Scholars and especially commentators in need of a quotation frequently cite Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu to support the idea of a “mixed” constitution with democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical elements. Rarely, though, are Montesquieu’s works, especially The Spirit of Laws, explored at length. Montesquieu is more likely to be plumbed for quotes to diminish current politicians rather than to be read seeking wisdom. Some writers even call him a prophet. Once in a while, however, engaging Montesquieu in this way can produce something thoughtful, like this piece by Harvey Mansfield, but that is rare.

What has long been needed is a book-length analysis of Montesquieu, especially in light of “post-liberal” criticism of the American founding as a fatally and ideologically flawed Enlightenment project, rooted in a false, radically individualist anthropology. Like Marxian analysis of the American Founding, these political philosophical arguments have in common an overly theoretical approach as well as an extreme reductionism. Yet they are at their root implicitly historical, for they propose “liberalism” as an ideology, and the American Revolution as an attempt to instantiate in the body politic this ideology that they argue was doomed to fail.

With The Politics of Place: Montesquieu, Particularism, and the Pursuit of Liberty, Joshua Bandoch, Research Fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, gives us the Montesquieu book we need to navigate this debate about the degree to which American government institutions and constitutional principles are universal. Indeed, Bandoch wants to know whether it even is possible “to develop a universalistic account of the right political order.” On its own, this is not a groundbreaking book. Yet it significantly furthers our definition of just what “American exceptionalism” might or can or ought to be.

Montesquieu in the Federalist Debate

Enlightenment thinkers prior to the American Revolution, including John Locke, thought one could reason one’s way to the best system of government. Joining these Enlightenment thinkers is a long cast of characters, all of whom in one way or another sought not so much principles of right order and justice but rather universal systems. These thinkers include Jeremy Bentham, Georg W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and nearly all thinkers in the Jacobin vein who eschew liberty and virtue for a programmatic but elusive utopia.

Bandoch’s question is whether Montesquieu is rightly considered among this group who propose a singular, transcendent political order. His answer, given Montesquieu’s influence among Americans in the wake of the Revolutionary War, has important implications for the American Founding. For if the US Constitution is a model borrowed from Montesquieu, then it is the ideological blueprint the post-liberals argue that it is and nothing more. And if it is a blueprint that can be unmoored from the American experience, then Americans who promote their constitutional order as universal in all respects have greater cause to export it as a one-size-fits-all plan for humanity. But what if the US Constitution is a compromise document, shaped through prudence and moderation at a particular time and place?

Only the Bible was quoted more than Montesquieu at the Constitutional Convention. The use of Montesquieu, however, especially The Spirit of Laws, did not stop there. In the ensuing debates over whether to ratify what Madison called “the draft of a plan,” Americans drew different conclusions from Montesquieu. For example, Antifederalists warned that, given the “extent and vagueness” of Congress’s powers under the Constitution, the federal union was too large to sustain itself without centralized tyranny. The result, Antifederalists claimed, would crush local needs.

Bandoch is right that this is important evidence of a strong democratic localism and experience with liberty. Richard Beeman points out that the theoretical backing used to bolster this argument came from Montesquieu, whom Antifederalists often cited both in assembly (Pennsylvania) and in print (Samuel Bryan and Robert Yates). Indeed, according to Antifederalists like Yates, who directly quoted The Spirit of Laws, history and common sense showed that republics could only flourish within small geographic limits among a homogeneous people.

Federalists James Madison and Alexander Hamilton also quoted and heavily used Montesquieu. Federalist 47, written by Madison, is one long disquisition on Montesquieu and how Americans ought to interpret the ways he connected liberty to separation of powers. Madison goes so far as to say that the British constitution was to Montesquieu as Homer was to later poets—the source and inspiration of perfection. Forrest McDonald notes that Americans could “recite the central points of Montesquieu’s doctrine as if it had been a catechism.” Beeman also acknowledges that “nearly all of America’s political leaders were familiar with the writings of Baron de Montesquieu.”

McDonald and Beeman are correct about American admiration for Montesquieu. But as McDonald admits, Montesquieu’s reading of Bolingbroke’s “misleading” depiction of the British constitution had led him to stress three separate government branches even though “the English system was asymmetrical” until the 1600s. Americans, after all, had the experience of their own colonial tradition of liberty. Much like the Americans’ reading of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, Americans did not discover in Montesquieu a blueprint for a government that existed only in the minds of ideologues. What they found, rather, was confirmation, clarification, theoretical grounding, and broad principles for what had been growing organically in America for over 150 years during the period praised by Edmund Burke as a time of “salutary neglect.”

And so Madison tries to show in Federalist 47 that Montesquieu could not have meant entirely separate powers. Madison offers as evidence several state constitutions to show how in the United States liberty had already been preserved and perpetuated without the rigid Antifederalist interpretation of Montesquieu.

This shows the significance of particularism that Bandoch stresses in his reading of Montesquieu. One might, like some American founders, greatly admire the British constitution. Or, like Simon Bolívar, think that the United States Constitution was the best. But in both cases, the adaptation of principles to local circumstances through the use of prudence reigned. As Bolívar said, no matter how great it was in theory, the US Constitution was no more suited to Spanish South America than the Venezuelan constitution was to North America. Separation of Powers, yes. Universally transferable system, no.

The Marks of Good Government

So where does this leave the varieties of American exceptionalism? Bandoch addresses this question starting with Alexander Hamilton’s claim in Federalist 1 that Americans had created a government “by reflection and choice.” That Hamilton believed this does not make it true, yet “at its core,” according to Bandoch, “Hamilton’s statement was meant to be entirely truthful, and was embraced by many of the founders,” who actually believed they had used “reflection and choice.” But by “reflection and choice,” Bandoch says, they meant that they had devised “the best institutions to establish and maintain a secure, free, and prosperous political order. These institutions were superior to those found anywhere else in the world.”

Montesquieu, says Bandoch, would have condemned twentieth-century socialist nations on account of their destruction of private property and promotion of equality. “But he also would have . . . rejected them on account of their failure to establish security, liberty, and prosperity.” But liberal democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom have not failed in this way due to “effective moderating institutions” that protected private property and ensured the rule of law, thereby preventing leveling and deep centralization. These institutions include common law courts in the UK and the fact that “the American states were true governing entities with real powers . . . with the power to check each other and the federal government.”

Still, Bandoch argues that Montesquieu’s assessment of government is not so much related to its form (democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, or mixed) but rather to a state’s ability to promote and defend freedom and prosperity. Despite sometimes having the feel of an academic dissertation, Bandoch’s book has an underlying call to action by relating how the “politics of place” impacts freedom and prosperity: “Billions of people around the world suffer because they lack sufficient security, liberty, and prosperity in their lives. The question we should ask is how best we can guide them to establish security, liberty, and prosperity in their particular place.”

The only outright error worth noting in this otherwise insightful book is the misattribution of one of G. K. Chesterton’s most famous quotes about the United States to Charles Dunn: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.” Whether Chesterton is correct about this is arguable (I assess this question at length in The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty). But Bandoch’s point here is to evaluate the historiography of the American founding’s achievement, and then to provide “an alternative understanding of the founders’ accomplishments.”

The Particular and Permanent Things

Bandoch concludes that “Montesquieu’s politics of place provides grounds for critiquing the universal and unfortunate strands of American exceptionalism. It also provides a more fruitful framework” because it “interprets the American founding to be exceptional on particularist grounds.” The exceptionalism here is just how well the project worked for Americans in promoting freedom, prosperity, and security. But “the American model,” argues Bandoch, “is not universal,” even if the goods it achieves are.

Talk of constitutional models in terms of their universal applicability is one thing. But Bandoch goes beyond talking about the US Constitution to say that the natural rights language of the Declaration of Independence “may not be effective in or appropriate for diverse societies.” To make this statement is to read the Declaration’s preamble as merely a rehashing of John Locke. The Declaration also makes a constitutional argument because it draws on the English tradition of petitions and declarations, as well as the common law tradition.

So does this make it a particular or a universal argument for independence? James Stoner presents a compelling argument that it is both. For Thomas Jefferson, “common law and natural law actually do tell similar stories: Both look to a past where the power of hereditary authority is limited . . . and both insist of law and constitution that they meet the test of reason.” Stoner’s point is that Jefferson and other Americans saw the common law tradition and liberalism’s claims of universal natural rights as inseparable. They were defending these universal rights in their own particular way, as Jefferson and the Whig historians who inspired him believed the English had done for centuries.

Yet this does not seem to be what Bandoch has in mind when he argues that the real exceptionalism of Americans was their moderation and willingness to compromise when establishing their government. This is true if we consider only the peaceful replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the US Constitution. But in applying the same principle of moderation to the Declaration of Independence, Bandoch overlooks that the Declaration came just over a year into a bloody, eight-year revolution, and revolutions are not moderate events productive of compromise. Rather, American genius cast what is universal in their own particular terms, and did so effectively. Life, liberty, and property are not particularly American, and where law does not protect private and shared property rights, life and liberty—and prosperity—suffer.

The best way to approach the debate about American founding principles is to steer it away from overly theoretical and reductionist approaches and toward specific events and particular experiences and the application of virtues like prudence and moderation recommended by Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville. Such historical treatment of the American founding would further a rediscovery of those principles and virtues associated with the American experiment in ordered liberty that is universal even as they are particular. The Politics of Place is an important contribution to this project, for implied in particularism is the argument that events, universal goods, and the vagaries of history matter more than theory.