Madison’s Ratchet: Ambition Counteracting Ambition and the Aggregation of Political, Managerial, and Legal Controls Over Federal Administration
本文基于麦迪逊的野心对抗野心理论，分析1930年代后行政国家发展导致三权分支各自发展对联邦机构的控制，这些控制不断累积并复杂化联邦行政。
In Federalist 47 and 51, James Madison contended that the accumulation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the hands of one body or person would produce tyranny. He explained that one defense against such tyranny was to make “ambition . . . counteract ambition” by giving each of the three constitutional branches of the federal government the “means,” “motives,” and wherewithal to “resist encroachments” on their powers by another. However, after the development of the contemporary administrative state in the 1930s, rather than serving as a check against encroachments alone, the process of ambition counteracting ambition prompts each branch to develop its own set of controls over federal agencies without necessarily trenching on the powers of the other branches. “Madison’s Ratchet” is the tendency for these controls overwhelmingly to aggregate and thereby vastly complicate federal administration.