James Madison was the fourth president of the United States and a central architect behind the Federalist Papers.
In Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison wrote about how factions—groups with specific interests—can threaten democracy. He warned both against the potential tyranny of majority rule over minorities, where the many tyrannize the few, and against the danger of an elite gaining disproportionate power and thereby tyrannizing the many.
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His solution was a representative democracy with a wide diversity of interests, so that no single group could dominate. This foundation became important for the development of the American constitutional system.
Madison believed that by distributing power across many levels and through a representative system, both forms of tyranny could be prevented.
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After the Norwegian Parliament completely removed the already marginal opportunity for citizens to influence personal elections, it has become even more natural for politicians to seek power internally within parties. Although political parties have far more members, it is an estimated 2,500 individuals who have the main influence over who is placed in the top, safest positions on electoral lists. They exercise significant control over central state power beyond the reach of voters.
The Norwegian democracy has thus moved out of the necessary balance of power that characterizes a healthy democracy.
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Over the years, this power elite has assigned its politically governed administration an ever-growing number of tasks, employees, and obligations. So many people depend directly or indirectly on public administration for their livelihood that challenging this structure would entail a loss of votes for any party attempting it. In this way, traits that can be described as a tyranny of the majority have also emerged in Norway, weakening genuine democracy.
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