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Paul Leicester Ford's summary preceding Federalist No. 10, from his 1898 edition of The Federalist. September 17, 1787, marked the signing of the final document. By its own Article Seven, the constitution drafted by the convention needed ratification by at least nine of the thirteen states, through special conventions held in each state.
A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government. At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means a country that is governed by elected representatives and by an elected leader, such as a president, rather than by a monarch or any hereditary aristocracy .
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison rejected "pure democracy" in favour of representative democracy, which he called "a republic". [96] There were similar debates in many other democratizing nations. [97] In contemporary usage, the term democracy refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative. [98]
Many public debates about democracy-versus-republic, according to Heersink, are thinly masked attempts to alter or preserve a status quo that benefits a party or candidate for at least the short-term.
Federalist No. 10, Madison's first contribution to The Federalist Papers, became highly regarded in the 20th century for its advocacy of representative democracy. [38] In Federalist 10, Madison describes the dangers posed by factions and argues that their negative effects can be limited through the formation of a large republic.
The first topic that Madison addresses is the differentiation between a republic and a democracy.. George Clinton, the Governor of New York and one of the foremost authors of the Anti-Federalist papers at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, cited Montesquieu, a political philosopher who authored "The Spirit of the Laws", [5] to support his argument.
More broadly, in Federalist No. 10, Madison distinguished a democracy from a republic. Jefferson warned that "an elective despotism is not the government we fought for." [80] Madison wrote: In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.
[10] The first forms of federalism took place in ancient times, in the form of alliances between city states. Some examples from the seventh to second century BC were the Archaic League, the Aetolic League, the Peloponnesian League, and the Delian League. An early ancestor of federalism was the Achaean League in Hellenistic Greece.