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I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the effect that a failed American Revolution would have on the development of republicanism and liberalism, typically arguing that these ideologies would ultimately be hurt or even delegitimized, but a discussion that I don’t think I’ve ever seen is what would happen to republicanism if the Articles of Confederation weren’t replaced, thus leading to the collapse of the United States.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say the United States falls apart sometime in the late 1780s, at the latest 1789, due to disagreements between the states that prevent the Constitutional Convention (so nothing like What Madness is This? where the United States violently collapses because, as fun as that is, it’s kind of a different what if). This is an interesting time because, unlike the American Revolution, the French Revolution is arguably set in stone by this point and is already taking inspiration from the United States to an extent. So if the United States collapses does this mean that the French revolutionary movement is, at the very least, hindered a bit? Or does the French Revolution stay on course, with older American models, as well as the most likely democratic models of the post-Union states, serving as inspiration instead?

A scary (and pretty interesting) possibility for this scenario is that republicanism could go down a much more authoritarian route ITTL. After all, it wouldn’t take a political scientist to realize that the United States collapsed because of a lack of a central government, so does this cause the French and other republican movements to conclude that their systems need to be, at the very least, substantially less federalized? Could this cause a sort of pseudo-Dictatorship of the Proletariat or something? Another thing people could potentially conclude ITTL is that the United States failed because of internal social differences, so this could cause nations to become more prone to monoculturalism ITTL, as well as a more unified national ideological mindset (Southern aristocratic conservatism vs New England mercantile liberalism), which could definitely make for a weird dystopia if carried to an extreme.

Overall, I’d think that this TL would be much more authoritarian and unitarian, with republics tending to prefer autocracy while aristocratic could be prone to more reactionary ideologies if republicanism is more oppressive. But what do you all think? Would republicanism become more authoritarian ITTL? Or do republican and liberal movements more or less continue down the same path as OTL?
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