When, and under what conditions, should the rule of the majority be curtailed in order to protect the rights of the minority? And, conversely, when, and under what conditions, must the rights of the minority be restrained in order to prevent the subversion of majority rule? These questions are answered on a case-by-case basis in every constitutional democracy in such a way that neither majority rule nor minority rights suffer permanent or irreparable damage. Both majority rule and minority rights must be safeguarded to sustain justice in a constitutional democracy.
How can that be to the good? And what are the cultural conditions necessary for its success? To answer these questions a historical survey is needed; politics in ancient Greek cities will provide the main material to be studied.
However, majority rule was not invented by the Greeks; although in a singular, comprehensive and systematic way they made it into a principle for determining the general will of a group or community Larsen, ff. Majority rule perceives all voices as equal.
Majority rule is a radical principle that makes all voters equal. The extent of this equality becomes more abstruse the greater the social, economic and cultural differences among voters.
But all this applies to a definite sphere of social life, namely the political one. Majority rule does not require democracy but merely equality within the group of decision-makers.
Consequently, majority rule can also be found in aristocratic polities where the leadership is unstratified. For this reason, majority rule can be adopted in strongly hierarchical societies or groups, for example in ancient Rome. Yet equality is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the application of majority rule.
Most cultures avoid it, even those that practice political equality to an even greater degree than did the Greeks, e. Why should this be the case? Majority rule dispenses with unanimous approval of a decision that will be binding for all.
For these peoples, such would have been a political abomination. But not for the Greeks. Nowhere in the pre-industrial world does one find a culture that applied majority rule in such a comprehensive and systematic way as in the Greek polis. But the assembly is incapable of reaching a joint decision. After three controversial speeches, the assembly is split:. There were two voting methods in ancient Greece. The issue of decision-making processes has become so critical in the last thirty years because we live in a world-historical period in which political institutions have the chance to become globalized.
And it is precisely at this historical moment that majority rule seems to be disappearing. For multi-culturalism and communitarianism cannot per se accept majority rule. When majority rule becomes problematic, it is time to reexamine it. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, a certain current of historical research made an ideology of majority rule and dismissed the consensus principle as primitive. We have to abandon such notions.
Ethnologists have had little difficulty in showing that every culture has pronounced individualistic features, even if those features occur in myriad areas. But if this explanation of the consensus principle is false, then its conclusion regarding majority rule must be specious.
Today political anthropology disposes of a wealth of material yielding information on decision-making processes in the most widely varying cultures; and in fact the principle of consensus predominates. But there appear to be many paths to solidarity, and many of them are not so far removed from majority decisions. For political scientists the consensus principle is no longer an inexplicable problem.
Today one can name the exact conditions under which unanimity rule functions. The key to understanding the consensus principle is first of all the degree of intensity, and secondly, delayed reciprocity I will be simplifying here so that we can fast-forward to the Greeks.
In political reality, decision-maker preferences are never equally strong [3]. If a small group intensely advocates option a, while a larger group supports option b but only in a half-hearted way, then consensus will be achieved through the lukewarm majority yielding to the passionate minority; and this they can do because their preference is weaker Sartori, 83ff. This disposition does not just fall from the sky, but has at least two preconditions:. It proceeds along strict lines of performance which must be inculcated through practice.
If the yielding party is disadvantaged, then parties will cease to be yielding. The yielding party must be able to count on the fact that his yielding is not interpreted as weakness or defeat, and that in the future when he intensely advocates an option, his opposite number will yield.
Consequently, the consensus principle always functions best in small groups where everyone knows each other [6]. What is the advantage of such a consensus principle? Simple: all participants play a positive-sum game, i. In the best-case scenario, no one loses and everyone wins with delayed reciprocity [7].
Majority rule is the exact opposite: under less-than-ideal circumstances it tends to become a zero-sum game, one side winning and the other side losing. The disadvantage of the consensus principle is the high decisions costs. In other words, the expenditure in time, rhetoric, gestures, and appeals to good will can be enormously high; and that happens as soon as several group members advocate their respective preferences with the same intensity.
If no side in the conflict gives ground over several hours or even days, this means an enormous expenditure in time and rhetoric. Perhaps they arrive at a compromise that pleases no one; and in the worst case the community is incapable of forming a general will; it is paralyzed; perhaps it even breaks apart.
The decision costs sink if the decision-makers of a certain group are ethnically homogeneous and have real solidarity. Thus, the establishment of homogeneity in many communities is a top political priority. This has important cultural repercussions [8]. Why this detour through sociology and political anthropology? Because I require a differentiated inventory to tell how the consensus principle functions in various cultures; this inventory helps me to find those variations that lead to the majority principle [9] In principle there are three possibilities.
All approve the resolution and intend to abide by it. In such a case the political optimum has been achieved. No consensus has been achieved on the basis of the two options, but rather a compromise between the options. Neither side has adopted the option of the other; instead several groupings have yielded in some places and remained intractable in others.
Three disadvantages: 1 Most of the time this is patently the worst solution ; 2 Because the group of decision-makers cannot agree to adopt the most intensely advocated preference of a certain party, they consent to the option that can somehow be reconciled with their own respective preferences; neither side advocates this alternative option, since neither side really wants it; 3 The principle of delayed reciprocity fails, for the payback is not delayed but ad hoc.
Thus one can see that the consensus principle no longer functions, or only qualifiedly so. More Definitions for majority rule. See the full definition for majority rule in the English Language Learners Dictionary.
Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of majority rule. Examples of majority rule in a Sentence Recent Examples on the Web The Senate should become a democratic body, even if not a representative one, and honor the principle of majority rule.
First Known Use of majority rule , in the meaning defined above. In the s, some towns and states passed measures legalizing discrimination against gays and lesbians. Text Dependent Questions. What kind of government does our country use? What, in theory, ensures that the rights of people in the numerical minority are treated the same as the rights of those in the majority? Democracy or majority rule; the Constitution and its original language and amendments. Aside from the Constitution, what might you argue is most important when it comes to protecting the rights of vulnerable populations?
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