Digital Commons @ Assumption University Political Science Department Faculty Works Political Science Department 2013 James Madison and the Legitimacy of Majority Factions Greg Weiner Assumption College,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/political-science-faculty Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Weiner, G. (2013). James Madison and the Legitimacy of Majority Factions. American Political Thought 2(2): 198-216. https://doi.org/10.1086/673131 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. James Madison and the Legitimacy of Majority Factions GREG WEINER ABSTRACT Scholarship on the political thought of James Madison has long been divided between adherents of the "liberal" and "republican" views, with a fusion between them recently emerging as the dominant understanding. Yet one element of Madison's thought cannot be neatly elided: the question of which value prevails when balancing mech- anisms fail and a choice between majority rule and minority rights is unavoidable. This essay argues that Madison sided emphatically with majority rule, even when the ma- jority in question was factious. His criticism of majorities is never tantamount to ques- tioning their entitlement to rule: on the contrary, the analysis of Federalist10, his clearest indictment of majority factions, is completely compatible with their democratic legiti- macy. This vindication of majority factions when, however rarely, they formed is most evident in Madison's defense of the legitimacy of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, despite what he believed to be its factious nature.