Majoritarianism

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Majoritarianism is a political philosophy or ideology with an agenda asserting that a majority, whether based on a religion, language, social class, or other category of the population, is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. This traditional view has come under growing criticism, and liberal democracies have increasingly included constraints on what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens' fundamental rights.^[1] Majoritarianism should not be confused with electoral systems that give seats to candidates with only a plurality of votes. Although such systems are sometimes called majoritarian systems, they use plurality, not majority, to set winners. Some electoral systems, such as instant-runoff voting, are most often majoritarian – winners are most often determined by having majority of the votes that are being counted – but not always. A parliament that gives lawmaking power to any group that holds a majority of seats may be called a majoritarian parliament. Such is the case in the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Parliament of Saudi Arabia and many other chambers of power.

Under a democratic majoritarian political structure, the majority would not exclude any minority from future participation in the democratic process. Majoritarianism is sometimes pejoratively referred to by its opponents as "ochlocracy" or "tyranny of the majority". Majoritarianism is often referred to as majority rule, which may refer to a majority class ruling over a minority class, while not referring to the decision process called majority rule. Majority rule is a belief that the majority community should be able to rule a country in whichever way it wants. However, due to active dis-empowerment of the minority or minorities, in many cases what is claimed as the majority with the right to rule is only a minority of the voters.

Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. If democracy is restricted by a constitution that cannot be changed by a simple majority decision, then yesterday's majority is being given more weight than today's. If it is restricted by some small group, such as aristocrats, judges, priests, soldiers, or philosophers, then society becomes an oligarchy. The only restriction acceptable in a majoritarian system is that a current majority has no right to prevent a different majority emerging in the future; this could happen, for example, if a minority persuades enough of the majority to change its position. In particular, a majority cannot exclude a minority from future participation in the democratic process. Majoritarianism does not prohibit a decision being made by representatives as long as this decision is made via majority rule, as it can be altered at any time by any different majority emerging in the future.

One critique of majoritarianism is that systems without supermajority requirements for changing the rules for voting can be shown to likely be unstable.^[2] Among other critiques of majoritarianism is that most decisions in fact take place not by majority rule, but by plurality, unless the voting system artificially restricts candidates or options to two only, such as is done under Contingent voting, two-round voting and Instant-runoff voting.^[3] In turn, due to Gibbard’s theorem and Arrow's paradox, it is not possible to have a voting system with more than two options that retains adherence to both certain "fairness" criteria and rational decision-making criteria.^[3][4] Additionally, if majoritarianism is left unchecked, the rights of minority groups can be threatened.^[5] Some democracies have tried to resolve this by requiring supermajority support to enact changes to basic rights. For example, in the United States, the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion are written into the Constitution, meaning it would take more than a simple majority of the members of Congress to repeal the rights.^[6] Other democracies have sought to address threats to minority rights by adopting proportional voting systems that guarantee at least some seats in their national legislatures to minority political factions. Examples include New Zealand, where mixed-member proportional voting is used, and Australia, where a single transferable vote system is used.^[7][8] Whether these methods have succeeded in protecting minority interests, or have gone too far, remains a matter for debate.^[9]