République et démocratie de Montesquieu à Madison

Political theory has been for long committed to the idea that a republic is possible only in small states, where the diversity of interests is reduced to the point where it makes possible the formation of a genuine common interest. Montesquieu adheres to this thesis when he says that, far from looking for this chimerical common interest, modern politics must be an art of balancing particular interests. Madison answered this argument by showing how, on the contrary, a republic is possible in large states only; in such states, the variety of extant interests constrains each of them to look not for a compromise — which is impossible to find where the interests in play are so widely apart from each other — but for a genuine common interest transcending all particularities.