James Madison's Views in The Federalist Papers

This essay will deal with the views of James Madison as expressed in The Federalist Papers on the problem of factions in politics. It will first examine the relationships among factions, liberty, and property. It will next discuss why factions present a problem for the establishment of a free and democratic form of government. It will go on to explain why, in Madison's view, factions are the fundamental problem of politics. Finally, it will consider the ways in which Madison proposed that the problem of factions could be resolved.

In The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Madison begins by commenting that one of the greatest advantages promised by a well-constructed federal Union is its tendency to break and control the violence of factions, which he considers to be one of the greatest dangers to a free society, because of what would now be called the problem of the "tyranny of the majority." After some general comments on people's concerns about this issue, he defines "faction" as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community" (p. 78). Clearly, what he means by faction is what is meant in many countries by political party. However, in the American experience, what he calls a faction is a political party in the wild state, or, perhaps

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the problem exists only in a direct democracy, as in a New England town meeting, where the people themselves are meeting to conduct their own government. In a representative democracy, for which he uses the term "republic" (p. 81) the indirectness of the government provides the emotional distancing that allows a solution to the problem. Madison's Proposal for Resolving the Problem of Factions Madison names two great differences between a direct and an indirect democracy. The first is in the delegation of governmental powers to the elected representatives. The second is the size of the territory that can have such a government. These two differences help relieve the effects of factionalism in the following ways. First, the electing of representatives means that the citizenry are attempting to choose persons with sufficient experience and personal merit that they might do a decent job of administering the government. Certainly, representing the interests of others allows for a cooler head than pursuing one's own interests does. And here Madison was right, as history has shown. The American experience has been that almost always a legislator, at either the state of the federal level, will regard himself or herself as duty-boun

Category: History - J