To successfully govern, the United States, like all democracies, must effectively navigate among competing ideologies. When competition is manifested by vigorous debate leading to compromise, democracy works. If, however, ideology begets hyperpartisanship, then dysfunction, paralysis or even civil war can be the result. The inevitability and pitfalls of adversarial government were recognized by the nation’s founders, who attempted to build safeguards into the Constitution.
At the convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the main ideological rift was between those who favored a strong central government, such as Alexander Hamilton (ironically called Federalists), and those who favored states retaining much of the autonomy they enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation. Although this is often referred to as the big state/small state divide, anti-Federalists were often from large states themselves (such as New York’s Robert Yates).
Many of the delegates, most notably James Madison, tried to mitigate factionalism with a design that would require give and take while avoiding what has become known as the “tyranny of the majority.” In “Federalist 51,” Madison wrote that power in the new government “will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.” To avoid centralizing power, the Constitution mandated a population-based House of Representatives, a state-based Senate, an Electoral College that combined the two, and an independent executive and judiciary. Other potentially fatal issues, such as slavery and the regulation of commerce were all parts of a series of compromises that allowed the final document to be approved (sometimes grudgingly) by almost everyone, thereby appearing to justify Madison’s faith.
