Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Madison's Revolutionary Idea: How Large Republics Solve Faction Problems
Dr. Alan Gibson explores Madison's revolutionary idea in Federalist 10 that republican government works better over large territories with diverse populations rather than small ones. This concept directly challenged centuries of traditional republican theory that insisted republics must remain small to function properly.
• Madison argued large republics naturally check faction formation, particularly majority factions that threaten minority rights
• Both Federalists and Anti-Federalists considered themselves republicans but disagreed fundamentally on how to structure the government
• Traditional republican theory identified three pure forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) that each faced distinct corruption problems
• Montesquieu and others believed small republics were necessary because "the public good is better felt, better known" in smaller territories
• Anti-Federalist Brutus feared an extended republic would inevitably lead to power consolidation, unrepresentative government, and eventually monarchy
• Many Anti-Federalists recognized the need for constitutional reform but preferred strengthening the Articles of Confederation rather than creating a powerful central government
• The debate centered on faction control, representation, and preventing government corruption
Join us in the next episode as we dive deeper into Federalist 10 and explore more of Madison's groundbreaking political theory.
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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Welcome back everyone. I am really excited for this kind of part of the series because we're going to really dive into the Federalist Papers, and I'm really excited to have our guest, Dr Alan Gibson, who is going to be a visiting professor at Skettle in the spring of 2026, but currently works at the Kinder Institute at the University of Missouri. Dr Gibson, thank you so much for being here. And the question that we're looking at today is what is kind of that main idea of Federalist 10? And I know you're going to get into Brutus 1 and kind of get into more of this, but we'll kind of start there. What's the main idea of Federalist 10?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, first thank you for having me here. I'm really looking forward to doing this. It's a lot of fun. I get to revisit ideas I've been thinking about for a long time. Also, incidentally, I graded American Advanced Placement Test for 20 years, the first part of my career. I haven't done it in a decade or so, but I did it for a really long time. So communicating to that group of students will be fun as well and revisit some things that I did earlier in my life.
Speaker 2:In a nutshell, the idea of Federalist Number 10 is that Republican government can be extended over a large geographical area with a large population and you'll end up with a more stable Republican government in a large geographical area, again with a large population and diverse interests, than you would in a small territory. In a small territory you're going to have a problem of majority factionalism that's going to arise and that really Madison says there's no remedy for the problem of a majority faction, which is his central concern in the Federalist no 10. In a small geographical area you can't really remedy that problem, at least not based upon the Republican form, and that's the other part of the requirement. You have to have a Republican remedy for the Republican problem of faction. So if I could just roll back from after stating that basic proposition, if I could just roll back and talk about Republicanism and the Republican tradition before Madison, then I'll just go through step by step through the argument of Federalist no 10 and elaborate on some different things. But the Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike considered themselves to be Republicans. The Republican form of government was the only one that was going to be consistent with the principles of the American Revolution that had been fought.
Speaker 2:Obviously we'd fought a war against a monarchy or a monarch in particular, and it's also the case that the framers believed the genus of the American people, or the genius I'm sorry by which they meant the spirit or ethos of the American people, was Republican. We didn't have the one, the few and the many in our society. We were just a group of people, a kind of middle-class group of individuals, of Republican forms of government, through ancient historians principally, but also all kinds of political commentators and political philosophers, and there was this belief that there were three pure forms of government. Those were monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. And democracy and democracies and republics are roughly analogous with each other, but Madison defines them differently, and so we can get into that a little bit later, but anyway, a monarchy was susceptible to the problem of tyranny. An aristocracy naturally turned into an oligarchy, which is the rule of the wealthy few. That was the problem when it became corrupted. An aristocracy became an oligarchy and the problem that was associated with democracies and republics were turbulence, instability and factionalism, and those were all an associated constellation of problems that needed to be dealt with. And so in this, both groups of those anti-feralists and federalists were on the same page with regard to those principles of government and that sort of thing, to those principles of government and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But the question was how do you address the problem of faction? And that's of course what Madison's talking about in Federalist no 10. And that's where they're going to disagree in that. And so, within this long Republican tradition also, there were two other basic propositions, and one of these basic propositions was that you really did have to try to cure the mischiefs of faction, to use Madison's language, by trying to give everyone the same opinions, passions or interests, or educating people in the same sets of beliefs and creating similar interests between them. And a second proposition that came out of that was that Republican governments had to be confined to a small geographical area. So this was I'm calling this the small republic thesis. Madison calls it in Federalist no 14, which also deals with the extended republic argument. He calls it the prevailing prejudice with regard to the size of a practical republican administration. So what is the proper size to have for a republic?
Speaker 2:The tradition that Madison inherits and that Brutus is appropriating says that you have to have a small republic. So why do you need a small republic? There are a lot of different answers to that in this republican tradition. Commentators are not don't always give it exactly the same thing, but there's also this kind of generic answer that the framers themselves inherit and that generic answer is basically that you lose the content, you lose awareness of an understanding and knowledge of the public good. In a large geographical area in which all of these different economic interests and religious sects and diverse climates and peoples and things like that, it's very hard to discern some common good between all of these diverse elements in a large, and you necessarily get that diversity when you create a large republic.
Speaker 2:So the first part of this is simply an awareness that there is a public good. And let's see, I had a quote from Montesquieu here about this. Montesquieu says in a large republic the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations, it is subordinated to expectations, to exceptions I'm sorry, it depends upon accidents. In a small one, the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen, abuses are less extensive there and consequently less protected. So that, in a nutshell, is one of two primary reasons why you need a small geographical area for a public. According to this tradition.
Speaker 2:Then the second thing that is commonly said about this is if you either have a large geographical area, then you try to govern it as a republic, it's going to naturally transform into a monarchy or a kingship. It's going to take, according to this understanding of government, it's going to take a king who commands force, and also maybe in some cases, force of personality, to hold together this diverse people in this large geographical area. And if you try to create a republic in a large geographical area, it's going to transform into that kind of government naturally anyway. If you have a king who's governing, then that's the right thing to do. If you have a large geographical area and if you make the mistake of trying to form a republic in a large geographical area, it's going to become a kingship anyway. It's going to become a monarchy anyway. So that is the inherited tradition. And then Brutus is an anti-federalist, so he's formed a more decentralized system of government system of government. He sees the state governments themselves as the primary units on which the union will be formed, and they're going to also be the locus of decision-making in the republic. That's where most of the decisions are going to be made.
Speaker 2:Some of the anti-federalists favored some reforms of the Constitution and giving some powers to the national government. Commercial regulation and the power of taxation were the common ones. But they were not as extensive in granting authorities to the national government as the federalists, to be sure. And so what? In appropriating the small republic thesis, brutus is saying if you create this republic over this large geographical area, it's naturally going to fail. It's just inevitably going to fail.
Speaker 2:And look at all these writers who said that the republican government can't do that, it can't meet these expectations. It's going to once, once again, transform. There's this belief. The anti-federalists are almost obsessed with the idea of what is termed consolidation at this time, the consolidation of power in a single person, in a monarch and a single branch. And we'll see this when we talk about Federalist no 51 in a few minutes as well. They're really obsessed with this problem of consolidation. And that's what's going to happen if you try to create a Republican government in a large geographical area. Power is going to concentrate in the national government. That's going to eliminate the states. It's going to concentrate, probably in the executive branch and that executive branch is going to transform into a monarchy at the national level. So it's very ill-advised to do that.
Speaker 2:Brutus is also talking in that about how people there aren't enough representatives in under the Constitution. And so the belief was and Madison says this in Fair Oldness, number 10 as well that if you have a large territory you can have larger geographical, larger electoral districts with greater number of individuals in them and you can have fewer representatives in them. You're going to have fewer representatives in proportion to the population in a large republic than a small republic. Brutus is saying they didn't give us enough representatives to represent these three million people who are in the United States. Not all of the interests of the people are going to be represented. It's impossible to represent all the interests of the people at the national level and also the people aren't going to know who these people are, their electoral districts in which they elect them are going to be too vast and further they're going to be put away a long way away. This is a three-mile-an-hour society that these individuals live in, and that's an important consideration. And they're not going to know their representatives when they elect them as well, and then they're going to lose sight of them and the ability to hold them accountable once they are elected. So Brutus believes that this is a kind of a recipe for disaster creating an extended republic and giving substantial powers anyway to the national government. They want to.
Speaker 2:Basically, anti-federalists do stay with the Articles Confederation. They want a somewhat fortified Articles Confederation. With regard to the anti-federalists also though, it's a stereotype to say that they didn't—it's false actually to say that they did not understand that there was a crisis of Republican government and that we needed constitutional reform. Many of them did, and I noticed immediately that Brutus says we've got a problem here in the very beginning of Brutus 1. He says we need some kind of reform here. He just doesn't, like many anti-federalists, favor the reforms that the federalists do, and especially empowering this national government that stretches across this large geographical area with these powers that will become and giving it to representatives who will necessarily become unaccountable to their constituents. So that's sort of a preliminary part of that.
Speaker 1:That's Brutus's part each thank you to Dr Alan Gibson for his expertise on this. Please join us for the next episode where we're going to be diving even deeper into Federalist 10.
