Retained sovereignty did not mean that the states were thirteen wholly independent countries free of national obligations. The Articles called the union perpetual, assigned Congress exclusive authority over specified matters such as peace and war, and required states to abide by congressional determinations on questions submitted to the United States. States also accepted restrictions on their own diplomacy, alliances, warfare, and other conduct. The design therefore combined real national authority with a presumption that governing power remained in the states unless expressly transferred. Its weakness arose not because the document said national decisions never mattered, but because implementation often remained in institutions that national officials did not control.

The arrangement created a collective-action problem. Every state benefited from independence, national defense, diplomatic credibility, stable public credit, and access to neighboring markets. Each state also had incentives to preserve its own tax revenue, protect local merchants, favor its debtors or creditors, and let other states contribute more to shared expenses. A state acting rationally for its own immediate constituents could help produce a result that harmed the union as a whole. Voluntary cooperation could work during a common emergency, but it was harder to sustain when costs were visible locally and benefits were spread across all thirteen states.

The later Constitution did not simply abolish the states. It created a federal system in which national law within its constitutional sphere could operate more directly on individuals and would be supreme over conflicting state law, while states retained substantial governing authority. That distinction helps prevent two errors. The Confederation was not a unitary national government with subordinate provinces, and the Constitution was not a complete transfer of all state power to the center. Chapter 2 asks why the older balance supplied too little dependable national capacity; later chapters ask how the new balance divided, checked, and contested authority.

Video lesson: The ARTICLES of CONFEDERATION, Explained [AP Government Foundational Documents]