Majority Rule and Its Limits

This topic asks why decisions by majority should be authoritative, what protects minorities from majority power, and whether constitutional rights properly limit what majorities may decide.

Definition

Majority rule is the decision procedure under which the option preferred by more than half of voters prevails; its limits concern the constraints — constitutional rights, minority protections, supermajority requirements — that may legitimately restrict what a majority can decide.

Scope

Covers the justification of majority rule (May's theorem, fairness), the danger of the tyranny of the majority, constitutional and rights-based limits on majority decisions, the debate over judicial review, and the place of minority protection. Social-choice paradoxes are touched on as they bear on majority decision.

Core questions

• Why should the will of the majority be authoritative?
• How can minorities be protected from a majority's power?
• Should constitutional rights place limits on what majorities may decide?
• Is judicial review a legitimate or an anti-democratic limit on majority rule?

Key concepts

• majority rule
• the tyranny of the majority
• minority rights
• constitutionalism
• judicial review
• the counter-majoritarian difficulty

Key theories

The tyranny of the majority

Tocqueville warns that in democracies the majority can oppress minorities not only through law but through social pressure on opinion, so that unchecked majority power threatens individual liberty and independence of mind.

Representative government and minorities

Mill defends representative democracy while warning against the suppression of minorities, advocating devices such as proportional representation to ensure that minority opinions are heard rather than swamped by the numerical majority.

The case for majoritarianism

Waldron argues that under reasonable disagreement about rights, majority decision is the procedure that best respects citizens as equals, and that judicial review of legislation lacks a compelling democratic justification.

History

Concern that majorities might oppress minorities runs from Madison's Federalist arguments and Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835/40) through Mill's Considerations on Representative Government (1861). The modern debate over rights, constitutionalism, and judicial review was sharpened by Waldron's Law and Disagreement (1999) and the 'counter-majoritarian difficulty'.

Debates

Rights as limits on majorities

Whether constitutionally entrenched rights and judicial review legitimately constrain majority decisions, or whether, as Waldron argues, majoritarian legislatures better respect disagreement among equals.

Protecting minorities

How a democracy can prevent persistent minorities from being dominated, through devices such as proportional representation, federalism, or entrenched rights.

Key figures

• Alexis de Tocqueville
• John Stuart Mill
• Jeremy Waldron
• James Madison

Seminal works

• tocqueville1835
• mill1861
• waldron1999

Frequently asked questions

What is the 'tyranny of the majority'?

It is the danger that a numerical majority in a democracy will use its power to oppress minorities, whether through law or through social conformity, a worry made famous by Tocqueville and Mill.