AEI Press

Edward C. Banfield argues the conventional wisdom is incorrect. In The Unheavenly City Revisited, he presents rigorous analyses showing that “by any conceivable measure of material welfare the present generation of urban Americans is, on the whole, better off than any other large group of people has ever been anywhere.” He furthermore argues that there is little evidence that the billions of dollars of government spending is improving matters. Indeed, well-intended government actions have proved harmful in some instances.

The Unheavenly City Revisited cautions policymakers that their biases may affect their perceptions of America’s metropolitan areas. Improving the lives of people in cities through government action is an exceedingly complex enterprise. Government officials and citizens alike must be realists about what government action can achieve.

The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance. In the fourth volume of this series, legal scholars and political scientists examine the many ways in which the founding generation understood the “unalienable rights” immortalized by the Declaration of Independence.

Although the Declaration described the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as a “self-evident” truth, this characterization belied the Revolutionary era’s complex discourse on the origins of political rights and their role in sustaining a political community.

Delving into these debates reveals how the American Revolution encoded a productive tension between individual rights and communal responsibilities at the nation’s founding.

Material hardship among American children has never been lower. This seeming victory in the War on Poverty, however, has failed to loosen the connection between family origins and where kids end up. Children born to the most disadvantaged parents today are no less likely than in the past to become the most disadvantaged adults when they grow up. Indeed, because of the perverse disincentives in our safety net, policy may have simultaneously reduced hardship while impeding upward mobility. More generally, the progressive assumption that what poor children need to advance primarily involves more money is a dubious one.

But if progressive proposals to expand the opportunities of poor kids have disappointed, the challenges those children and adolescents face have never sufficiently preoccupied the right. Conservatives are appropriately skeptical of government’s ability to influence behaviors and values or to manage initiatives effectively. Their concerns about the federal government’s proper role in social policy are well-grounded. But the moral imperative to do right by kids—to affirm the American Dream—remains.

This volume provides a set of ideas to do just that. The proposals are grounded in the insight that greater opportunity requires shoring up the relationships of children and adolescents and the strength of the institutions to which they are connected—in short, rebuilding social capital. And they embrace a spirit of innovation. Expanding opportunity requires experimentation with new approaches, many of which will fail, to identify scalable effective policies. But identify them we must.

Government Project tells the story of an attempt by the US government to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperative farm in Pinal County, Arizona, in 1937. These individuals were among the most desperately poor and disadvantaged in the nation.

Casa Grande Valley Farms was an elaborate venture that provided the Americans who volunteered to settle there with housing, work, and the opportunity to earn income. For five years, the farm succeeded. The revenues from the sale of its crops gave the Casa Grande settlers material comfort and wealth far beyond what they had ever possessed.

But in the farm’s seventh year of operation, the inhabitants shuttered it and walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay of the government officials overseeing it.

Government Project explains what went wrong at Casa Grande. In telling this story, it illuminates larger truths about human nature and the limits of governance.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the third volume of this series, scholars of American history and law consider the place of religion in the American Revolution. Many who participated in the American fight for independence viewed the cause as a fundamentally spiritual struggle, one with enormous implications for religion’s future in American civil society.

Exploring the multifaceted ways in which the founding generation understood religious freedom and worked to balance protections for diverse religious communities with the rights of individual conscience illuminates the commitment to liberty at the heart of the American project.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the inaugural volume of an eight-book series, renowned historians and political scientists explore what the contested idea of democracy meant to those who participated in the American Revolution. For some, democracy represented a particular way to order government, while others understood democracy to be a transformative principle that would serve as the philosophical bedrock of not just the new republic’s political institutions but its social and cultural ones as well.

Examining the democratic culture that was born out of the American Revolution can help us understand the framework within which we continue to debate the structure and purpose of the system of government that binds us together today.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. In honor of this significant anniversary, the American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the second volume of this series, leading historians, political scientists, and economists analyze the role that the market economy played in the creation of the United States. Alongside the American Declaration of Independence, 1776 marked the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This work shaped the political and economic thought of many leaders in the American Revolution, including those who would go on to join rival political parties, such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. At the same time, the founders evinced concerns over what economic inequality might mean for political freedom in the fledgling republic.

Understanding how the founding generation viewed the promises and perils of capitalism in securing the future of the United States can shed light on modern debates over capitalism’s role in American society.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the sixth volume of this series, scholars of American history and international relations survey how the United States defined its place among the community of nations following independence. As they noted in the Declaration, the revolutionaries understood that the success of their movement depended on “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” and assistance from allies abroad. At the same time, disputes over foreign entanglements and neutrality fiercely divided Americans in the early republic.

Looking at the founding-era debates over America’s “empire of liberty” can inform the foreign policy questions we face today.

Alexander Hamilton was a rare combination - active, influential politician and powerful, original thinker. He played a critical role in the formation of the American republic as delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1789, as co-author, with James Madison and John Jay, of The Federalist papers, and as the first secretary of the Treasury. His economic writings contributed to the transformation of America from a handful of small, isolated agrarian states into the powerful industrial nation of today. His writings on the Presidency helped shape an office at once powerful enough to deal with the major problems of domestic and foreign policy, and yet not so powerful as to threaten political liberty. Here, in one volume, are the most important of his political and economic writings and speeches.

This volume of Hamilton's writings and speeches is a project of A Decade of Study of the Constitution, AEI's program of constitutional studies designed to help prepare the nation for a thoughtful observance of the bicentennial of the Constitution. We hope this volume contributes to such an observance by assisting scholars and the general public to recover and appreciate anew the principles of Hamilton's political thought - principles that undergird free and prosperous republics.

In universities and other truth-seeking institutions, free inquiry is under threat.

The practice of free inquiry rests on tolerating dissent and promoting data and logical argument over feelings, status, party rule, or group affiliation. Many of the most noted successes of the West are the fruits of free inquiry, but this legacy is now at risk. Furthermore, our education system is failing to teach the values of free inquiry and free speech, which are vital to preparing citizens to work alongside those with differing opinions.

In The Free Inquiry Papers, an impressive array of academics come together to address this urgent problem. Across 21 chapters, the authors lay out the arguments for free inquiry, document the current threats, and offer solutions to protect and advance free inquiry. The authors represent a range of academic and political backgrounds, but they agree on three fundamental perspectives. First, the current higher education regime now prioritizes activism and status over the search for truth, especially in the social sciences and humanities. This is neither politically nor scientifically sustainable. Second, improvements are possible and would enhance the institutions’ validity and credibility. Third, no one has all the answers.

The erosion of support for free inquiry matters for everyone, but it is especially dangerous for the institutions whose mission is the production of ideas and knowledge. If we lose our ability to debate and discuss ideas openly and honestly, then both science and democracy will yield to a new dark age.

Now in its fourth edition, After the People Vote remains an indispensable concise guide to help students and all citizens understand this critical and controversial American political institution. 

The mechanisms that lead to the final selection of a president are complex. Some procedures are sketched out in the original Constitution and its amendments, and others in federal law, congressional rules and procedures, state laws, and political party rules. This new, expanded edition of After the People Vote—featuring new sections on public opinion on the Electoral College and proposals for amending the Electoral College system—explains how our system of electing a president works, especially the processes that kick in after the November general election date.

In recent years, the Constitution has become a source of political controversy between conservatives and progressives. While the right defends our founding document, the left argues that it’s an antiquated plan of government that goes against basic principles of democratic sovereignty.

What’s missing from this debate is an appreciation for the Constitution’s purpose. What kind of government were the founders trying to achieve?

In his new book, Democracy or Republic? The People and the Constitution, Jay Cost provides insight into that question. He argues that the founders’ vision was for a republic, not a democracy.

In both types of government, the citizens have the power to rule, but republics go further than this. A republic, as Abraham Lincoln put it, is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But in a simple democracy, the majority can rule for the good of themselves, rather than the whole community. How do you place the people in charge without creating a democratic tyranny? By the time of the American Revolution, nobody in the history of the world had yet answered this question.

But America’s Founding Fathers did just that, and the Constitution reflects their ingenious solution—the idea of consensus. They created a government that would take action not because a narrow and fleeting majority demands it, but because a large, broad, and considered coalition of the people has found common cause with one another. This reflects the true opinion of the people, not just a faction that is temporarily in power. That is how government of the people becomes government for the people.

America, then, is not merely a democracy. It is something greater. It is a republic, built on the ideal of consensus. And while our country today has many problems, consensus remains the best way to solve them. Far from being a liability for the United States, the Constitution is still its greatest asset.

In The Administrative State Before the Supreme Court: Perspectives on the Nondelegation Doctrine, leading scholars consider a revival of the Constitution’s nondelegation doctrine—the separation-of-powers principle that bars Congress from transferring its legislative powers to the administrative agencies. 

Although the nondelegation doctrine has lain dormant since 1935, some Supreme Court justices have recently called for its return. As the Supreme Court takes up the doctrine in current cases, this volume makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the separation of powers and the Constitution.