What role did the Articles of Confederation play in the development of the American government?

The Articles of Confederation were really just a way station in the development of American government.  They allowed the country to stay together in the years right after the American Revolution, but then they were found to be inadequate and were discarded.  We could argue that they helped make sure that the US would not have a unitary system of government, but that is about the only aspect of the Articles that survived in the new Constitution.

The early United States definitely needed a constitution like the Articles of Confederation.  They needed something that would allow the states to exist in a very loose alliance.  The people of the various states were certainly not ready to put their trust in a central government.  They disliked the way that the British government had ruled them from afar and they did not want to repeat that experience.  If someone had tried to impose the document that we now know as the Constitution of the United States, they probably would have rebelled and split apart.  For this reason, the Articles of Confederation were vital to the development of American government.  Without the Articles, American government might not have survived long enough to develop.

However, by 1787, it was clear that the Articles did not create a good system of government.  The US needed a much stronger central government in order to thrive. Therefore, Americans needed to discard the Articles.  Not much of the system that the Articles created survived to become part of the Constitution, which is why we cannot say that the Articles really had much influence on later American government.  Really, all that survived was the idea that the states should have some degree of autonomy.  The United States did not end up with a unitary system.  This is really the only direct legacy of the Articles of Confederation.

Thus, we have to say that the Articles of Confederation did not contribute much to the development of American government in the sense that the ideas of the Articles did not get passed down to become part of the Constitution.  Instead, the Articles contributed mainly by allowing the US to survive long enough to create the Constitution that we now have.