Comparison Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau And James Madison

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Madison are both influential political thinkers to inspire people’s understanding on democracy. This article aims to compare and contrast their opinions on democracy and representation, and will argue that although they have some similarity on the ideas of separation of power and the damage brought by wealth inequality, still disparate on the attitudes towards representation and the ideal scale of democratic governance.

In terms of Rousseau’s theory, people can not be represented, and it is difficult to achieve a real democracy. Rousseau thinks that the essential element of democracy is political participation. Even though people are bounded by general will, and the rule of majority is accepted; as long as they

Similar to Rousseau, Madison thinks that private interests, or in his words, factious spirits corrupt public life and need to be fixed. Therefore, he advocates for the division of powers to motivate elites to oversee each other. He also shares the idea that economic inequality will harm democracy because it is the main factor to produce factions with disparate interests. However, unlike Rousseau, Madison tries to regulate and incorporate those interests into the operation of government, and argues that a representative government in a large-scale territory will be capable of fixing the problem of faction and strengthen democracy. More precisely, Madison reasons that in a small scale state, the majority will always form in a faction to sacrifice the interest of minority. On the contrary, the elected representative would be wiser to enlarge public views and improve policy choices to take consideration to the minority interest, and it happens more often in a large electoral body. In a larger state, people have greater chances and are more free to choose ideal candidates, and a variety of groups to form the majority will be less possible to have common interests to oppress the minority. In this way, the government can be beneficial for individuals to pursue their own