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Majoritarian democracy is a form of democracy based upon a principle of majority rule. [1] Majoritarian democracy contrasts with consensus democracy, rule by as many people as possible. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Arend Lijphart offers what is perhaps the dominant definition of majoritarian democracy. He identifies that majoritarian democracy is based on the Westminster model, and majority rule. [5] According to Lijphart, the key features of a majoritarian democracy are:
In the majoritarian vision of democracy, voters mandate elected politicians to enact the policies they proposed during their electoral campaign. [6] Elections are the focal point of political engagement, with limited ability for the people to influence policymaking between elections. [7]
Though common, majoritarian democracy is not universally accepted – majoritarian democracy is criticized as having the inherent danger of becoming a "tyranny of the majority" whereby the majority in society could oppress or exclude minority groups, [1] which can lead to violence and civil war. [2] [3] Some argue[ who? ] that since parliament, statutes and preparatory works are very important in majoritarian democracies,[ citation needed ] and considering the absence of a tradition to exercise judicial review at the national level,[ citation needed ] majoritarian democracies are undemocratic.[ citation needed ]
Fascism rejects majoritarian democracy because the latter assumes equality of citizens and fascists claim that fascism is a form of authoritarian democracy that represents the views of a dynamic organized minority of a nation rather than the disorganized majority. [8]
There are few, if any, purely majoritarian democracies. In many democracies, majoritarianism is modified or limited by one or several mechanisms which attempt to represent minorities.
The United Kingdom is the classical example of a majoritarian system. [5] The United Kingdom's Westminster system has been borrowed and adapted in many other democracies. Majoritarian features of the United Kingdom's political system include:
However, even in the United Kingdom, majoritarianism has been at least somewhat limited by the introduction of devolved parliaments. [10]
Australia is a generally majoritarian democracy, although some have argued that it typifies a form of 'modified majoritarianism'. [9] This is because while the lower house of the Australian Parliament is elected via preferential voting, the upper house is elected via proportional representation. Proportional representation is a voting system that allows for greater minority representation. [11] Canada is subject to a similar debate. [12]
The United States has some elements of majoritarianism - such as first-past-the-post voting in many contexts - however this is complicated by variation among states. In addition, a strict separation of powers and strong federalism mediates majoritarianism. An example of this complexity can be seen in the role of the Electoral College in presidential elections, as a result of which a candidate who loses the popular vote may still go on to win the presidency. [13]
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone. Under other election systems, a bare plurality or a scant majority are all that are used to elect candidates. PR systems provide balanced representation to different factions, reflecting how votes are cast.
The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of votes that a candidate or political party requires before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a type of representation provided by some mixed electoral systems which combine local winner-take-all elections with a compensatory tier with party lists, in a way that produces proportional representation overall. Like proportional representation, MMP is not a single system, but a principle and goal of several similar systems. Some systems designed to achieve proportionality are still called mixed-member proportional, even if they generally fall short of full proportionality. In this case, they provide semi-proportional representation.
The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is an apportionment method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in proportional representation among political parties. It belongs to the class of highest-averages methods. Compared to ideal proportional representation, the D'Hondt method reduces somewhat the political fragmentation for smaller electoral district sizes, where it favors larger political parties over small parties.
In political science, parallel voting or superposition refers to the use of two or more electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture of at least two tiers, which do not interact with each other in any way; one part of a legislature is elected using one method, while another part is elected using a different method, with all voters participating in both. Thus, the final results can be found by calculating the results for each system separately based on the votes alone, then adding them together. A system is called fusion or majority bonus, another independent mixture of two system but without two tiers. Superposition is also not the same as "coexistence", which when different districts in the same election use different systems. Superposition, fusion and coexistence are distinct from dependent mixed electoral systems like compensatory (corrective) and conditional systems.
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. 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.
How Democratic is the American Constitution? is a book by political scientist Robert A. Dahl that discusses seven "undemocratic" elements of the United States Constitution.
Arend d'Angremond Lijphart is a Dutch-American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics. He is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is influential for his work on consociational democracy and his contribution to the new Institutionalism in political science.
Consociationalism is a form of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which remains stable due to consultation among the elites of these groups. Consociational states are often contrasted with states with majoritarian electoral systems.
The Gallagher index measures an electoral system's relative disproportionality between votes received and seats in a legislature. As such, it measures the difference between the percentage of votes each party gets and the percentage of seats each party gets in the resulting legislature, and it also measures this disproportionality from all parties collectively in any one given election. That collective disproportionality from the election is given a precise score, which can then be used in comparing various levels of proportionality among various elections from various electoral systems. The Gallagher index is a statistical analysis methodology utilised within political science, notably the branch of psephology.
The Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) is an organisation formed of members and supporters of the British Labour Party, who are interested in issues of democratic renewal and electoral reform.
A plural society is defined by Fredrik Barth as a society combining ethnic contrasts: the economic interdependence of those groups, and their ecological specialization. The ecological interdependence, or the lack of competition, between ethnic groups may be based on the different activities in the same region or on long–term occupation of different regions in the Defined by J S Furnivall as a medley of peoples - European, Chinese, Indian and native, who do mix but do not combine. Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the marketplace in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections of the community living side by side, within the same political unit.
In proportional representation systems, an electoral quota is the number of votes a candidate needs to be guaranteed election. They are used in some systems where a formula other than plurality is used to allocate seats.
The Pacification of 1917 was a political agreement between liberals and socialists on the left and some Christian parties on the right in the Netherlands, ending both the suffrage issue and the school struggle. The Christian parties involved would later present themselves as "Christian-democrats".
Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American political scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. Shugart specializes in electoral systems, party systems, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an orchardist, and runs the Fruits and Votes blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.
In political science, the effective number of parties is a diversity index introduced by Laakso and Rein Taagepera (1979), which provides for an adjusted number of political parties in a country's party system, weighted by their relative size. The measure is especially useful when comparing party systems across countries.
An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices.
A winner-take-all electoral system is one where a voting bloc can win all seats in a legislature or electoral district, denying representation to any political minorities. Such systems are used in many major democracies. Such systems are sometimes called "majoritarian representation", though this term is a misnomer, as most such systems do not always elect majority preferred candidates and do not always produce winners who received majority of votes cast in the district, and they allow parties to take a majority of seats in the chamber with just a minority of the vote.
A mixed electoral system is one that uses different electoral systems to elect different seats in a legislature. Most often, this involves a winner-take-all component combined with a proportional component. The results of the combination may be mixed-member proportional (MMP), where the overall results of the elections are proportional, or mixed-member majoritarian, in which case the overall results are semi-proportional, retaining disproportionalities from the majoritarian component. Systems that use multiple types of combinations are sometimes called supermixed.
Mixed-member majoritarian representation (MMM) is type of a mixed electoral system combining winner-take-all and proportional methods, where the disproportional results of the winner-take-all part are dominant over the proportional component. Mixed member majoritarian systems are therefore categorized under semi-proportional representation, and are usually contrasted with mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) which aims to provide proportional representation compensation ("top-up") seats.
According to our model the proportional system has a lower probability of rebellion than the majoritarian system. ... Empirically, we find that countries with proportional system has the lowest probability that groups rebel and that the more inclusive is the system, the smaller the probability of suffering a civil war.
Unfortunately, one of the worst democratic structures is the most ubiquitous: majority rule based on majority voting. It must be emphasised, furthermore, that these two practices are often the catalysts of division and bitterness, if not indeed violence and war.
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