Majority rule can dominate minorities and so fails as a guard against arbitrariness
Evidence
The fact that consent to a form of interference is not sufficient as a guard against arbitrariness means that no one who is concerned about domination can be happy about two developments that gathered momentum about the turn of the nineteenth century. One development was the growth of the populist idea, as we described it in the last chapter, that provided the majority rules, all is well. Majority rule may seem to be blessed by its consensual character, but it can clearly involve the domination of minority groups, and no one who resists domination can endorse unconstrained majoritarianism. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 321
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Systematic minority discrimination inevitably undermines the impartiality of the rule of law — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1382; Defeated minorities can accept majority rule when discourse can resume — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 62; Majority rule is not self-evidently correct and requires an extra ideological dignity (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Systematic minority discrimination inevitably undermines the impartiality of the rule of law
#corroborates(0.85) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1382 - Defeated minorities can accept majority rule when discourse can resume
#qualifies(0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 62 - Majority rule is not self-evidently correct and requires an extra ideological dignity
#expands(0.80) - Defeated minorities accept majority rule through continued discursive hope, not conviction change
#corroborates(0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 95 - Majority rule works only when members’ interests are homogeneous
#qualifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6251