Countervailing power

For countervailing buyer power, see Monopoly.

Countervailing power, or countervailance, is the idea in political theory which suggests that the wielding of power by two or more groups, centers, or sets of interests within a polity can, and often does, yield beneficial effects through productive opposition and containment between opposing forces. As a political concept, it resembles those of agonism, agonistic pluralism, and checks and balances, encapsulated in the often-quoted phrase from Federalist No. 51 that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition". The notion of countervailance has been applied in both politics and economics.

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