What Exactly is the "Jeffersonian Tradition" in US foreign Policy?

The Jeffersonian tradition in US foreign policy has been associated through the work of Walter Russell Mead with the policy of principled isolationism. Jeffersonians, it is claimed, sought to avoid international involvement because of the threat it posed to the US constitution. This paper challenges that assumption by arguing that Jeffersonian republicanism was in fact expansionist and that its policy toward the European powers was based on a realist calculation of what was possible given US weakness. Following on from this the paper also challenges Mead's assumption that Jeffersonians can be distinguished from Wilsonians, arguing instead that Wilsonians are in fact Jeffersonians with power. Finally, the paper asks if it is worth keeping the distinction between Jeffersonians and Wilsonians in the typology of US foreign policy traditions. Recalling Daniel Deudney's argument that Madisonian republicanism is in fact the forerunner of Wilsonian liberal internationalism, and recalling Jefferson's concern that the Madisonian system of checks and balances would not be a substitute for a constitutional bill of rights, the paper suggests that the real inheritors of a Jeffersonian liberal internationalist tradition are in fact those activists who seek to hold the society of states to account before a non-negotiable international human rights regime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]