Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

by Steven Levitsky

Hamilton, criticizing the Articles of Confederation, argued that the equal representation of states “contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.” “It may happen,” he wrote in Federalist No. 22, that a “majority of states is a small minority of the people of America.” Likewise, Madison described equal representation in the Senate as “evidently unjust” and warned that it would allow small states to “extort measures [from the House] repugnant to the wishes and interests of the majority.” James Wilson of Pennsylvania also rejected equal state representation, asking, like Hamilton, “Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called states?” Wilson backed Madison’s so-called Virginia Plan, presented on the first day of deliberations. Under this proposal, representation in both the House and the Senate would be proportional to the population of each state. But the smaller