is no less demanding or inclusive than the articulation of the people’s will. There is a need for communication, information, criticism, debate, airing of multiple perspectives, reflection, and revision. Difference becomes a resource rather than a complication. A free media and vigorous civil society, supported by a strong educational system, help complete the constitutional order. They train their gaze not only on the political sphere but also on areas of social life where political institutions do not and sometimes should not intrude. What is needed above all is a critical posture toward oneself and others, a moral alertness. Hence the need to institutionalize challenges from those who are differently situated, including minorities, and to stand ready to offer an account of oneself. Madison writes, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob” (Fed. 55, p. 336). Socrates says the same in Plato’s Apology, when explaining why he could not continue to participate in politics without sacrificing his integrity. Like Socrates, Madison fears that in large assemblies group sentiment will replace individual judgment and conscience will fall asleep.38 Responsibility is dissipated in crowds. Though respect for character may be a strong motive in individuals, “In a multitude its efficacy is diminished in proportion to the number which is to share the praise or the blame.”39
Madison rejects direct democracy because he views it as impractical on anything other than a local scale, where parochialism and group think pose grave dangers to justice, and because he cannot imagine how to supply the necessary checks against majority tyranny. He also thinks that many adults lack qualifications to decide complex policy questions; they are better able to choose suitable lawmakers than to make laws themselves. Though he recognizes the problems of direct democracy, he appears less alert to those of representative democracy. He should have known better than to assume that in a system based on geographic representation, voters would choose lawmakers “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations” (Fed. 10, p. 126). Experience has proven what common sense would predict. When representatives are beholden to geographic constituents, who are not institutionally constrained to justify their preferences to other citizens, parochialism asserts itself with a vengeance and lawmakers are under pressure to flout justice. Direct democracy at least has the advantage that all citizens are present to challenge one another’s demands. One attempt to address this dilemma is the consensus model of democracy, which by stipulating that government policy should secure the widest possible agreement seeks to raise the standard of public justification.40 Some of the devices characteristic of this model (bicameralism, judicial review) are familiar to American citizens, others less so (proportional representation, multiparty systems, coalition cabinets, multiparty appointment of judges). Political scientists debate the merits of the consensus model of democracy, but it deserves our attention as one attempt to remedy the deliberative defects of geographic representation.
Madison’s Cosmopolitan Republicanism
Other commentators have noted the cosmopolitan logic implicit in Madison’s thought.41 By “cosmopolitanism,” I mean support for international institutions that constrain national policy in the interest of justice and the common good. Of course, Madison does not expound the idea; he does not follow his thought to its logical conclusion. This is unsurprising, for international institutions did not exist at the time, and it took the genius of Kant to theorize their possibility.42 (Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” appeared seven years after The Federalist.) Yet Madison’s thought points unmistakably in a cosmopolitan direction.
Madison’s cosmopolitanism springs from three sources: his support for cooperative solutions to otherwise insoluble problems, his commitment to avoiding injustice toward minorities (tyranny of the majority), and his commitment to avoiding injustice toward outsiders.
Madison (writing in 1788) believes that closer political integration of the American states is necessary, because it offers security against foreign danger and against “contentions and wars” among the states, and because it guards states against “violent and oppressive” internal factions and against military establishments poisonous to the foundation of liberty (Fed. 45, pp. 292–93). To object in the name of the sovereignty of the individual states is to make a fetish of particular institutions, no wiser than the old attitude that “the people were made for kings, not kings for the people” (p. 293). “Peace, liberty, and safety” should not be sacrificed so that the governments of the individual states “might enjoy a certain extent of power and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty.” Instead, “the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued,” and “no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object” (p. 293).
Madison’s views are worth keeping in mind today when the world’s safety, freedom, and welfare are imperiled by global climate change, weapons of mass destruction, and financial interdependence. Our response must take the form of close international cooperation, with institutional mechanisms to ensure that countries honor their commitments. We now have many generations’ worth of experience with international institutions and understand that their benefits could not have been secured by other means. If thicker international institutions are the rational solution to looming disaster, emotional attachment to strong state sovereignty must not bar the way.
Madison has no patience for institutional inertia. The spirit of innovation, informed by reason and experience, is famously celebrated in Federalist 14. “Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish.” The glory of the people of America is “that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times, and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience” (Fed. 14, p. 144). In Federalist 49 Madison warns against frequent invitations to constitutional transformation, as destabilizing, dangerous, and unnecessary. This does not contradict the clear implication of Federalist 14 that revisions should be undertaken when circumstances require.
It may be objected that Madison’s argument depends on a sense of national belonging, which gives us reason to support national integration but to resist the cosmopolitan project. It is true that in Federalist 14 (from which I have just quoted) and Federalist 45 appeals are made to a shared American identity. Madison writes that “the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies” (Fed. 14, p. 144; see also Fed. 45, p. 293). But we do not have to choose: cosmopolitanism, as I use the term, does not imply the disappearance of the nation-state. It envisages international institutions that constrain national policy for the sake of justice and the common good. In fact, as I argue in my next chapter, some cosmopolitan goals may prove unattainable without the preservation of the nation-state.
We should also recall the purpose of Madison’s remarks. Responding to those who think a federal union is impractical, he argues that a sense of national identity (recently reinforced by the shared sacrifice of the War of Independence) is sufficient to guarantee the enterprise. He does not claim it is necessary. It is worth noting that appeals to national belonging take up very little space in his Federalist essays. His case for the federal union rests on justice and the need to solve shared problems. Nowhere does he say these reasons are insufficient to motivate action, and the view should not be imputed to him. Unlike Hamilton, moreover, he is not guided by a desire for national self-assertion.
The second source of Madison’s cosmopolitanism is his fear of majority tyranny. The perennial threat to justice is faction, defined as any majority
