On James Madison’s Pluralist Political Theory

James Madison is a prominent statesman and political philosopher of the United States of the18th-century, and the youngest among the founding fathers. As the Father of the U.S. Constitution, his pluralist political philosophy laid the theoretical foundation for the Constitution. Madison became one of the principal architects of the American political system.The roots of Madison’s political philosophy were classical republicanism, classical liberalism, and the Calvinist theology, and the context of his pluralist-republican theory was the American Revolution. Propriety, moderation and a sense of balance permeated his whole thought, and this feature was manifested prominently in his republican proposal, which included two mechanisms, namely, first, separation of powers, checks and balances, and second, the mechanism of interest groups. The first mechanism involved two kinds of check, that is, first, horizontal checks among the legislative, executive and judicial branches; and second, vertical checks between the state governments and federal government. Concerning interest groups, Madison proposed an open recognition of the existence of human diversity in opinion as well as in property, and he held that government should protect the political-economic interests of each group, and divided interests and spread powers as far as possible. Doing so would lead to balance between interest groups and stability of the whole society. Moreover, a decentralized governmental structure would provide access to the demand and influence of interest groups on governmental decision-making.Madison’s political philosophy met the need for political legitimacy of and laid a theoretical basis for the foundation of the U.S. federal government, and he was a forerunner of the pluralist model of democracy, which is the main trend in the present day the United States. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, who trusted the common people and proposed the majoritatian model of democracy, Madison was quite pessimistic about human nature. Although unlike Hamilton, Madison was opposed to monarchy and proposed a republic for the US, he treated the common people with distrust and vigilance, and his primary concern was "the tyranny of the majority over the minority"; that is to say, he feared that the common people would invade the property right of the rich. This was for him a dilemma and predicament, and reflects an essential characteristic of Madison’s pluralist political philosophy and limitations in his thought due to times and his class status. This also leads to his emphasis on freedom over equality in the realm of economic life, which is a considerable weakness of his political theory. In consequence, this weakness of his thought exerted strong influnces on the democratic theories and practice of the present day the United States of America.In building socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics, on the one hand, we should not just copy the Western political model; one the other hand, guided with Marxist principle, we should critically assimilate whatever beneficial in the thought of Madison, thereby improve the mechanism of check and balance within our socialist political structure, and promote the people’s consciousness and ability of political participation, in order to strengthen and improve the people’s democratic dictatorship.