A Pluralist Government

A Pluralist Government

There are many forms of government, specifically three forms of democracy, pluralist, elite, and participatory in which countries around the world partake in. When the founding fathers were creating the constitution they incorporated many aspects of each form of democracy into it, but the one they focused on the most was the pluralist democracy. A pluralist democracy is one in which groups organize to influence the political decision making, allowing no single viewpoint to control. The founding fathers, especially James Madison, who focused on creating many factions that would debate and create more compromise throughout each group. So, when creating the constitution, the founding fathers focused on creating a pluralist democracy through the United States.




James Madison was aware that factions could potentially be an issue, but he believed that factions could also be the driving force of the government's success. While writing the Federalists papers, explaining the reasoning behind the constitution, he concluded that “By faction {he} understands a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”(Fed. 10). Through all of this, Maddison is stating how he believes that the factions, or groups of people with the same interests, will come together to benefit the country, however majority factions need to be avoided. By having a various amount of factions, all with conflicting viewpoints, they will begin to debate and eventually reach compromise, which will in the end, benefit many different citizens throughout the country. In a pluralist democracy, it is intended that groups get together to bargain and compromise to ensure that one viewpoint doesn’t take all the control. Even in the worst case, the founding father came up with the separation of powers and checks and balances to completely ensure that the majority factions won’t dominate. This also lets many representatives from each separate faction, or group, participate directly in the decisions being made in the government, ensuring a potentially successful, pluralist democracy.





Therefore, when the finding fathers were creating the future government for thr United States, they were creating a pluralist democracy. With the faction groups, each citizen would have a say in the governemnt, and the majority faction taking control woud be avoided.