Politics and the constitution in british and american History: Interview with Professor Maurice Vile by Joaquín Varela Suanzes-Carpegna
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Date of Birth: 23 July 1927
Nationality: British
Qualifications:
B.Sc.(Econ.), London School of Economics, 1951.
Ph.D., University of London, 1954.
M.A., Oxford University, 1962.
D.C.L.(Hon.), University of Kent, 1993.
F.R.Hist.S.
Education:
1938-43 The Hackney Downs School, London.
1943-44 The Polytechnic, Regent Street, London.
1944-45 & The London School of Economics and Political Science,
1948-54 University of London.
Army Service:
1945-48 Royal Armoured Corps. Commissioned in the 4th./7th. Royal Dragoon Guards.
Academic Posts:
1954-62 Lecturer in Government and Politics, the University of Exeter.
1962-65 Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.
1963-64 Lecturer in Politics, Magdalen College, Oxford.
1965-68 Reader in Political Studies, the University of Kent.
1968-85 Professor of Political Science, the University of Kent.
1985 to date Professor Emeritus of Political Science, the University of Kent Page 560
1989-1994 Director of British Programmes and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Boston University.
1994-1999 Director of Research, Canterbury Christ Church University
Administrative Posts:
1969-75 Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Kent.
1975-81 Pro Vice-Chancellor, the University of Kent.
1981-84 Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the University of Kent.
Visiting Posts:
1960 Visiting Professor, the University of Massachusetts.
1961 Visiting Professor, Smith College, Massachusetts.
1974 Royer Lecturer, University of California at Berkeley.
Other Appointments:
Formerly Director of the Centre for Research in the Social Sciences, University of Kent
Formerly member of the Political Science Committee, Social Science Research Council
Formerly member of the Executive Committee and Chairman of the Workshops Committee, European Consortium for Political Research.
HEFCE Specialist Subject Assessor in American Studies,
The Structure of American Federalism, Oxford University Press, 1961, 206 pp.
Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, 359 pp.; Second edition with new chapter and bibliography, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1998; Chinese edition, published by SDX Joint Publishing Company, Beijing, 1997; Spanish edition, edited by Joaquín Varela Suanzes-Carpegna, published by Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007.
Politics in the U.S.A., Allen Lane, 1970, Pelican Books edition, 1973; published by Hutchinsons, 1976; 6th. edition, Routledge, 2007, 318 pp. French edition: Le régime des Etats-Unis, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1972. Iranien edition, Teheran, 2006. Page 561
Federalism in the United States, Canada and Australia, Research paper no. 2, The Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1973, 48 pp.
The Presidency: American Historical Documents, Vol. IV, Harraps, London, 1974, 210 pp.
General Editor, The Penguin Interdisciplinary Readings, 5 volumes, Penguin Books, London.
"Federalism and Labor Regulation in the United States and Australia," in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LXXI, No. 2 June 1956, pp. 223-241.
"Féderalisme et securité sociale," Féderation, Paris, No.134, 1956, pp. 145-154.
"Judicial Review and Politics in Australia," American Political Science Review, Vol. LI, No.2, June 1957, pp. 386-391.
"The Formation and Execution of Policy in the United States," Political Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 162-171.
"Community Studies and Decision-Taking, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2, April, 1972, pp.133-153 (with Theresa Brown and M.F.Whitemore).
"Federal Theory and the 'New Federalism'," Politics, Sydney, Nov. 1977, pp. 1-14.
"Presidential and Parliamentary Systems," in The Prospect for Presidential- Congressional Government, edited by A. Lepawsky, Institute of Governmental Studies, Berkeley, 1979, pp. 49-64.
"The Dynamics of American Federalism," in American Government and Politics, edited by B.K. Shrivastava and T.W. Casstevens, New Delhi, 1980, pp.19-36.
"The Declining Significance of American Presidential Elections," in Contemporary Review, June 1980, Vol. 236, No. 1373, pp. 281-6.
"Federation and Confederation: The Experience of the United States and the British Commonwealth," in Political Co-operation in Divided Societies, edited by D. Rea, Dublin, 1982, pp. 216-228.
"Carl Friedrich and Political Science," in Government and Opposition, Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 1985, pp. 178-184.
"Federalism", "The Separation of Powers", and "Checks and Balances", articles in The Encyclopaedia of Political Institutions, edited by V. Bogdanor, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987. Page 562
"Unbuckling Bagehot," in The Times Higher Educational Supplement, No. 814, June 10, 1988, p. 17.
"Parliament and Government: Unbuckling the Powers," in Social Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, January 1989, pp. 100-103.
"Separation of Powers", article in The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, edited by Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst, Macmillan, New York.
"Separation of Powers", article in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, edited by Jack P. Greene and J.R.Pole, Blackwells, Oxford, 1991.
"British Influences on the American Founding Fathers: Lessons for Europe," in Federalism and the British: Two Centuries of Thought and Action, edited by Stanley Henig, The Federal Trust, 2007, pp. 16-34.
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Professor Vile, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview for the number 10th of Historia Constitucional. I will begin asking you about the first steps in your academic career. What were the reasons that led you to become a researcher and a scholar? Did anybody especially support you? Who were your first masters?
MJCV: There were two people who influenced me deeply as a student. Harold Laski and Karl Popper. Laski was teaching at the London School of Economics in 1944-5 when I was studying there, and was still there when I returned to continue my undergraduate studies in 1948. Although Laski had become a convinced Marxist by 1938 his early works developed pluralist ideas and his A Grammar of Politics, first published in 1924, developed the notion of "authority as federal". Although I could never share Laski's later admiration for Marxism and the Soviet Union, what personal contact I had with him convinced me that the analysis of the Grammar of Politics was that of the "real Laski". Karl Popper, who also taught at the LSE influenced me deeply. His book The Open Society and its Enemies was, I think, one of the greatest works of political philosophy of the 20th century, and his The Logic of Scientific Discovery developed a conception of common sense empiricism which outlives all the later post- modernist and other fads.
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Your doctoral dissertation, read in 1954, was about federalism in the United States of America and in Australia. I would like to know why you chose that subject that together with the division of powers has been the central idea of your research. I would also like to know who was the director or directors of this first academic research.
MJCV: The understanding of the combination of pluralism and empiricism that I came to at the LSE led me to see democratic politics as a complex pattern of bargaining and compromise. The standard descriptions and definitions of Page 563 federalism at that time were too legalistic, so that I wanted to study realistically how political forces worked within, and manipulated the legal structures of federalism. I worked under the direction of Professor William Robson.
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Your first book was "The Structure of American Federalism", published in 1961. As you said in the preface, you wrote it at the same time you were working on your doctoral dissertation, however this is only about federalism in the United States. It will be the main idea of this book that conflicts which develop between the Supreme Court, on the one hand, and either the Federal Congress or the States, on the other, or conflicts which develop between Congress and the States, are usually solved without becoming embedded, due to the mechanisms of political integration that operates in the U.S. political system, which are based on the party system and pressure-groups. Without these political mechanisms it is impossible to understand this system, even though it also requires for its correct comprenhesion knowledge of the constitutional law. Could you expand on this critical matter, that is not only a characteristic of federalism in the U.S.A., but also, Professor Vile, the way you understand the study of politics and the Constitution, to which I will refer later?
MJCV: It is important to realise that "constitutionalism" involves more than simply having a constitution. Constitutions can be of great significance, or virtually none. As Madison put it, they can be mere "parchment barriers". The constitution of a country is a part, but only a part, of its political system. The distribution of political power, and the way in which it is exercised, interacts with constitutional provisions in many different ways, according to the country's history, its social and economic conditions, its political psychology, and other factors. Thus the Soviet Union had an elaborate constitution which was of little significance, because political power was centralised in the Communist Party, whereas in the United States the Constitution has considerable significance, although the exact meaning of the Constitution at any...
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