Why Majority Rule Is Less Popular in Democratic Practice than in Democratic Theory

Page 160 systems do tend to go together. ¹³ Typically in PR countries electorates are fragmented. A single party rarely wins a majority of seats, much less a majority of electoral votes. Coalition cabinets are the rule. And stable coalitions typically require consensus building.

The political institutions of some countries impede majority rule in still other ways. In federal countries national majorities cannot always prevail over minorities concentrated in certain states or provinces. Though only six countries have federal systems, these include several of the oldest "stable polyarchies" (table 11.1). Other forms of minority veto over majority decisions are even more widespread. In most democratic countries the political system allows minorities to exercise a veto over policies by means of judicial review, which allows a high court to set aside legislation that in its view contravenes the constitution, or by pacts and understandings that create consociational arrangements of some sort, or sometimes by both (table 11.1).

The various limits on the scope of majoritarian government might be transcended if referenda were commonly employed. But national referenda are confined almost exclusively to Switzerland. Elsewhere they are either rare or nonexistent (table 11.2).

Most stable polyarchies, then, have not adopted strictly majoritarian systems. Of the twentyone countries analyzed by Lijphart, he judges only six to be more or less

fully majoritarian. An additional six are "majoritarianfederal," that is, national majorities are limited by federalism. All the rest are "consensual" rather than majoritarian

(table 11.3).

sarily exclude alternatives to strict majority rule. Whether people committed to the democratic process find it reasonable to adopt majority rule for all collective decisions, impose limits on majority rule, or move toward consensual arrangements therefore depends in part on the conditions under which they expect collective decisions will be made. If and as these conditions change, arrangements judged suitable in previous circumstances may be modified in one direction or another—

toward stricter majoritarianism or toward greater nonmajoritarianism. When political conflicts endanger national unity, for example, political leaders may replace majoritarian practices with consociational arrangements that ensure a veto to all significant subcultures. If and when the conflict subsides, these consociational arrangements may in turn give way to a less consensual, more majoritarian system, which is roughly the history of the Netherlands from the First World War to the 1980s.

The main conditions that favor majoritarian practices in a country are these. First, the more homogeneous the people of a country are, particularly in characteristics that are strongly associated with political attitudes, the less likely it is that a majority will support policies harmful to a minority and therefore the more likely it is that a broad consensus on the desirability of majority rule will exist. At the limit, a country's people would be so homogeneous that no majority could ever harm a minority without simultaneously harming its own members, an assumption of Rousseau's, I believe, that allowed him to entrust collective decisions about the general good so confidently to the majority.

Second, the stronger the expectations among the members of a political minority that they will enter into tomorrow's majority, the more acceptable majority rule will be to them, the less they will feel a need for such special guarantees as a minority veto, and the more likely they are to see these as impediments to their own future prospects as participants in a majority government.

Finally, whether as a consequence of the first two or for other reasons, majority rule is likely to gain greater support among members of a minority if they are confident that collective decisions will never fundamentally endanger the basic elements of their way of life, whether in matters of religion, language, economic security, or others.

Conversely, to the extent that one or more of these conditions is absent, some groups are likely to resist strict majority rule and to deny legitimacy to majority decisions. As we shall see in chapter 18, most countries of the world do lack these conditions (as well, often, as others favorable to democracy); this is therefore one reason, among others, why so many countries are not democratic. But even in countries with (otherwise) democratic, or polyarchic, institutions, the conditions favorable to majoritarianism just mentioned are frequently weak or absent. As a consequence, in these democratic countries strict majoritarianism has usually been rejected in favor of various nonmajoritarian and consensual arrangements for collective decisionmaking. ¹⁴

Confronted by conditions that would seriously undermine the general accept

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Page 162 ability and legitimacy of majority rule, then, democrats commonly prefer to adopt limitations on majoritarianism. To insist that by doing so they must necessarily violate the requirements of the democratic process seems to me unwarranted.

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The upshot of our exploration of majority rule, then, is this: The quest for a single rule to specify how collective decisions must be made in a system governed by the democratic process is destined to fail. No such rule, it seems, can be found.

On the other hand, the defects in majority rule are far too serious to be brushed aside. They oblige us to look with the utmost skepticism on the claim that democracy necessarily requires majority rule. Yet we are entitled to be just as skeptical about claims that an alternative would be clearly superior to majority rule or more consistent with the democratic process and its values. For all the alternatives to majority rule are also seriously flawed.

We may reasonably conclude, then, that judgments as to the best rule for collective decisions ought to be made only after a careful appraisal of the circumstances in which these decisions are likely to be taken. This conclusion is consistent with actual experience in different democratic countries, where people have adopted a variety of different rules and practices.

In adopting or rejecting majority rule, the people in democratic countries have not necessarily violated the democratic process or the values that justify it. For under different conditions, the democratic process may properly be carried out under different rules for making collective decisions.