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An Example of Factions

© Frank Monaldo

Belief in democracy, or some form of consent of the governed, is now so pervasive that even despotic regimes employ the rhetoric of democracy. Even mainland China, a country that mows down its citizens with tanks, refers to itself as the ``People's Republic of China.'' The use of the vocabulary of democracy was not always the case.

A few centuries ago, the common wisdom was that democracies were dependent upon the mood of the mob and hence were inherently unstable. If democracies could exist at all, they could only exist in small nation states or cities with homogeneous populations.

One of the most interesting features of the creation of the United States Constitution is that it was the product of deliberate and thoughtful political decisions. The framers of the Constitution believed that the worst outcome for a political system is tyranny, whether tyranny of the majority or of the few. They took care to establish a balance of powers to mitigate these threats.

Even more ingeniously, they took the then current understanding of democratic rule and flipped it on its head. In the Federalist Papers, Madison argued not only that large democracies could be stable, but that extensive democracies with many factions function best. These factions act as checks and balances on one another, alleviating the "defect of better motives."

Madison eloquently explained:

"The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, . . . the more easily they will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens."

This perspective makes it interesting to watch the interplay of factions within contemporary society. At the end of this essay is a list of the top 10 contributors to parties and candidates in the 1995-1996 election cycle. The contributions include money from the listed contributor, their political action committees, and their employees and their immediate families. The Center for Responsive Politics compiled the list from Federal Election Commission data.

Note that the biggest single contributor is a tobacco company which gave a majority of funds to Republicans. Among the top 10, the only other contributor that donated most of their contributions to Republicans was the American Medical Association.

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