Minorities accept majority rule only under a shared constitutional consensus.

Evidence

The deliberative character of the opinion and will formation of the voters is measured in the political public sphere by the discursive quality of the contributions, not by the goal of a consensus, which is in any case unattainable; rather, here the participants’ orientation to the truth is supposed to ignite an open-ended conflict of opinions that gives rise to competing public opinions. … All that is required to institutionalize the anarchic power of saying ‘no’ unleashed in public debates and election campaigns, in disputes between political parties, in the negotiations of parliament and its committees, and in the deliberations of the government and the courts, is the prior political integration of all participants into the consensus over the basic intention of their constitution. The latter is simple enough: it merely spells out the plain will of the citizens to obey only the laws they have given themselves. Without such a consensus on the meaning of deliberative democratic self-legislation, the respective minorities would not have any reason to submit to majoritarian decisions, for the time being at least. … In other words, there must be a recognizable connection between the results of government action and the input of the voters’ decisions, such that the citizens can recognize it as the confirmation of the rationalizing power of their own democratic opinion and will formation. The citizens must be able to perceive their conflict of opinions as both consequential and as a dispute over the better reasons. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 20

Categorization

• XREF: The legitimation mechanism links to deliberative-democratic theory generally and to the 1962 volume’s thesis on how legitimacy is produced through the public sphere. — connects to: Defeated minorities can accept majority rule when discourse can resume — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 62; Majority rule works only when members’ interests are homogeneous — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6251; Defeated minorities accept majority rule through continued discursive hope, not conviction change — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 95 (+2 more)

Related

• Defeated minorities accept majority rule through continued discursive hope, not conviction change (similarity 0.86)
• Deliberative democracy is agonal dissent atop constitutional consensus, not consensus-seeking talk. (similarity 0.86)
• Defeated minorities can accept majority rule when discourse can resume (similarity 0.85)
• Majority rule can dominate minorities and so fails as a guard against arbitrariness (similarity 0.81)
• Power-legitimation must come from within democracy itself once unifying worldviews fade (similarity 0.80)
• Democratic elections legitimize only as outcomes of prior public deliberation, not preference aggregation (similarity 0.80)
• Deliberative politics is constitutive of democracy, not a regulative ideal (similarity 0.79)
• Majority rule depends on citizens committing to the common good over self-interest (similarity 0.79)
• Democratic legitimacy requires tacit constitutional consensus renewed each generation (similarity 0.78)
• Legitimacy arises from inclusion plus deliberation filtered through reasons (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Defeated minorities accept majority rule through continued discursive hope, not conviction change #expands (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 95
• Defeated minorities can accept majority rule when discourse can resume #expands (0.82) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 62
• Deliberative democracy is agonal dissent atop constitutional consensus, not consensus-seeking talk. #expands (0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 19
• Majority rule works only when members’ interests are homogeneous #qualifies (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6251
• Conflict between freedoms is overcome only through mutual reciprocal recognition. #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 317