Understanding the Behavior of Sovereign States

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As he did in Federalist No. 6, Hamilton in Federalist No. 7 concerned himself with a nearly psychological question of motivations and behaviors in politics. And referring to it as ‘nearly psychological’ is only to recall that Hamilton refers in this essay to the behavior of states, in contrast to the focus on the behavior of individuals in Federalist No. 6. When describing the results of likely self-regarding behavior of states, Hamilton wrote: “We should be ready to denominate injuries those things which were in reality the justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest.” (Federalist No. 7) When we look at the content of Federalist No. 7, we see a range of subjects: territorial claims of states, commercial policies of states, policies on debt in the states.

Uniting the States as a Justification of the Constitution

The subjects above may look wide-ranging, but may be better conceived as elements of a single focus: each of them is a potential source of dispute among the states. The states as independent sovereignties might endanger one another individually, and the USA as a whole. This is a function of behaviors that are not blameworthy. The self-regarding behavior of states would be difficult to change, even if one wanted to do so. One should expect states to pursue a conception of their interests. To put it in this way may be too simplistic, but one way to think about the argument in Federalist No. 7 is to understand Hamilton’s focus on the potential for quarrels among the states as an argument explaining what they should unite.

The Concept of Interest in the Federalist Papers

It is easy enough to presume that a person can have an interest and pursue it. And it is common to say the same about sovereign states – lots of work in international relations presumes that sovereign states will pursue their interests in international contexts. A kind of collective interest is also presumed by the authors of the Federalist Papers to exist with reference to the branches of government, so that one can refer, for instance, to the executive branch asserting its prerogatives as against the legislature. A puzzle that has interested modern political scientists concerns just this concept of a group or institutional interest. Does a sovereign state have an interest that motivates action, as distinct from the interests of particular office-holders, or particular parts of a state? How do we know what it is, apart from inferring that interest from the actions of a sovereign state?