scholarly journals Majority Rule and the Right to Strike

1949 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 307 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
The Right

Following Majority Rule versus Deferring to Elders: Educational Background Shapes Group Decision Preference in Burmese Children

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yo Nakawake ◽  
Mark Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
International Schools ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Care Centre ◽  
The Right ◽  
Universal Pattern ◽  
Day Care Centre

Previous studies showed that most children believe majority rule is the right decision rule, and prefer it to authority rule when making group decisions among peers. Yet, these were conducted mostly in Western or similar populations. Here, we conducted experiments with fifty-one Burmese children (4 to 11 years old) at three types of educational institutions: international schools, a monastery school and a day-care centre for street children. In the experiment, children were asked whether they prefer majority or authority rule in a hypothetical story. The result showed the educational institution influences the proportion choosing majority rule, suggesting that preference for majority rule may not be a universal pattern and decision preference may be shaped by cultural factors.

Second Mechanism of Democratic Reason: Majority Rule

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Cognitive Diversity ◽  
Condorcet Jury Theorem ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Jury Theorem ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues that majority rule is a useful complement of inclusive deliberation, not just because majority rule is more efficient timewise, but because it has distinct epistemic properties of its own. It also stresses that majority rule is best designed for collective prediction—that is, the identification of the best options out of those selected during the deliberative phase. Of all the competing alternatives (rule of one or rule of the few), majority rule maximizes the chances of predicting the right answer among the proposed options. The chapter considers several accounts of the epistemic properties of majority rule, including the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the Miracle of Aggregation, and a more fine-grained model based on cognitive diversity.

Theories of Majority Rule

1932 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gilbert Heinberg
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Greek City ◽  
External Resources ◽  
The People ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Rich ◽  
City States ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do So

The term “majority rule” is as impossible to escape as it is apparently difficult to define with precision. Aristotle generally employed it to designate the conduct of government by the poor citizens, who were more numerous than the rich, in the Greek city states. In canon law, it meant the verdict of the maior and sanior pars of a small group. Frederic Harrison wrote about the “rule” of the “effective majority”—that section of any community or social aggregate, which, for the matter in hand, practically outweighs the remainder. He explains that it may do so “by virtue of its preponderance in numbers, or in influence, or in force of conviction, or in external resources, or in many other ways.” Sir George Cornewall Lewis thought that where the ultimate decision is vested in a body there is no alternative other than to count numbers, and to abide by the opinion of a majority. But in alleging that “no historian, in discussing the justice or propriety of any decision of a legislative body, or of a court of justice, thinks of defending the decision of the majority by saying that it was the decision of the majority,” he did not anticipate the view of the English historian Hearnshaw. According to the latter, “The faith of a democrat requires him to believe that in the long run the majority of the people finds its way to the truth, and that in the long run it tries to do the right.”

How Will Majority Rule Come About in Azania/South Africa?

1983 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentine J. Belfiglio
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Party ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Changes

There is a cancer in the body politic of South Africa that may not be cured in the foreseeable future but cannot be ignored. The Prime Minister, Pieter Willem Botha, is currently attempting to again support for a modified form of apartheid or multinational development. More land and resources must be assigned to Blacks, and a great deal more capital and recurrent funds must be spent if the Homelands are to be built up and made viable and attractive. Meanwhile, some concessions to Indians and Coloureds are being made to get them to acquiesce to a modified system of government and administration. They have not, however, satisfied Blacks, who want nothing less than majority rule, and the constitutional changes are strongly opposed by the right-wing faction of the ruling National Party. This short article will review prevailing attitudes and recommendations concerning current developments in South Africa, and then offer a possible solution to the seemingly insolvable dilemma.

The Argument for Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-164
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Decision Procedures ◽  
Cognitive Diversity ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
Formal Properties

This chapter defends an epistemic argument for democracy, namely the argument that the rule of the many is better at aggregating knowledge and, in the version presented here, at producing better decisions than the rule of the few. This argument builds on the formal properties of two key democratic decision-making mechanisms of democracy, namely inclusive deliberation on equal grounds and majority rule with universal suffrage. Properly used in sequence and under the right conditions, these two mechanisms ensure that no information and viewpoint is ignored and maximize the cognitive diversity brought to bear on collective political problems and predictions. Building on existing formal results by Lu Hong and Scott Page, the chapter introduces the “Number Trumps Ability” theorem, which formalizes the intuition that many minds are smarter than just a few. Under the right conditions systems governed by democratic decision-procedures can be expected to deliver greater epistemic performance than less inclusive and egalitarian systems.

scholarly journals Majority, Grand or All-Party Coalitions?

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 90-109
Author(s):  
Peter Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Weighted Majority ◽  
Voting System ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Right ◽  
Weighted Majority Voting ◽  
Inclusive Form

By what principle does one majority have the right to rule, and another not? Secondly, while elections are generally transparent, why should forming a government be secretive? Is it because people believe, not only in majority rule, which may be fine, but also in (simple or weighted) majority voting, which is not so good? There are, after all, other more accurate voting systems by which can be identified the will of the majority; some of these latter methodologies are non-majoritarian. Now, if decision-making were to be based on a non-majoritarian voting procedure, the right to majority rule might be brought into question; indeed, majoritarianism might become obsolescent. Other forms of governance should therefore also be examined. Accordingly, this paper considers first, some of the deficiencies of a majoritarian polity; next, a more inclusive form of decision-making; then, majoritarian and non-majoritarian types of governance; and lastly, a voting system by which a parliament may elect a national government.

scholarly journals Good Governance

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 132-155
Author(s):  
Peter Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Political Decisions

In many countries, „free and fair‟ parliament elections precede a process of cabinet selection which, in contrast, is often far from transparent. In single party majority rule, the party which wins the election then forms the government, its leader becomes the premier, and he/she then has the power to hire and fire ministers, as it pleases. Where elections result in a number of parties being represented in parliament, none of which has a majority, there invariably follows a very opaque part of the democratic process: inter-party meetings, wherein various parties try to form a majority coalition, with ministries allocated to party functionaries in deals perhaps shady or worse. A third structure relates primarily to conflict zones, all-party power-sharing; in these situations, any negotiations by which a government is formed can be both problematic and protracted. It need not be so. In either a single-party majority rule, a majority or grand coalition, or a unity government, the parliamentary party or parties concerned could use a transparent voting procedure, a tabular mechanism by which every mp can vote, not only for those whom they wish to see in government, but also for each nominee‟s ministerial post. It is called a matrix vote. This article will examine different government structures – one-party, two-party and multi-party states; it will examine the assumptions on which democracy is based, with particular regard to the fact that the right of a majority to rule is often interpreted to mean that political decisions can best be resolved by binary votes; it will consider a hypothetical example of the matrix vote; and finally, it will discuss the feasibility of an inclusive, all-party political structure.

The Ethos of Modern Democracy and the Church [1957]

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Formal Features

This article is a passionate call on the Catholic Church to accept democracy on substantive, not only instrumental grounds, and to grant Catholic believers independence in their electoral choices. Böckenförde here lays out his democratic theory, which is formally built on the three cornerstones of majority rule, individual liberty, and equality, whereby the latter two constrain the former and guard majority rule from degenerating into majority despotism. In the long term, the formal features of democracy alone will not suffice to sustain democratic politics, however. What is required, according to Böckenförde, is an ethos among the citizenry and its leaders to remain committed to these formal values. The first goal of every citizen must therefore be to ensure that the formal features of democracy are guaranteed and safeguarded, not that his or her personal values are politically realized. Democracy requires, Böckenförde lays out, a genuine willingness to compromise, not as a tactical manoeuvre because one is not (yet) strong enough to govern alone, but as a genuine concession and renunciation because one accords also to one’s political opponent the right to his own political convictions.

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