Andrew Abreu23 March 2014Essay n. 1Madison argues that the big problem in Democratic politics is factions. A faction is a group of people with common beliefs who potentially pursue against the common good/interest. Factions are inevitable because there will always be those who have and those who have not. Factions create uncertainty in democratic systems. To control the effects of factionalism, Madison says he believes a republican-style government would be more effective than a pure democracy. Federalist No. 10 is an essay written by James Madison and the tenth of the Federalist Papers, a series advocating ratification of the United States Constitution. Madison begins by stating that a “well-constructed union” will be able to break the violence of factions. He claims that this is the vice to which democratic government has fallen prey. Democracies are not stable, and the source of this instability is a selfish majority: "Everywhere we hear complaints from our most thoughtful and virtuous citizens, equally friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is neglected in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." faction causes cannot be removed. Madison proposes that there are two means of preventing factional harm. The first is to remove the causes of faction. There are two ways this can be done, the freedom to create factions can be taken away and making everyone the same can make factions irrelevant. The first by taking away the freedom to form fac...... middle of paper...... party. Madison claims that a republic, an indirect democracy, solves the problem of majoritarian factions by introducing a filter in the form of an elected legislative, executive, and judicial branch between public and public policy. The two ways Republics can cure factional ills. A republic, simply put, is an indirect democracy, and Madison points out two ways in which republics differ from pure democracies. First, they are representative in nature. The opinions and preferences of the population will be filtered through an institution composed of a group of individuals selected from the general population. Secondly, as a consequence of this representative scheme, the republic can include a larger territory, with a larger population and a greater number of interests. This makes it less likely that a permanent majority faction can form and tyrannize a minority.