Unpacking Federalist 10

Dr. Alan Gibson delves into James Madison's groundbreaking argument in Federalist 10 that challenges traditional thinking about republics and factions. Madison innovatively argues that a large, diverse republic better protects against majority tyranny than a small, homogeneous one by using the multiplicity of interests as a stabilizing force.

• Madison boldly challenges the small republic thesis prevalent in classical republican theory
• Factions form around opinions, passions, and interests, with economic interests being the most durable source
• Two approaches exist for handling factions: removing causes (by destroying liberty or homogenizing society) or controlling effects
• Majority factions pose the greatest threat as they can use democratic processes to tyrannize minorities
• Large republics with diverse interests make it difficult for majority factions to form and act in concert
• Representative systems with large districts tend to elect more capable, impartial representatives
• The multiplicity of interests in an extended republic creates moderation and impartial resolution of disputes
• Madison's experience with religious freedom in Virginia informed his thinking about factional conflict
• For AP Government students, this material connects to Topic 1.3 on government powers and individual rights

We encourage you to read Federalist 10 directly while listening to this episode for deeper understanding. Each reading reveals new insights into this foundational text of American political thought.

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Chapters

• 1:35 Welcome to Federalist 10 Continued
• 3:07 Madison's Challenge to Small Republic Thesis
• 5:18 Defining Factions and Their Types
• 10:22 Two Methods for Curing Factionalism
• 15:34 Large Republic Solution and Impartial Arbitration
• 23:28 Key Points for AP Gov Students

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Welcome back everyone to Civics in a Year. We are continuing our conversation with Dr Alan Gibson on Federalist 10. If you have not listened to the previous episode, please go ahead and do so first.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Madison, in contrast, is going to be the person who boldly challenges the small republic thesis. Okay, challenges the small republic thesis, okay. First, he doesn't believe that it's possible to have really a very large government or territory at all governed and have a homogeneity of interest. Even the state governments have diversity, a lot of diversity within them, and the state governments Hamilton's going to say this in Federalist no 9, are actually much bigger and much more diverse than anything that was set forth in the ancient world with regard to Republican forms of government. So Madison doesn't make that as much as he makes the argument that diversity itself is a benefit as opposed to a big problem. Anyway, the thing that Madison says most, his greatest innovation, is to argue that if you grant liberty, you end up with diversity, and that diversity itself can provide stability and can provide a better kind of foundation for stability in the large republic than the superficial hope that you're going to actually achieve a homogeneity of interest in a small republic. He says that you're not going to do that. Anyway, madison really is challenging several aspects of the small republic thesis. Republics in the ancient world were democracies in which people met in person, in which the whole population of citizens which was not of course the whole population of inhabitants but the whole population of citizens, would meet in assemblies to decide questions. This is Athenian democracy at least, and Madison differentiates a republic from a democracy. But these ancient republics were democracies. It's direct democracy, what he calls pure democracy, the principle of representation, which was really not known in the ancient world or deployed in republics in the way that it's going to be in the United States and then all subsequent republics in world history. So anyway, he challenges that. He argues against, again, standard Republican theory that it's wrong or impossible to try to cure the mischiefs of faction by removing their causes. Remember, he's going to control their effects. And most importantly, he argues that a large republic with a multiplicity of religious and interests will be more stable and more just in its administration than a small republic. What that comes down to is the numerous interests in the extended republic are going to check and balance each other and provide that stability. So again, that's sort of the core point.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Now I can back up here and then go through the argument pretty much as it appears in the 10th Federalist Paper. There are a few variations here, but I'll talk about a number of different things and then just sort of provide the details of Madison's argument. So he starts out talking about how Republican governments face the problem of faction. He uses the phrase it's the diseases most incident to Republican government. What are those diseases? They're the diseases caused by the problem of faction, and Americans have experienced these problems in their state governments and they've also. These problems have appeared throughout the history of Republican governments, and we have this narrative.

Speaker 2: 5:11

He then defines a faction, and that is an interesting part of this. His definition of a faction is pretty much consistent with ancient understandings of factions. He says by a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, and of course he's going to focus on the majority. That is going to be the most threatening form of factionalism, because the majority can get its way using the forms of the Constitution. The majority faction can use the Constitution to create a tyrannical act. Okay, and so Republican governments operate off the principle majority rule, majority factions can rule under the forms of the Constitution, but they can rule in their own favor, favor, and they can violate people's rights. He's worried about what we call majority tyranny, democratic despotism, a phenomenon that Montesquieu I'm sorry that Tocqueville, and also John Stuart Mill are going to fast on to really firmly in their thing. So anyway, he says factions, a number of citizens, majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest. And so united and actuated just means brought together and made active, charged or brought together and activated would be another way of saying this by passions or interest, and these are adverse to the rights of other citizens and the permanent and aggregate interest of the community. So factions are opposed to the rights of people and the permanent and aggregate or the common interest. So that definition of factionalism is pretty much in line with how factions been understood for a long time.

Speaker 2: 7:26

Anyway, madison then gives a typology of faction. So we know that factions are going to take place as either majorities or minorities, and we have to worry about majorities more. But also, how are they going to form? What types of factions are we going to get? Later in the analysis he says that we're going to have factions concerning opinions, passions and interests. Okay, and opinions are those concerning government and religion. So he's talking there about ideology and faith and how religion can become politicized. We know that, of course, in America and people can disagree with each other and divide into these groups opposing each other based upon their political ideologies as well.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Passions, he says, are expressed as an attachment to different rulers. So this is an old-fashioned understanding of faction, as a faction is the followers, is constituted by the followers of a certain leader. So the Trump faction, the Obama faction, the Clinton faction you might think of those kinds of these are the group of people who follow a particular leader and they're going to be in conflict with people who follow a different leader. And then, finally, he calls interest or property the most constant and durable source of faction. This is a really important point and something that AP graders actually look for too when they talk about this kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 9:04

So he's saying that we're going to have most of our conflict, most of the time, over economic interest, more than we are even over passions or ideology, passions for different rules or ideologies. We're going to have economic conflict and he does recognize in their, incidentally interest group conflict, the differences, the kinds of conflicts that people have as a result of being a member of one interest group versus another interest group. And, incidentally, I should have said this earlier faction is most analogous to interest groups today. Sometimes students want to make factions analogous to political parties. They're more like what he's talking about is more like what we call interest groups. Talking about is more like what we call interest groups. Anyway, these kinds of conflict can be conflicts between interest groups, but they can also be class conflicts. They can be conflicts between people who have property and people who do not have property, or rich versus poor, or that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 10:10

So, anyway, you've got this problem of faction, then you've got a definition of faction, then you've got this typology of faction, and then he makes this famous division and he says there are two methods of curing the mischief of faction. You can either try to remove the causes or control the effects. And you can remove the causes by destroying liberty. Obviously you don't want to go that direction. That's unwise. He says it's a cure worse than the disease and he sets up almost this kind of.

Speaker 2: 10:44

He sets up this direct analogy and he says faction is to add to, is to liberty, as error is to fire. Okay, so, uh, if you have, if you grant liberty, you're going to end up with faction and faction and error is also necessary to have fires, and fire is good and it nourishes, but fire is is also bad in some ways. Anyway, he says it cannot be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life because it nourishes faction, than it is to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life because it imparts, to fire its destructive agency. So that's one way to remove the causes, and he doesn't want that. And the other way is to give to everyone, to give to all the citizens the same opinions, patterns, of interest.

Speaker 2: 11:44

He calls this impracticable and, like I said earlier, though, this is the strategy that most Republican theorists have had up until this time period about how to deal with the problem of faction. Many of them have said that you have to try to use things like religious belief or a common education or civic education, or also even rules about the distribution of property in a particular place, to prevent there from being all this factionalism. You try to give to everyone the same opinions, passions and interests. He calls that impractical. He doesn't believe there's been an experiment in it that has worked. That method, incidentally, is kind of caricatured in Plato's Republic, where he talks about the communism of the guardian class and how they're not going to have any property and also the establishment of certain kinds of beliefs that reach across and unify people. So Madison says he's experimented, thought about these two ways of removing the causes.

Speaker 2: 12:56

He says we're going to have to control the effects, we're going to grant liberty, we're going to end up with factions and factionalism and we're still going to have to try to control the effects of these factions. But the effects of all factions are not the same. The effects of majority factions are much more consequential, more destructive than the effects of minority factions. Minority factions, the political system could handle them, they can be outvoted in the normal processes of government. But majority factions can again use the forms of government to effect their violence.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Madison says what this means is that the ancient form of a republic, a pure democracy, has no remedy for majority factions. People meet in their assembly, they vote, they're right there with each other, they know each other's opinions, passions and interests and the majority coalesces and they abuse the rights of the minority. Madison then defines the problem as and he calls this his great desiderato, and he describes the problem as reconciling majority rule with the protection of power, individual rights and the promotion of the public good, but and here's the catch without violating the form of Republican government. So we need a Republican remedy for a Republican problem of majority factionalism. He then essentially lays out two solutions to this. He then essentially lays out two solutions to this. One of them and this is very the language in this is very convoluted. In this part it's the only part of the 10th federalist paper that's kind of really hard to read or obscure. Anyway he says that you're going to, in effect, elect representatives from large geographical districts. You don't have to have as many representatives in a large republic in proportion to citizens as you do in a small republic, and so what that is going to do is you're going to create much larger geographic districts. Madison then argues that that's going to increase the probability for the election of the best representatives. You're going to get these wise guardians of the public good if you elect them from large geographical districts. He says that unworthy candidates will be less able to practice what he calls the vicious arts by which such elections are conducted, and the vicious arts is a term of craft from Shakespeare. It has to do with witchcraft, and so this is the idea of using rhetoric, in effect, to stir people up. This is the he's worried. He's saying you're going to get fewer demagogues if you elect people from large geographic districts. There are other reasons why large geographic districts are better for elections. One thing that happens is you have fewer people in the legislative branch itself and that turns out you have to raise the number to a certain level to get a deliberative assembly. But if you go beyond that level, if you get too many people in there, actually the political system he says in Federals 52 and 58 operates with more of an oligarchic tendency. Fewer members actually participate in a really large legislative body than a moderately sized one, and that's when he thinks is best for deliberation. And this is related to the number of representatives and how big the districts are as well. But he places the most emphasis and this is where he's considered most innovative in saying that the extended republic will reach out across a variety of interests in the nation and religious sects in the nation and that that will prevent majority factions from coalescing on principles other than justice and the public good. And that comes from Federalist no 51 when he reintroduces this idea. Anyway, if you have an extended republic, you're going to have a greater number of individuals, a greater distance between the people and the people and their representatives and especially, you're going to have a greater variety of interest in religious sects in the nation. That's going to make it less probable that the majority knows it's a majority. You have to know that you're a majority to want to act upon that impulse. They're going to be less likely to know they're a majority and then they're going to have these obstacles or barriers to acting in concert with each other. Now I want to put a particular twist on this and you can make up your own to the students I'm speaking to. You can make up your own mind whether you put this in your advanced placement exam because it may not fit with their template or their grading scheme and know how these things are done. But anyway, here's what's really going on in both of those arguments for expanded electoral districts and for extent of territory and diversity of interest. Both of them promote the impartial arbitration of factional disputes. So what Madison wants and he talks about this early in Ted Farrell's paper is there to be impartiality in the resolution of factional disputes. So you need a third party kind of decision about when these two, when these different groups, go against each other. But you can't have a third party that's completely independent of the parties in a Republican form of government because they elect the people who are the representatives. They can't be totally independent. So what you do is you elect them in a large republic from large districts. They turn out to be the kind of people who are better able to make impartial judgments in factional disputes. And you have them, you create a greater independence as a result of extended territory for them to be able to make those kinds of decisions. Extended territory for them to be able to make those kinds of decisions. Madison also believes that, especially within the legislative body, that the diversity of interest will themselves moderate each other and that that will create, will move the resolution that comes out of legislative deliberations more in line with an impartial resolution of that dispute. So this solves the great desideratum. You have majority rule, but in an extended republic it is moderate and impartial majority rule and it prevents majority tyranny without precluding majority rule if that makes sense. And so that's kind of the core of what he's doing there, with that little addendum of. It's not exclusively my interpretation, but the interpretation I share of this document with several other people. Core points here to think about when you're studying for an advanced placement thing in this is that. Remember that Madison thinks that economic factions are the most constant and durable source of faction. They're the most constant and durable source of faction. You should definitely remember that the solution for the problem of the mischiefs of faction is found in controlling their effects, not trying to suppress them in any way to either abolish liberty or to give to everyone the same opinions, passion. You're not going to remove the causes. You have to deal with the effects, because we're a liberty, we're a country that grants liberty. First, and you know those are the most important core points. And then the thesis of the whole paper is basically that it's a multiplicity of interest that will have a kind of elixir for the problem of majority factionalism. Madison, incidentally, had dealt with the problem of majority factionalism in disputes regarding religious freedom in the state of Virginia during this time period and he had seen that the multiplicity of interest or, I'm sorry, the multiplicity of religious sects in Virginia had sort of gone. You know, had been in conflict with each other to some degree, but their interactions had moderated the conflict between them. So once the established church was overthrown and all of these different religious sects were going to be treated on the same ground, then you could have a neutral or impartial relationship of the state to these different religious groups and one majority would not be able to oppress the other religious sects in the state of Virginia. So that's my version of Federalist no 10.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Perfect, dr Gibsonson, that was amazing. And for our ap gov friends, brutus one and federalist 10 are required documents and if you are a teacher or a student studying for the test, a lot of what dr gibson hit was under topic 1.3, government powers and individual rights. So thank you for that deep dive on Federalist 10. And for students listening to as we were doing this. I actually had a copy of Federalist 10 up and was going through it with Dr Gibson and understanding. I mean, I've read Federalist 10 as a teacher hundreds of times, but every time I read it there's something different. So thank you so much for that.