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

can engage in the decision-making process and exercise their influence on the creation of general will, they still enjoy civic liberty and realize self-determination through being the actual part of sovereignty. Therefore, representation alienates the intrinsic value of democracy that people should form general will through direct participation. For Rousseau, the government is no more than the means or the agent of the community to serve general will or common good. Besides, in order to eliminate private interests which corrupt general will, he supports the division of legislative and executive branches. However, due to Rousseau’s emphasis on participation, he considers that democracy is too challenging to realize in a modern state. There are several preconditions for participatory democracy, which are a small state, a simple society, high equality on fortune and civic virtue like no luxury, but they do not exist in the modern society. Consequently, Rousseau is pessimistic for the prospect of democracy.
Madison agrees with Rousseau in some concepts, but he supports the idea of representation, especially in a large and complicated society.

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

interests.
In conclusion, while Rousseau criticizes the representative government in the large scale state is not compatible with political participation, which is the core value of democracy, Madison emphasizes that it would fix the problem of faction and tyranny of the majority, which damage both public good and the rights of other citizens.