Federalist 10: James Madison

A simple fact of nature for humans is their desire to compete and win, the true can be said for minority and majority groups. James Madison foresaw this problem when writing Federalist 10. He discusses the problems with factions and their threat they posed to the new government, as well as the naturally ambitious nature of humans and how that can be used to control power. Lastly, Madison claims that pluralism and the ambition of people are the solution to factions. The Madisonian majority is the idea of small factions, groups of either minority or majority looking to bend public interests in their favor. These factions pose a threat to public good should they have adversarial interests to what the community wants. However, through a representative …show more content…
The detractors to granting such power to a federal government feared the creation of tyranny, but Madison rebutted with the system of checks and balances that sought to play on the naturally ambitious nature of people in power to maintain their power. In Federalist 51 Madison says, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition” (Federalist 51, P.1), meaning that the drive of people to keep power will act as check on those trying to over extend their power and establish itself as superior. This was Madison’s solution to the problem of a powerful government, each branch will work to make sure the other ones don 't gain more power than granted as well as branches having to work together to stop the other branch from overreaching. Not only would it work between branch’s but also within them, for example the bicameral nature of Congress serves as a check on each house. Issues can arise from this such as a deadlock in Congress. A system of checks and balances was essential in creating a functioning power structure within the government that limited the ability of one branch to become more powerful than the …show more content…
The idea of the Madisonian Majority is a lot of small interest groups who have shifting interests. These competing groups would serve as a check on themselves order to bring about compromise allowing for harmful groups to be sifted out. Another issue came from the placement of a vast amount of power in the federal government, but a system of checks and balances that would use the ambitious nature of people to act as a monitor on the other branches. This ensured a system that didn’t allow for one branch to become superior to the