The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments" (The Federalist No. 51)¶
Madison, J. (1788). The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments" (*The Federalist* No. 51): The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments. The Federalist.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Balance
- Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) established the philosophical foundation for separation of powers as a balancing mechanism; Madison's Federalist 51 (1788) articulated checks and balances as the structural technology for maintaining constitutional balance by institutionalizing countervailing powers.
This sourceArgues that 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition' — interior structural checks institutionalize countervailing powers to maintain constitutional balance. [Compound-claim note: the host sentence also credits Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Federalist 51 itself supports the Madison half: interior structure with mutually checking departments and 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition'. It says nothing about Montesquieu.
“the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”
- Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) established the philosophical foundation for separation of powers as a balancing mechanism; Madison's Federalist 51 (1788) articulated checks and balances as the structural technology for maintaining constitutional balance by institutionalizing countervailing powers.
- Checks and Balances
- As Madison (1788) argued in Federalist No. 51, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition"—a structural design where decision rights are distributed asymmetrically so that critical functions require coalition formation or explicit approval from bodies with competing interests.
This sourceFoundational essay establishing "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" as the structural rationale for distributing power across mutually checking branches.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Federalist No. 51 supplies the maxim verbatim and the rationale of giving each department means and motives to resist the others; the coalition or explicit-approval mechanism is the entry's gloss.
“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
- As Madison (1788) argued in Federalist No. 51, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition"—a structural design where decision rights are distributed asymmetrically so that critical functions require coalition formation or explicit approval from bodies with competing interests.
- Credible Commitment
- Constitutional design. Separation of powers, judicial review, supermajority rules, and entrenched rights constrain future political majorities, with "ambition counteracting ambition" being an explicit credibility-engineering argument.
This sourceArgues that constitutional structure must make 'ambition counteract ambition,' constraining future majorities — an explicit credibility-engineering argument for separation of powers.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Federalist 51 supports separation of powers and 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition' as a structural check; judicial review, supermajority rules and entrenched rights are not discussed.
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
- Constitutional design. Separation of powers, judicial review, supermajority rules, and entrenched rights constrain future political majorities, with "ambition counteracting ambition" being an explicit credibility-engineering argument.
- Governance
- Political science & public administration: Government structure (separation of powers, federalism, unitarism), legislative bodies (parliaments, congresses, councils), regulatory agencies (licensing, standard-setting, enforcement), constitutional law, administrative procedure—a domain whose architectural logic Madison (1788) sets out in Federalist 51's account of how "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" through institutional checks.
This sourceFoundational articulation of separation of powers and institutional checks; contains the quoted maxim 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition,' directly supporting the public-administration architectural-logic claim.
SupportedVerified against the work's full text
Federalist 51 states the maxim verbatim inside its argument for structuring government so separate departments and governments check each other.
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”
- Political science & public administration: Government structure (separation of powers, federalism, unitarism), legislative bodies (parliaments, congresses, councils), regulatory agencies (licensing, standard-setting, enforcement), constitutional law, administrative procedure—a domain whose architectural logic Madison (1788) sets out in Federalist 51's account of how "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" through institutional checks.
- Separation of Powers
- The core insight transcends political systems: any system with unmediated power accumulation creates incentive structures for abuse, a dynamic Madison (1788) made central to Federalist No. 51 with the formulation that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
This sourceArgues that, since men are not angels, government must be designed so that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition"—the canonical statement that separation of powers requires aligning institutional incentives, not merely partitioning functions.
SupportedVerified against the work's full text
Federalist No. 51 gives the exact formulation, ties it to guarding against concentration of power and controlling government abuses, and extends the principle to private as well as public affairs.
“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
- The core insight transcends political systems: any system with unmediated power accumulation creates incentive structures for abuse, a dynamic Madison (1788) made central to Federalist No. 51 with the formulation that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 5 of 5 citations: 2 supported, 3 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60 ×2
- https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0199 ×1
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