Federalist Papers 10 Discussion Friday October 4 2024 11 50 AM What was Madison s view of human nature Is the discussion about factions relevant in the current political climate What if Madison was wrong about human nature How did his view of human nature shape the kind of government he helped create COCHRAN P 71 While the framers feared the tyrannical rule of despots they had also experienced the threats to property and national unity that could occur when a government lacked the ability to act because it had insufficient power James Madison famously indicated in The Federalist 10 the anxie ty in Philadelphia over the tendency of people to divide into factions with each faction seeking its own interest without regard for the public interest In fact government needed to break and control the violence of factions if the Republic was to be successful Madison hoped that when many factions or interest groups were co mpeting for influence no one interest group would dominate They would be impaled on the machinery of government allowing elected officials to prudently promote t he general welfare Of course groups may join forces with each other to expand their power and influence with Congress through providing a combination of c ampaign contributions and electoral support with political parties Groups could become powerful enough to dominate political parties COCHRAN P 369 Madison s suspicions expressed in The Federalist 10 think that the policy is likely to be more in the individual s self interest 2 We expect however that advocates of a particular foreign policy should be able to demonstrate with con vincing clarity how the policy they embrace is more likely to advance the nation s foreign policy goals than competing policy proposals President John F Kennedy once said Domestic policy can only defeat us foreign poli cy can kill us 3 His point was that major threats to the security of the nation require intelligent strate gies to protect our nation s international political economic and security interests because the consequences of failure could be catastrophic BIRKLAND P 94 As James Madison a leading founder constitutional scholar and the fourth president of the United States explained in Fede ralist No 10 a primary benefit of federalism is that it contains policy fads or fast moving popular movements within one or a few states thus preventing the growth or expansion of conflict to the national level But there is a more affirmative and positive rationale for federalism Federalism fosters state innovation an d induces states to improve their capacity to address problems that the federal government does not address Walker 1969 1971 Osborne 1990 This has induced many studen ts of policy to call states the laboratories of democracy because innovations can be developed state by state and then adopted and adapted by other states 1 The devolution of federal programs to the states is often justified in terms of the notion that the states are more innovative and responsive than the too large federal government As Tallon and Brown note in writing about welfare reform If nothing is very new about the stakes of devolution why not craft a block grant tu rn states loose and record what transpires in the federal system s famous laboratories of democracy Tallon and Brown 1998 The answer to these questions of devoluti on versus control hinges on the assumption that states will make faithful efforts to build capacity to do the things the federal government seeks to accompli sh with the block grant which is a grant of money to states that carries with it far fewer restrictions than many funded programs This is why the debates over these pro grams can be fierce some believe that the states cannot or will not implement a program the way the federal government wants it others argue that too much federal control fails to account for local differences and that these one size fits all solutions are ultimately less efficient and more prone to fail devolution The process by which federally designed and administered programs are turned over in whole or in part to the sta tes to manage as they see fit based on their needs and conditions This is often justified by the sense that the states are more innovative and responsive than the too large federal government block grant Government funding provided to state and local governments as a block with very broad rules on how the funds a re to be used this allows the states great flexibility in using the funds but with a loss of some control and accountability BIRKLAND P 168 Since the 1960s the number of interest groups has rapidly expanded McFarland 1987 Today while many groups are local and deal with local issues many interest groups and popular movements cannot be confined to small states or communities in the manner contemplated by Madison in Feder alist 10 Clearly our evolution from a group of states to a nation aided by transportation and communication capabilities unimagined by the founders has ma de it possible for groups to mobilize quickly on a regional or national scale After all news that took weeks to travel from New York to Pittsburgh can now move n early instantly from New York to Pittsburgh or to Los Angeles Moscow Tokyo Beijing or Baghdad With this capacity to communicate containing political conflict withi n one place is very difficult Political ideas and information transcend local and national borders at a speed and volume unprecedented in world history BIRKLAND P 232 Second groups that lose in the first stage of a political conflict can appeal to a higher or different decision making level such as when losing parties appeal to state and then federal institutions for an opportunity to be heard hoping that in the process they will attract others to their cause Conversely dominant groups work to contain conflict to ensure that it does not spread out of control The underlying theory of these tendencies dates to Madison s defense in Federalist 10 of the federal system as a mechanism to contain political conflict Schattschneider s theories of issue expansion explain how in groups retain control over problem definition and the way such problems are suppressed by dominant actors in policy making These actors form what Baumgartner and Jones 2009 call policy monopolies which attempt to keep pr oblems and underlying policy issues low on the agenda Policy communities use agreed upon symbols to construct their visions of problems causation and solutions As