelligence and technique, decide political regimes? On this account, the universality, or universal applicability of our principles and procedures is an illusion facilitated by our own partiality, by our failure to see the larger whole that limits our part and our powers of action. Lacking the requisite wisdom, we run the risk of willing the good and working the bad, and not for the first time. The difficulty with this position is the unwarranted conclusion to which it tends to lead: we do nothing.

The best reason for taking The Federalist seriously in the postcommunist context is the fact that most countries of the former Soviet Bloc have lacked a genuine political literature for 50 years or more. Thus, for example, the concept of checks and balances is unknown in many of the postcommunist countries.7 Yet, in the understanding of The Federalist, checks and balances are of crucial importance for moderate politics. The related ideas of deliberative democracy and a multicentric political system are unknown in the East--precisely where they are most needed.8 And it is unlikely that the new students of government and politics in the former Soviet Bloc will gain an adequate understanding of these things by the study of West European parliamentary democracies, in which checks and balances are either absent or only weak ly present. The parliamentary systems are, in general, designed for an energetic implementation of the governmental majority's program. Accordingly, the boundary dividing those in power from those who are not is often abrupt. In spite of democratic freedoms of speech and association, significant segments of society are not effectively represented. This may be acceptable in those countries of Western Europe that have benefited from a half century of peace, freedom, and overall prosperity. But in societies deeply divided by ethnic identity, social class, religion, and especially by relationship to the former Communist regime (thus by wealth and poverty), a more balanced, multicentric system--affording multiple points of access for individuals and groups--would be wiser. It would be wiser because it can ameliorate the strong tendency of postcommunist countries to become oligarchies, that is, regimes superficially democratic wherein, however, control of wealth and property remains e xclusively in the hands of the formerly privileged class: the nomenklatura and the secret police.9 This is a principal rationale for the study of American constitutionalism in the present context.

More generally, the lack of an effective (non-ideological) political discourse in the former Soviet Bloc has facilitated an apolitical or antipolitical intellectual tradition. Romantic communitarianism or "archaism," antiliberal (isolationist) nationalism, and degraded versions of Herder are typical representatives.10 These currents of thought are de facto diversions from the realism of the major tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle through Montesquieu, The Federalist, and Tocqueville. As a result, the judgment (of both intellectuals and ordinary people) is often unpracticed in linking cause and effect in political experience. And this in turn leads to a lack of clarity concerning the most important questions of the hour: What is democracy? Is the current, widespread, precarious situation caused by democratization or the failure to democratize?

It is important to emphasize that the following account of The Federalist is addressed to students and teachers in the postcommunist countries, and not primarily to American readers. The specific character of a people or political culture requires great care, even "extreme circumspection,"11 in the application of common principles. For present purposes, this truth becomes clearest in light of Madison's observation "that liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power . . . and that the former [abuses of liberty], rather than the latter, is apparently most to be apprehended by the United States."12 In contrast, it is historically rooted abuse of power that is the problem in the East. This constitutes a major difference between the American and the postcommunist contexts, a nd gives rise to focus and emphasis in the interpretation of The Federalist that differ from those most characteristic of the American problematic. In the following, it will thus be necessary to combine detailed textual analysis on points familiar to American scholars with illustrative examples taken from political experiences alien to Americans but all too familiar in postcommunist societies.