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In social choice theory, the majority rule (MR) is a social choice rule that says that, when comparing two options (such as bills or candidates), the option preferred by more than half of the voters (a majority) should win.
In political philosophy, the majority rule is one of two major competing notions of democracy. The most common alternative is given by the utilitarian rule (or other welfarist rules), which identify the spirit of liberal democracy with the equal consideration of interests. [1] Although the two rules can disagree in theory, political philosophers beginning with James Mill and continuing through to the present day have nevertheless long argued the two can be reconciled in practice, with majority rule being a valid approximation to the utilitarian rule whenever voters preferences are similarly-strong. [1] [2] This position has found strong support in many social choice models, where the socially-optimal winner and the majority-preferred winner tend to overlap. [3] [4]
Majority rule is the most common social choice rule worldwide, being heavily used in deliberative assemblies for dichotomous decisions, e.g. whether or not to pass a bill. [5] Mandatory referendums where the question is yes or no are also generally decided by majority rule. [6] It is one of the basic rules of parliamentary procedure, as described in handbooks like Robert's Rules of Order. [1]
One alternative to the majority rule is the set of plurality rules, which includes ranked choice-runoff (RCV), two-round plurality, or first-preference plurality. This is often used in elections with more than two candidates. In these elections, the winning candidate is the one with the most votes after applying some voting procedure, even if a majority of voters would prefer some other candidate. [5]
The utilitarian rule, and cardinal social choice rules in general, take into account not just the number of voters who support each choice but also the intensity of their preferences.
Philosophers critical of majority rule have often argued that majority rule does not take into account the intensity of preference for different voters, and as a result "two voters who are casually interested in doing something" can defeat one voter who has "dire opposition" to the proposal of the two, [7] leading to poor deliberative practice or even to "an aggressive culture and conflict." [8]
Parliamentary rules may prescribe the use of a supermajoritarian rule under certain circumstances, such as the 60% filibuster rule to close debate in the US Senate. [4] However such requirement means that 41 percent of the members or more could prevent debate from being closed, an example where the majority will would be blocked by a minority.
Kenneth May proved that the simple majority rule is the only "fair" ordinal decision rule, in that majority rule does not let some votes count more than others or privilege an alternative by requiring fewer votes to pass. Formally, majority rule is the only decision rule that has the following properties: [9] [10]
In group decision-making voting paradoxes can form. It is possible that alternatives a, b, and c exist 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 majority support to pass, majority rule is vulnerable to rejecting the majority's decision.
According to Kenneth May, majority rule is the only "fair" decision rule. Majority rule does not let some votes count more than others or privilege an alternative by requiring fewer votes to pass. Formally, majority rule is the only binary decision rule that has the following properties: [11] [12]
Majority rule meets these criteria only if the number of voters is odd or infinite. If the number of voters is even, ties are possible, violating neutrality. Some assemblies permit the chair to vote only to break ties. This substitutes a loss of anonymity for the loss of neutrality.
In group decision-making voting paradoxes can form. It is possible that alternatives a, b, and c exist such that a majority prefers a to b, another majority prefers b to c, and yet another majority prefers c to a. (For each proposition to have majority, the measure must involve more than just voter's first preference.) Because majority rule requires an alternative to have majority support to pass, majority rule is vulnerable to rejecting the majority's decision. (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.)
A super-majority rule actually empowers the minority, making it stronger (at least through its veto) than the majority. McGann argued that when only one of multiple minorities is protected by the super-majority rule (same as seen in simple plurality elections systems), so the protection is for the status quo, rather than for the faction that supports it.
Another possible way to prevent tyranny is to elevate certain rights as inalienable. [13] Thereafter, any decision that targets such a right might be majoritarian, but it would not be legitimate, because it would violate the requirement for equal rights.
Voting theorists claimed that cycling leads to debilitating instability. [14] Buchanan and Tullock note that unanimity is the only decision rule that guarantees economic efficiency. [14]
McGann argued that majority rule helps to protect minority rights, at least in deliberative settings. 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 any decision can easily be overturned by another majority. Furthermore, suppose a minority wishes to overturn a decision. In that case, under majority rule it just needs to form a coalition that has more than half of the officials involved and that will give it power. Under supermajority rules, a minority needs its own supermajority to overturn a decision. [14]
To support the view that majority rule protects minority rights better than supermajority rules, McGann pointed to the cloture rule in the US Senate, which was used to prevent the extension of civil liberties to racial minorities. [14] Saunders, while agreeing that majority rule may offer better protection than supermajority rules, argued that majority rule may nonetheless be of little help to the least minorities. [15]
Under some circumstances, the legal rights of one person cannot be guaranteed without unjustly imposing on someone else. McGann wrote, "one man's right to property in the antebellum South was another man's slavery."
Amartya Sen has noted the existence of the liberal paradox, which shows that permitting assigning a very small number of rights to individuals may make everyone worse off. [16]
Saunders argued that deliberative democracy flourishes under majority rule and that under majority rule, participants always have to convince more than half the group, while under supermajoritarian rules participants might only need to persuade a minority (to prevent a change). [15]
Where large changes in seats held by a party may arise from only relatively slight change in votes cast (such as under FPTP), and a simple majority is all that is required to wield power (most legislatures in democratic countries), governments may repeatedly fall into and out of power. This may cause polarization and policy lurch, or it may encourage compromise, depending on other aspects of political culture. McGann argued that such cycling encourages participants to compromise, rather than pass resolutions that have the bare minimum required to "win" because of the likelihood that they would soon be reversed. [16]
Within this atmosphere of compromise, a minority faction may accept proposals that it dislikes in order to build a coalition for a proposal that it deems of greater moment. In that way, majority rule differentiates weak and strong preferences. McGann argued that such situations encourage minorities to participate, because majority rule does not typically create permanent losers, encouraging systemic stability. He pointed to governments that use largely unchecked majority rule, such as is seen under proportional representation in the Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden, as empirical evidence of majority rule's stability. [14]
Approval voting is a single-winner electoral system in which voters mark all the candidates they support, instead of just choosing one. The candidate with the highest approval rating is elected.
The two-round system, also called ballotage, top-two runoff, or two-round plurality, is a voting method used to elect a single winner. In the United States, it is often called a jungle or nonpartisan primary. It is sometimes called plurality runoff, although this term can also be used for other systems.
In social choice theory, Condorcet's voting paradox is a fundamental discovery by the Marquis de Condorcet that majority rule is inherently self-contradictory. The result states that it is logically impossible for any voting system to guarantee the winner has a majority of the vote, because it is possible no such winner exists: in some situations, a majority of voters will prefer A to B, B to C, and also C to A, even if every voter's individual preferences are rational and avoid self-contradiction. Examples of Condorcet's paradox are called Condorcet cycles or cyclic ties.
A Condorcet method is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, whenever there is such a candidate. A candidate with this property, the pairwise champion or beats-all winner, is formally called the Condorcet winner. The head-to-head elections need not be done separately; a voter's choice within any given pair can be determined from the ranking.
Arrow's impossibility theorem is a key result in social choice showing that no rank-order method for collective decision-making can satisfy the requirements of rational choice. Specifically, any such rule violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, the principle that a choice between and should not depend on the quality of a third, unrelated option .
Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, convenes together for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting. Residents of a jurisdiction represented by an elected official are called "constituents", and the constituents who choose to cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called "voters." There are different systems for collecting votes, but while many of the systems used in decision-making can also be used as electoral systems, any which cater to proportional representation can only be used in elections.
The Copeland or Llull method is a ranked-choice voting system based on counting each candidate's pairwise wins and losses.
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.
In social choice theory, May's theorem, also called the general possibility theorem, says that majority vote is the unique ranked social choice function between two candidates that satisfies the following criteria:
The participation criterion, sometimes called votermonotonicity, is a voting system criterion that says candidates should never lose an election as a result of receiving too many votes in support. More formally, it says that adding more voters who prefer Alice to Bob should not cause Alice to lose the election to Bob.
In political science and social choice theory, Black'smedian voter theorem states that if voters and candidates are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum and voters have single peaked preferences, any voting method satisfying the Condorcet criterion will elect the candidate preferred by the median voter.
The majority favorite criterion is a voting system criterion that says that, if a candidate would win more than half the vote in a first-preference plurality election, that candidate should win. Equivalently, if only one candidate is ranked first by a over 50% of voters, that candidate must win. It is occasionally referred to simply as the "majority criterion", but this term is more often used to refer to Condorcet's majority-rule principle.
Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that analyzes methods of combining individual opinions, beliefs, or preferences to reach a collective decision or create measures of social well-being. It contrasts with political science in that it is a normative field that studies how societies should make decisions, whereas political science is descriptive. Social choice incorporates insights from economics, mathematics, philosophy, political science, and game theory to find the best ways to combine individual preferences into a coherent whole, called a social welfare function.
Bullet, single-shot, or plump voting is when a voter supports only a single candidate, typically to show strong support for a single favorite.
The Borda method or order of merit is a positional voting rule which gives each candidate a number of points equal to the number of candidates ranked below them: the lowest-ranked candidate gets 0 points, the second-lowest gets 1 point, and so on. Once all votes have been counted, the option or candidate with the most points is the winner.
Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as ranked-choice voting or the alternative vote (AV), combines ranked voting together with a system for choosing winners from these rankings by repeatedly eliminating the candidate with the fewest first-place votes and reassigning their votes until only one candidate is left. It can be seen as a modified form of a runoff election or exhaustive ballot in which, after eliminating some candidates, the choice among the rest is made from already-given voter rankings rather than from a separate election. Many sources conflate this system of choosing winners with ranked-choice voting more generally, for which several other systems of choosing winners have also been used.
Rated, evaluative, graded, or cardinalvotingsystems are a class of voting methods which allow voters to state how strongly they support a candidate, which involves giving each one a grade on a separate scale. Cardinal methods and ordinal methods are the two categories of modern voting systems.
Ranked voting is any voting system that uses voters' orderings (rankings) of candidates to choose a single winner or multiple winners. Many ranked voting systems apply lower preferences just as contingency choices when higher preferences are found to be ineffective or the vote or part thereof needs to be transferred on in cases where higher preference was elected.
A major branch of social choice theory is devoted to the comparison of electoral systems, otherwise known as social choice functions. Viewed from the perspective of political science, electoral systems are rules for conducting elections and determining winners from the ballots cast. From the perspective of economics, mathematics, and philosophy, a social choice function is a mathematical function that determines how a society should make choices, given a collection of individual preferences.
A jury theorem is a mathematical theorem proving that, under certain assumptions, a decision attained using majority voting in a large group is more likely to be correct than a decision attained by a single expert. It serves as a formal argument for the idea of wisdom of the crowd, for decision of questions of fact by jury trial, and for democracy in general.
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