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Interests and Deliberation In the American Republic, or, Why James Madison Would Never Have Received the James Madison Award James Q. Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles Editor's Note. The Madison Award, given triennially since 1978, is awarded to a living American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science. It is designed to recognize a career of scholarly excellence rather than a particular piece of scholarship. James Q. Wilson, recipient of the 1990 Madison Award, gave the following address at the APSA's Annual Meeting. My deep gratitude for the honor you have given me is in no way diminished by the provocative subtitle I have given to this lecture. I intend no disrespect; I intend only to suggest that so important a moment in the life of a political scientist inevitably leads him to reflect, not only on his own inadequacies (a topic on which I trust you have even stronger views than I), but also on what we mean by "political science." The case against Madison receiving the Madison Award is easily stated and perhaps compelling: He did not have a Ph.D. degree; he published no articles in refereed journals; he wrote no great books. He is best known for a few dozen op-ed pieces written for a New York City newspaper and a long set of notes he took during a summer long conference in Philadelphia, notes that were not published during his lifetime. It would be as if this award were given to some combination of William Safire and a court stenographer. (Some may think that in 1990, it was.) And yet most of us think of Madison as this nation's first political scientist, and certainly one of its greatest. He importantly shaped the oldest written constitution in the world and, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, left behind its most memorable and penetrating explication. The Federalist Papers are today the most frequently read works of 18th or 19th century American political thought. Long studied by Americans, they are now studied as well by newly free Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians. Madison did not, at least in the Federalist, describe his undertaking as "political science." It was Hamilton who most frequently and enthusiastically referred to his understand ing of government as scientific. But it was Madison who gave us, especially in Numbers 10 and 51, the intellectual framework, the ruling paradigm, around which much of contemporary political science is organized. I should say "frameworks" or "paradigms," for obviously political science today is engaged in a great debate over how best to understand politics. To oversimplify, that debate is between those who take preferences as essentially given and self- serving and those who take them as changeable and to some degree other regarding. To the former, interests count; to the latter, deliberation matters. Both sides can find support in James Madison. In that sense he is, indeed, a founder and so, to that degree, we are one discipline; however spirited our debates, we have, should we wish to acknowledge him, a common ancestor. In Federalist Number 51 we find ample Madisonian support for a rational choice model of politics. The motive of politicians is private interest, in particular, political ambition. Men lack -- they suffer from a "defect of" -- better motives, and this is as true in public as in private matters. Accordingly, they are likely to use their governmental offices to serve the interests of themselves rather than of their constituents. Number 51 sets forth what some now call the principal-agent problem. The citizen is the principal: He wishes to advance his interests while preventing others from advancing theirs at his expense. The first aspect of this goal Madison called the problem of faction, the second the problem of liberty. The government official is the agent: He is nominally accountable to his principal, the citizen, but sees opportunities for using his privileged access to power and information in ways that serve his own interest at the expense of his principal's. No "parchment barriers" [Number 48] will prevent this; "auxiliary precautions" are necessary [Number 51]. Madison's solution to the principal-agent problem is well known. We must give "to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others." We want the legislative, executive, and judicial branches to be able and willing to resist the encroachments of others, not because we want any given branch to be free of constraints, but because we want them all more or less equally constrained so as to minimize each citizen’s vulnerability to actions taken either to enhance the power and wealth of government officials or to advance the interests of another citizen. Though Madison did not do so, one can easily extend the analysis of Number 51 to show how the legislative branch will seek to dominate the bureaucracy; how the bureaucracy will respond by serving the reelection needs of valued legislative allies; how one house of Congress will maneuver against the other; and how each house of Congress will create committees and procedures designed to prevent one faction, by its monopoly of information, from manipulating legislative outcomes in ways that enhance its reelection prospects at the expense of the reelection prospects of less informed members. The late Martin Diamond was, I think, among the first to suggest that reading Number 51 lends support to a geometrical view of politics -- governance is a parallelogram of forces in which the following maxim applies: "To the vector belongs the spoils." Federalist Number 10 strikes a different note. It begins in the same vein as Number 51: citizens are prone to form factions in order to advance their interests and passions. But almost imperceptibly the argument shifts away from the principal-agent problem of Number 51 to a far more difficult problem. That is the specter of a majority faction that always gets its way, whatever justice may require. Madison gives the example of a proposed law governing private debts. Creditors will be on one side, debtors on the other. "Justice ought to hold the balance between them." But instead, "the most numerous party" gets its way. Unlike in Number 51, in Number 10 numerical superiority means political superiority. The government is the supine instrument of the "superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." No principal-agent problem here. And more: What is this word, "justice," all about? Justice ought to decide? What can that mean? Who is to be the instrument of justice, and how can his interest in justice be reconciled with his interest in his interests? Moreover, the sources of faction turn out to be more complex than one might have suspected from Number 51. To be sure, "the various and unequal distribution of property" is ''the most common and durable source of faction," but factions also arise around "passions," "religion," and "opinions." And these opinions in turn reflect not merely circumstances and well-understood wants, but the "fallible" reason of man. But what is fallible is changeable, and if changeable then no longer the stable lodestar, the unmoved first mover, of political action. In Number 10, long before he gets to the checks and balances of Number 51, Madison proposed a partial solution to the problem of majority faction. His solution was a system of representation set in place in a large or "extended" republic. The effect of a system of representation is not simply to permit checks and balances to operate, but also "to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations." Of course factious, partial, or even sinister people might become representatives. (Madison was no Pollyanna.) But in a large republic this was less likely to occur than in a small one. If many citizens must vote for a single representative, then "it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts, by which elections are too often carried" and elections will be more likely to attract men with "the most attractive merit, and the most diffusive and established character." Having large districts would, of course, worsen the principal-agent problem from the point of view of the citizen, because each representative would now be the agent of many different and perhaps competing principals. The minimum size of a district -- thirty thousand people -- meant that only two cities, New York and Philadelphia, would have a representative all to themselves. All the other towns and villages, many separated by considerable distances, would share a representative. As a result, most voters would have to rely on reputation as a basis for choosing among candidates, with the effect that the elected representative would have more opportunity to pursue his own interests at the expense of those of his constituents. The contrast between Number 51 and Number 10 is striking. In the former the goal is to solve the principal-agent problem; in the latter no such problem exists. In the former men rationally pursue their own interests; in the latter they allow their opinions to be refined by the superior judgment of representatives. In the former the separation of powers is proposed as a way of checking the self-serving behavior of representatives; in the latter the prospect of a large republic is embraced as a way of giving effect to the other regarding tendencies of those representatives.

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