Who Gains Power When a System Cannot Decide
A system where one person can stop everything does not reward wisdom. It rewards refusal, and Alexander Hamilton understood that this was not merely an inconvenience but a structural threat to self-government. When a political system cannot reliably decide, power does not disappear; it does not remain neutral. It relocates, and it tends to flow toward those most willing to exploit delay rather than those most capable of governing.
Federalist No. 22 is Hamilton’s argument about the migration of power. Where Federalist 21 explored how weakness dissolves loyalty and shared identity, Federalist 22 turns colder and more mechanical. It asks who actually benefits when a system cannot act, and how that inability reshapes behavior over time. Hamilton’s answer is unsparing. Systems that cannot move do not empower the thoughtful or the principled. They empower the obstructive, because obstruction is where leverage accumulates when motion is rare.
Unanimity Is Not Neutral
Under the Articles of Confederation, major national decisions required near unanimity among the states, a design choice often defended as cautious and liberty-preserving. Hamilton does not dispute the intention, but he insists on confronting the consequence. Unanimity is not neutral. It radically redistributes power by shifting leverage away from those willing to act and toward those most willing to refuse. Once consent is required from everyone, the marginal actor, the state with the narrowest interest or strongest grievance, gains influence far beyond its responsibility to the whole.
Hamilton is blunt about where this leads, warning that unanimity “embarrasses the administration” and “substitutes the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto” for the decisions of a majority. In that environment, refusal becomes asymmetrically powerful. A single holdout can stall legislation, block treaties, delay funding, or undermine enforcement simply by standing still, while the costs of delay are borne by everyone else.
Over time, this predictably reshapes political behavior. Actors stop asking what outcome best serves the union and start calculating how long they can hold out and what concessions delay might extract. Bargaining replaces deliberation, not because participants are corrupt, but because the structure rewards endurance over judgment. Hamilton’s point is not moralistic. It is behavioral. Systems do not merely constrain choices; they also teach strategies.
Why Hamilton Was Not Afraid of Disagreement
Hamilton is often portrayed as hostile to dissent, but Federalist 22 reveals a more precise concern. He assumes disagreement. What alarms him is disagreement without consequence, because it severs power from responsibility.
Under the Articles, states could refuse national obligations without bearing proportional costs. Congress could request funds, urge treaty compliance, or appeal to collective interest, but it lacked the authority to compel action. Those who complied paid the price. Those who refused still enjoyed the benefits of union. For Hamilton, this was incoherent governance. As he put it, “a government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care,” and the Confederation plainly did not.
In such an environment, strategic noncompliance becomes rational. Responsibility becomes something to avoid rather than share. This is where Federalist 22 moves beyond apathy into something more corrosive. The problem is no longer disengagement. It is weaponized participation, where actors remain fully engaged but use the system’s inability to act as a source of power.
Majority Rule as Power Containment
Hamilton’s defense of majority rule in Federalist 22 is frequently misunderstood as optimism about outcomes. It is nothing of the sort. He does not claim that majorities are wiser, fairer, or more virtuous. His argument is narrower and more realistic. Majority rule limits how much damage any single actor can inflict on the system.
Hamilton makes this explicit when he warns that giving a minority “a negative upon the majority” simply subjects the will of the many to the few. Minority veto power does not restrain authority. It inverts it. By allowing decisions to proceed despite dissent, majority rule forces political actors to internalize loss and live with outcomes they oppose. It reconnects disagreement to consequence and prevents refusal from hardening into a permanent veto.
Hamilton understood that no political system can guarantee good decisions, but it can prevent permanent paralysis, which is far more destructive. In this sense, majority rule is not a moral ideal. It is a stabilizing mechanism designed to keep the system governable even when disagreement is sharp.
How the Holdout Returns
Federalist 22 feels modern because the behavior Hamilton describes never vanished. It adapted. We did not formally reintroduce unanimity, but we recreated its effects through procedures, norms, and expectations. Consensus was treated as a moral requirement even when the rules did not demand it.
The result is structurally familiar. One determined actor can still stall progress, not by persuading others, but by exploiting time, process, and exhaustion. The Constitution remains intact, but the incentive structure quietly drifts back toward obstruction. Hamilton would have recognized this immediately, because the problem was never the specific rule. It was the power dynamic the rule created.
This drift carries real consequences. Hamilton warned that treaties themselves become meaningless when refusal carries no cost, insisting they must be treated “as part of the law of the land,” not as optional commitments subject to local convenience. When enforcement is uncertain, credibility erodes, and the costs of obstruction spill outward beyond domestic politics.
The Professional Refuser
Every political system eventually produces specialists, not because it intends to, but because incentives select for specific skills over time. In systems that reward decision-making, those specialists tend to be builders and negotiators. In systems that reward delay and veto power, a different figure rises. Federalist 22 is Hamilton recognizing the early emergence of the professional refuser, the actor who understands that governing carries visible risk while blocking action rarely does.
Governing means owning outcomes, absorbing blame, and accepting tradeoffs that will inevitably disappoint someone. Refusal avoids accountability while still generating leverage, especially in systems where delay itself becomes a bargaining chip. Over time, this reshapes the political selection process. Those most comfortable saying no are elevated. Those willing to decide are punished, often by their own allies, for creating outcomes that can be attacked. This is not a failure of character. It is rational adaptation to incentive design. Hamilton’s concern is not that people will argue too much, but that a system which rewards obstruction will increasingly be dominated by actors with the least interest in resolution, because resolution carries cost and refusal does not.
Festivus Is Funny Because It Ends
The Festivus metaphor works because it captures the absurdity of grievance divorced from resolution. Everyone gets a turn to complain, strength is theatrically displayed, and nothing actually changes, which is precisely why it works as comedy rather than catastrophe. The ritual ends, the pole goes back in the garage, and life resumes because no one mistakes the performance for governance.
Hamilton’s warning in Federalist 22 is that a republic cannot survive if it begins to operate this way as a governing model. Grievance is inevitable in a free society, but it must be connected to decision, and strength must ultimately be measured by outcomes rather than obstruction. When stalemate itself becomes victory, and refusal is treated as virtue, politics collapses into performance. Festivus works because it is temporary. Government has no such luxury.
When Dysfunction Becomes an Equilibrium
The Articles of Confederation failed because their defects were visible and immediate. They broke quickly enough that no one could pretend the system was working. Modern dysfunction persists for the opposite reason. It stabilizes. The system functions just enough to get by. Laws pass intermittently, budgets are funded eventually, and crises are addressed at the last possible moment, creating the illusion of viability even as the underlying capacity to govern steadily erodes.
In that environment, behavior adapts. Government benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations. Obstruction stops being shocking and becomes routine, a regular feature of the landscape rather than a sign of institutional distress. Over time, the standard for success quietly shifts. The question is no longer whether government governs effectively, but whether it collapses outright. Survival replaces performance as the benchmark, and we mistake endurance for legitimacy.
Hamilton understood that this kind of equilibrium is more dangerous than open failure. A system that collapses forces reform. A system that limps along trains its participants to live with dysfunction and, worse, to profit from it. When obstruction is normalized and delay is rewarded, the incentives favor those least invested in governing and most skilled at exploiting the stalemate. Reform becomes harder precisely because no single moment feels catastrophic enough to demand it, even as the damage accumulates year after year.
The Lesson of Federalist 22
Federalist 22 is not a plea for unity, nor is it a call for better intentions or higher-minded civic virtue. Hamilton is making a colder and more durable argument about incentives and power. When refusal is cheaper than responsibility, refusal will dominate political behavior. When delay creates leverage without consequence, delay will multiply. And when obstruction carries no real cost, the system will reliably elevate those who practice it most effectively, regardless of their interest in governing.
Hamilton’s defense of majority rule follows directly from this logic. He does not claim that majority decisions are inherently wise or just. He claims something more modest and more necessary. Majority rule keeps the system moving. It prevents disagreement from hardening into permanent paralysis and denies any single actor the ability to hold the republic hostage indefinitely. In Hamilton’s view, this was not an aspirational ideal but a preventative measure, designed to keep self-government from collapsing under the weight of its own incentives.
When a political system makes refusal cheaper than responsibility, it does not reward wisdom. It rewards obstruction, handing power to those least willing to govern and calling the result self-government.