Majority rule
Encyclopedia
Majority rule is a decision rule that selects alternatives which have a majority
, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including the legislature
s of democratic nations. Some scholars have recommended against the use of majority rule, at least under certain circumstances, due to an ostensible trade-off between the benefits of majority rule and other values important to a democratic society. Most famously, it has been argued that majority rule might lead to a "tyranny of the majority
", and the use of supermajoritarian rules and constitutional limits on government power have been recommended to mitigate these effects. Recently some voting theorists have argued that majority rule is the rule that best protects minorities.
(first-past-the post) is often mistaken for majority rule, they are not the same. Plurality makes the options with the most votes the winner, regardless of whether the fifty percent threshold is passed. This is equivalent to majority rule when there are only two alternatives. However, when there are more than two alternatives, it is possible for plurality to choose an alternative that has fewer than fifty percent of the votes cast in its favor.
s being an exception. However, it is frequently used in legislatures and other bodies in which alternatives can be considered and amended in a process of deliberation until the final version of a proposal is adopted or rejected by majority rule. It is the default rule prescribed in books like Robert's Rules of Order
. The rules of order of most groups additionally prescribe the use of a supermajoritarian rule under certain circumstances, a two-thirds rule, for example, to reopen debate on a measure that has already been decided. One exception is Rusty's Rules of Order, which serves as the standing orders of the Industrial Workers of the World
, which is a simplification of Robert's Rules that prescribes the use of majority rule only.
Strictly speaking, it has been shown that majority rule meets these criteria only if the number of voters is odd or infinite. If the number of voters is even, there is the chance that there will be a tie, and so the criterion of neutrality is not met. Many deliberative bodies reduce one participant's voting capacity—namely, they allow the chair to vote only to break ties. This substitutes a loss of total anonymity for the loss of neutrality.
to form. That is, it is possible that there are alternatives a, b, and c such that a majority prefers a to b, another majority prefers b to c, and yet another majority prefers c to a.
Because majority rule requires an alternative to have only majority support to pass, a majority under majority rule is especially vulnerable to having its decision overturned. (The minimum number of alternatives that can form such a cycle (voting paradox) is 3 if the number of voters is different from 4, because the Nakamura number
of the majority rule is 3. For supermajority rules the minimum number is often greater, because the Nakamura number is often greater.)
As Rae argued and Taylor proved in 1969, majority rule is the rule that maximizes the likelihood that the issues a voter votes for will pass and that the issues a voter votes against will fail.
". Supermajoritarian rules, such as the three-fifths supermajority rule required to end a filibuster
in the United States Senate
, have been proposed as preventative measures of this problem. Other experts argue that this solution is questionable. Supermajority rules do not guarantee that it is a minority that will be protected by the supermajority rule; they only establish that one of two alternatives is the status quo
, and privilege it against being overturned by a mere majority. To use the example of the US Senate, if a majority votes against cloture
, then the filibuster will continue, even though a minority supports it. Anthony McGann argues that when there are multiple minorities and one is protected (or privileged) by the supermajority rule, there is no guarantee that the protected minority won't be one that is already privileged, and if nothing else it will be the one that has the privilege of being aligned with the status quo.
Another way to safeguard against tyranny of the majority, it is argued, is to guarantee certain rights. Inalienable rights, including who can vote, which cannot be transgressed by a majority, can be decided beforehand as a separate act, by charter or constitution. Thereafter, any decision that unfairly targets a minority's right could be said to be majoritarian, but would not be a legitimate example of a majority decision because it would violate the requirement for equal rights
. In response, advocates of unfettered majority rule argue that because the procedure that privileges constitutional rights is generally some sort of supermajoritarian rule, this solution inherits whatever problems this rule would have. They also add the following: First, constitutional rights, being words on paper, cannot by themselves offer protection. Second, under some circumstances, the rights of one person cannot be guaranteed without making an imposition on someone else; as Anthony McGann wrote, "one man’s right to property in the antebellum South was another man's slavery". Finally, as Amartya Sen
stated when presenting the liberal paradox
, a proliferation of rights may make everyone worse off.
s. For example, the authors of An Anarchist Critique of Democracy argue that "two voters who are casually interested in doing something" can defeat one voter who has "dire opposition" to the proposal of the two.
Voting theorists have often claimed that cycling leads to debilitating instability. Buchanan and Tullock argue that unanimity is the only decision rule that guarantees economic efficiency.
Supermajority rules are often used in binary decisions where a positive decision is weightier than a negative one. Under the standard definition of special majority voting, a positive decision is made if and only if a substantial portion of the votes support that decision—for example, two thirds or three fourths. For example, US jury decisions require the support of at least 10 of 12 jurors, or even unanimous support. This supermajoritarian concept follows directly from the presumption of innocence
on which the US legal system is based. Rousseau advocated the use of supermajority voting on important decisions when he said, "The more the deliberations are important and serious, the more the opinion that carries should approach unanimity."
To support the view that majority rule protects minority rights better than supermajority rules McGann points to the cloture rule in the US Senate, which was used to prevent the extension of civil liberties to racial minorities. Ben Saunders, while agreeing that majority rule may offer better protection than supermajority rules, argues that majority rule may nonetheless be of little help to the most despised minorities in a group.
Another argument for majority rule is that within this atmosphere of compromise, there will be times when a minority faction will want to support the proposal of another faction in exchange for support of a proposal it believes to be vital. Because it would be in the best interest of such a faction to report the true intensity of its preference, so the argument goes, majority rule differentiates weak and strong preferences. McGann argues that situations such as these give minorities incentive to participate, because there are few permanent losers under majority rule, and so majority rule leads to systemic stability. He points to governments that use majority rule which largely goes unchecked—the governments of the Netherlands
, Austria
, and Sweden
, for example—as empirical evidence of majority rule's stability.
Majority
A majority is a subset of a group consisting of more than half of its members. This can be compared to a plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset; i.e. a plurality is not necessarily a majority as the largest subset may consist of less than half the group's population...
, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including the legislature
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
s of democratic nations. Some scholars have recommended against the use of majority rule, at least under certain circumstances, due to an ostensible trade-off between the benefits of majority rule and other values important to a democratic society. Most famously, it has been argued that majority rule might lead to a "tyranny of the majority
Tyranny of the majority
The phrase "tyranny of the majority" , used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a dissenting individual's interest that the individual would be...
", and the use of supermajoritarian rules and constitutional limits on government power have been recommended to mitigate these effects. Recently some voting theorists have argued that majority rule is the rule that best protects minorities.
Distinction
Though pluralityPlurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...
(first-past-the post) is often mistaken for majority rule, they are not the same. Plurality makes the options with the most votes the winner, regardless of whether the fifty percent threshold is passed. This is equivalent to majority rule when there are only two alternatives. However, when there are more than two alternatives, it is possible for plurality to choose an alternative that has fewer than fifty percent of the votes cast in its favor.
Use
Being a binary decision rule, majority rule has little use in public elections, with many referendumReferendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
s being an exception. However, it is frequently used in legislatures and other bodies in which alternatives can be considered and amended in a process of deliberation until the final version of a proposal is adopted or rejected by majority rule. It is the default rule prescribed in books like Robert's Rules of Order
Robert's Rules of Order
Robert's Rules of Order is the short title of a book containing rules of order intended to be adopted as a parliamentary authority for use by a deliberative assembly written by Brig. Gen...
. The rules of order of most groups additionally prescribe the use of a supermajoritarian rule under certain circumstances, a two-thirds rule, for example, to reopen debate on a measure that has already been decided. One exception is Rusty's Rules of Order, which serves as the standing orders of the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, which is a simplification of Robert's Rules that prescribes the use of majority rule only.
May's theorem
According to May, majority rule is the only reasonable decision rule that is "fair", that is, that does not privilege voters by letting some votes count for more or privilege an alternative by requiring fewer votes for its passing. Stated more formally, majority rule is the only binary decision rule that has the following properties:- Fairness: This can be further separated into two properties:
- Anonymity: The decision rule treats each voter identically. When using majority rule, it makes no difference who casts a vote; indeed the voter's identity need not even be known.
- Neutrality: The decision rule treats each alternative equally. This is unlike supermajoritarian rules, which can allow an alternative that has received fewer votes to win.
- Decisiveness: The decision rule selects a unique winner.
- Monotonicity: The decision rule would always, if a voter were to change a preference, select the alternative that the voter preferred, if that alternative would have won before the change in preference. Similarly, the decision rule would never, if a voter were to change a preference, select a candidate the voter did not prefer, if that alternative would not have won before the change in preference.
Strictly speaking, it has been shown that majority rule meets these criteria only if the number of voters is odd or infinite. If the number of voters is even, there is the chance that there will be a tie, and so the criterion of neutrality is not met. Many deliberative bodies reduce one participant's voting capacity—namely, they allow the chair to vote only to break ties. This substitutes a loss of total anonymity for the loss of neutrality.
Other properties
In group decision-making it is possible for a voting paradoxVoting paradox
The voting paradox is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic , even if the preferences of individual voters are not. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other...
to form. That is, it is possible that there are alternatives a, b, and c such that a majority prefers a to b, another majority prefers b to c, and yet another majority prefers c to a.
Because majority rule requires an alternative to have only majority support to pass, a majority under majority rule is especially vulnerable to having its decision overturned. (The minimum number of alternatives that can form such a cycle (voting paradox) is 3 if the number of voters is different from 4, because the Nakamura number
Nakamura number
In cooperative game theory and social choice theory, the Nakamura number measures the degree of rationalityof preference aggregation rules , such as voting rules....
of the majority rule is 3. For supermajority rules the minimum number is often greater, because the Nakamura number is often greater.)
As Rae argued and Taylor proved in 1969, majority rule is the rule that maximizes the likelihood that the issues a voter votes for will pass and that the issues a voter votes against will fail.
Minority rights
Because a majority can win a vote under majority rule, it has been commonly argued that majority rule can lead to a "tyranny of the majorityTyranny of the majority
The phrase "tyranny of the majority" , used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a dissenting individual's interest that the individual would be...
". Supermajoritarian rules, such as the three-fifths supermajority rule required to end a filibuster
Filibuster
A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...
in the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
, have been proposed as preventative measures of this problem. Other experts argue that this solution is questionable. Supermajority rules do not guarantee that it is a minority that will be protected by the supermajority rule; they only establish that one of two alternatives is the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
, and privilege it against being overturned by a mere majority. To use the example of the US Senate, if a majority votes against cloture
Cloture
In parliamentary procedure, cloture is a motion or process aimed at bringing debate to a quick end. It is also called closure or, informally, a guillotine. The cloture procedure originated in the French National Assembly, from which the name is taken. Clôture is French for "ending" or "conclusion"...
, then the filibuster will continue, even though a minority supports it. Anthony McGann argues that when there are multiple minorities and one is protected (or privileged) by the supermajority rule, there is no guarantee that the protected minority won't be one that is already privileged, and if nothing else it will be the one that has the privilege of being aligned with the status quo.
Another way to safeguard against tyranny of the majority, it is argued, is to guarantee certain rights. Inalienable rights, including who can vote, which cannot be transgressed by a majority, can be decided beforehand as a separate act, by charter or constitution. Thereafter, any decision that unfairly targets a minority's right could be said to be majoritarian, but would not be a legitimate example of a majority decision because it would violate the requirement for equal rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
. In response, advocates of unfettered majority rule argue that because the procedure that privileges constitutional rights is generally some sort of supermajoritarian rule, this solution inherits whatever problems this rule would have. They also add the following: First, constitutional rights, being words on paper, cannot by themselves offer protection. Second, under some circumstances, the rights of one person cannot be guaranteed without making an imposition on someone else; as Anthony McGann wrote, "one man’s right to property in the antebellum South was another man's slavery". Finally, as Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...
stated when presenting the liberal paradox
Liberal paradox
The liberal paradox is a logical paradox advanced by Amartya Sen, building on the work of Kenneth Arrow and his impossibility theorem, which showed that within a system of menu-independent social choice, it is impossible to have both a commitment to "Minimal Liberty", which was defined as the...
, a proliferation of rights may make everyone worse off.
Other arguments for limitations
Some argue that majority rule can lead to poor deliberation practice or even to "an aggressive culture and conflict". Along these lines, some have asserted that majority rule fails to measure the intensity of preferenceIntensity of preference
"Intensity of preference" is a term popularized by the work of the economist Kenneth Arrow, who was a co-recipient of the 1972 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics...
s. For example, the authors of An Anarchist Critique of Democracy argue that "two voters who are casually interested in doing something" can defeat one voter who has "dire opposition" to the proposal of the two.
Voting theorists have often claimed that cycling leads to debilitating instability. Buchanan and Tullock argue that unanimity is the only decision rule that guarantees economic efficiency.
Supermajority rules are often used in binary decisions where a positive decision is weightier than a negative one. Under the standard definition of special majority voting, a positive decision is made if and only if a substantial portion of the votes support that decision—for example, two thirds or three fourths. For example, US jury decisions require the support of at least 10 of 12 jurors, or even unanimous support. This supermajoritarian concept follows directly from the presumption of innocence
Presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence, sometimes referred to by the Latin expression Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat, is the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. Application of this principle is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, recognised in many...
on which the US legal system is based. Rousseau advocated the use of supermajority voting on important decisions when he said, "The more the deliberations are important and serious, the more the opinion that carries should approach unanimity."
Minority rights
McGann argues that majority rule helps to protect minority rights, at least in settings in which deliberation occurs. The argument is that cycling ensures that parties that lose to a majority have an interest to remain part of the group's process, because the decision can easily be overturned by another majority. Furthermore, if a minority wishes to overturn a decision, it needs to form a coalition with only enough of the group members to ensure that more than half approves of the new proposal. (Under supermajority rules, a minority might need a coalition consisting of something greater than a majority to overturn a decision.)To support the view that majority rule protects minority rights better than supermajority rules McGann points to the cloture rule in the US Senate, which was used to prevent the extension of civil liberties to racial minorities. Ben Saunders, while agreeing that majority rule may offer better protection than supermajority rules, argues that majority rule may nonetheless be of little help to the most despised minorities in a group.
Other arguments against limitations
Some argue that deliberative democracy flourishes under majority rule. They argue that under majority rule, participants always have to convince more than half the group at the very least, while under supermajoritarian rules participants might only need to persuade a minority. Furthermore, proponents argue that cycling gives participants an interest to compromise, rather than strive to pass resolutions that only have the bare minimum required to "win".Another argument for majority rule is that within this atmosphere of compromise, there will be times when a minority faction will want to support the proposal of another faction in exchange for support of a proposal it believes to be vital. Because it would be in the best interest of such a faction to report the true intensity of its preference, so the argument goes, majority rule differentiates weak and strong preferences. McGann argues that situations such as these give minorities incentive to participate, because there are few permanent losers under majority rule, and so majority rule leads to systemic stability. He points to governments that use majority rule which largely goes unchecked—the governments of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, for example—as empirical evidence of majority rule's stability.
See also
- Appeal to the majority
- Arrow's theorem
- Condorcet's jury theoremCondorcet's jury theoremCondorcet's jury theorem is a political science theorem about the relative probability of a given group of individuals arriving at a correct decision...
- Majority criterionMajority criterionThe majority criterion is a single-winner voting system criterion, used to compare such systems. The criterion states that "if one candidate is preferred by a majority of voters, then that candidate must win"....
- Majority loser criterionMajority loser criterionThe majority loser criterion is a criterion to evaluate single-winner voting systems. The criterion states that if a majority of voters prefers every other candidate over a given candidate, then that candidate must not win....
- Mutual majority criterionMutual majority criterionThe mutual majority criterion is a criterion used to compare voting systems. It is also known as the majority criterion for solid coalitions and the generalized majority criterion...
- NIBMAR
- OchlocracyOchlocracyOchlocracy or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities.As a pejorative for majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase mobile vulgus meaning "the fickle crowd", from which the English term "mob" was originally derived in the...
- Voting system criterion
- Voting systemVoting systemA voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election or on a policy referendum....
Further reading
- Black, D.: The Theory of Committees and Elections, Cambridge 1958
- Farquharson, R.: Theory of Voting, Oxford 1961