Balancing Self-Interest and Public Interest in American Politics

Introduction
The American political system was designed to foster cooperation¬¬¬¬ to achieve public interest – individuals’ goals for their community (Stone 2011, 24) – by subordinating individual self-interest to other interests (Stone 2011, 27). According to Federalist Paper 10, the main driving factor behind Madison’s idea of the republic was the desire to control the effects of factions, or the “tyranny of the majority”. Madison believed that a larger republic would lead to more factions that would have a difficult time uniting. Thus, the minority would have protection against the volition of the majority. However, the current American political system allows the opposite to occur ‒ interest groups are able to exert power over other groups

Downs predicts that issues where the majority of people are not suffering from the problem, issues where suffering provides benefits to the majority and harm to the minority, and issues that have no intrinsically exciting qualities are more likely to go through the attention cycle (Downs 1972, 41). When the Founding Fathers designed the American system, they originally wanted to prevent political parties from developing. However, Stone notes that people group themselves to get cooperation between humans and to, eventually, accomplish public purposes (Stone 2011, 29). When interest groups are formed, this organization leads to seeking out elected representatives to get organizational activity for the group’s cause. This association with elected officials lends itself to the increased chance of an issue going through the issue attention cycle; additionally, it lends itself to party association, helping the interest group’s issue get on the political agenda by appealing to the standards of the majority (Wilson 1975,

Agriculture, for example, is an industry with declining relative importance to the American economy with net income ranging from $3.6 billion to $1.9 billion between 1919 and 1932 (Lowi 1969, 105). Nevertheless, the agriculture industry, has managed to evolve into a largely self-governing system with ten separate, autonomous self-governing programs and has accomplished the successful redistribution of wealth towards the agriculture business (Lowi 1969, 105); this implies that a multiplicity of factions does not subdue the effects of factions. In Federalist Paper 10, Madison expressed the concern that the minority (the poor) would have proclivities to want to take from the majority (the wealthy); thus, his goal was to mitigate against the effects of factions. Yet, the agriculture industry demonstrates that it is possible for factions to prevail by appealing to the sentiments of the majority. Agriculture is revered in American society (Lowi 1969, 105); therefore, it can govern in a pluralistic way that disregards the original intent of the Founding