Party and Faction in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought from Montesquieu to Madison

Abstract

This chapter discusses some of the contexts and contents of the European debate about political parties in the eighteenth century, before moving on to delineate some facets of its reception in the early American republic, especially among some of its formative political writers and American presidents, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Whereas early American political thinkers were eager to avoid the extreme factionalism and partisanship which had been characteristic of Britain, most of them accepted that division was inevitable in politics. In addition to Madison’s familiar appropriation of “Humean” arguments about how to control factionalism in the Tenth Federalist, it is argued that Bolingbroke’s justification for partisan opposition within the party framework merits special attention.