In his essay Federalist No, 10, James Madison makes the case for the founding father's choice of a democratic republic as a political system.  Specifically, he attempts to demonstrate why this form of government is superior to a direct democracy, that is, one in which each person votes on every.  The argument he makes for republicanism is based on his concept of "factions".  In short, a faction is a group of people with a different opinion than another group of people.  Obviously, this difference in opinion can easily lead to conflict.  Madison states this:

"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens."

In essence, he is arguing that the republican principle of majority rule, minority rights is the best way to prevent factions.  He then goes on to posit that a direct democracy would have no way of dealing with this issue.  He writes:

"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual."


Federalist Paper No. 51 deals with the importance of separation of powers.  Madison is a major supporter of the idea that giving one group of people a large amount of power would inevitably lead to corruption and tyranny.  He proposes to achieve this departmentalization via a three-branch system, the same as is still used today.  This breaks the government into three separate bodies, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.  Each is responsible for a separate part of governance, but they must all work together to allow the government to run smoothly.  However, even he admits it is not perfect:

"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified."

He recommends alleviating this issue by doing two things: first, implementing a bicameral legislature, which damps the power of the legislative branch, and secondly by granting special powers to the executive branch, without which it could be too easily ignored.  Finally, Madison returns to his concept of factions with the following:

"It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority -- that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable."

He states that the best way to prevent an abuse of the minority by the majority is to implement equal civil rights for all people.  He is here expanding his previous concept of seperation of powers in government to the whole of the human race, and in doing so is demonstrating a level of wisdom far ahead of amny of his contemporaries.