(Re)Discovering America: James Bryce and The American Commonwealth

James Bryce's The American Commonwealth (1888) seeks to understand and explain the inner workings of America, which at that time was the only country in the world to boast a democracy characterized by universal manhood suffrage. Despite offering a broader, more detailed study of America as a whole than had yet been undertaken (including the first substantive description of the sub-state level of politics), The American Commonwealth is today largely viewed as a dated work of political science from America’s Gilded Age. In fact, this work represents Bryce’s attempt to bring harmony to the tensions between certain accounts of human nature that were present in America at the turn of the 20th century as well as providing important insight into the development of America at a most crucial point in her history.This dissertation presents Bryce’s keen observations and methodology as an early manifestation of incorporating methods of the empirical sciences into the social sciences. As was the case with many other political scientists at this time (including Woodrow Wilson, who is thoroughly discussed here as an apt comparison), Bryce worked to incorporate the staggering amounts of information that could now be gathered through empirical methods into his studies. However, Bryce did not do so at the expense of the broader classical political tradition. Bryce brings what superficially appear to be opposing traditions into a harmony, and his success in doing so offers his readers the strongest defense as to why The American Commonwealth is still deserving of academic attention.Works by Alexis de Tocqueville and James Ceaser provide context to the political and intellectual world into which Bryce takes his readers. These are used to frame the larger debate between the views presented by Bryce, Wilson, and Progressives generally concerning human nature, the aims of government in society, the role of individual sovereignty, and the circular methods through which public opinion both creates and is created by these aforementioned views. In addition to Bryce’s arguments presented in The American Commonwealth, particular attention will be given to a speech Bryce delivered in 1908 to the American Political Science Association in which he discussed the relationship between the hard sciences and the social sciences, and the implications for political science when they are intermingled.Political scienceAmerican historyClassical Political Thought, Empiricism, James Bryce, Public Opinion, The American Commonwealth, Woodrow WilsonPoliticsDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Politics. The Catholic University of Americ