of individuals (Binder, Online). He constructed the Constitution on a political theory that assumed the basic motive driving politicians was a quest for the power to control the decisions that imposed governmental authority on the nation's citizens. He believed that, as power seekers, politicians merely crystallize the factional divisions that underlie any society and fuel the political strife in which each faction seeks to dominate the other to maximize its own self-interest in an all-consuming passion that can overlook the general interest and civil liberties of the public (Dodd, 390).
Madison noted that perhaps the most fundamental tradeoff in designing democratic government lay between limiting participation to ensure stability and expanding participation to promote liberty (Gerber, Online). To Madison, the greatest threat to a democracy was the destabilizing potential of broad participation in government because he believed that decisions could too often rest on the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority rather than on the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party (Madison, Federalist 10). Consequently, to mitigate the destabilizing potential of mass participation and to protect minority interests, Madison advocated a system of checks and balances under a representative form of government (Gerber, Online).
Factionalism and Representative Government
Where other systems built structures around a view of the common values of a people, Madison designed a system to deal with the things that divided us (Turley, Online). Faced with the most pluralistic nation on Earth, Madison concluded that "the causes of faction cannot be removed and [] relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its adverse effects" (Turley, Online). He recognized that factions and divisions within a nation can, if left unresolved, fester into open conflict or "convulse the society" (Turley, Online).
Madison sa...