Majoritarianism (often also called majority rule) is a political philosophy or agenda which asserts that the major segment of a country's population is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in that country's society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. Under a majoritarian political structure the majority has a single restriction—it is not allowed to exclude any minority from future participation in the democratic process.
Majority rule is defined as the rule that requires at least 50% plus one person of community members to agree and to vote for a measure in order for the whole community to make a decision on that measure.
Two variations of majoritarianism can be found: the loose Majoritarianism that allows in some cases the exclusion of some individuals or minorities from future participation in the democratic process (by ostracizing them, killing them or taking their voting rights under certain conditions decided by a majority), and the strict Majoritarianism that prohibits totally the exclusion of a minority or of an individual from future participation in the democratic process (ostracizing or killing or taking away voting rights is not allowed).
Pejoratively the opponents of majority rule call it "tyranny of the majority".
Majoritarianism argues that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. If democracy is restricted by a constitution which cannot be changed by a simple majority decision then yesterday's majority is being given more weight than today's; if it is restricted by some small group, such as aristocrats, judges, priests, soldiers or philosophers, then society becomes an oligarchy. The only restriction they accept is that the current majority has no right to prevent a different majority emerging in the future, possibly because a minority persuades enough of the majority to change its position. In particular, the majority cannot exclude the minority from future participation in the democratic process. Liberals among them believe that sufficient individuals are concerned that they themselves could at times be in the minority, so that the majority would foster a general culture of tolerance for minorities. It is also notable (and often a subject of misuderstanding) that majoritarianism does not prohibit a decision being made by representatives as long as this decision is made via majority rule, as it can be altered at any time by any different majority emerging in the future.
History and legacy
Accurate majority rule (by using polls in order to define accurately what the majority really wants today and make every decision based on that majority will) has never been tried as a political regime in human history, with the exception of Athenian Democracy and some other ancient Greek states. However, some argue that none of those Greek states were perfect with respect to accurate majority rule, and most of the time due to technical reasons an aggressive minority (mob) with the help of aristocrats overcame the accurate majority will.
Although majority rule is strictly defined and has never been tried in human history with accuracy, majoritarianism (as a theory), similar to democracy, has often been used as a pretext by sizable or aggressive minorities in order to group people together and form cliques, so as to oppress other smaller (or inactive) minorities, or even sometimes the (inactive) majority.
This agenda is most frequently encountered in the realm of religion: In essentially all Western nations, for instance, Christmas Day - and in some countries, other important dates in the Christian calendar as well - are recognized as legal holidays; plus a particular denomination may be designated as the state religion and receive financial backing from the government (examples include the Church of England in the United Kingdom and the Lutheran Church in the Scandinavian countries). Virtually all countries also have one or more official languages, often to the exclusion of some minority group or groups within that country who do not speak the language or languages so designated.
Reform and backlash
In recent times - especially beginning in the 1960s - majoritarianism has come under intense attack from liberal reformers in many countries: In 1963, the United States Supreme Court declared that prayer in the nation's public schools was unconstitutional, and since then many localities have sought to limit, or even prohibit, religious displays on public property. Speakers of languages other than English have also won broader rights in the United States, as legal documents, including those pertaining to voting, have been made available in other languages, particularly Spanish. The movement toward greater consideration for the rights of minorities within a society is often referred to as multiculturalism.
This has provoked a backlash from advocates of majoritarianism, who lament the Balkanization of society they claim has resulted from the gains made by the multicultural agenda; these concerns were articulated in a 1972 book, The Dispossessed Majority, written by Wilmot Robertson. Multiculturalists, in turn, have accused majoritarians of racism and/or xenophobia, a charge which the majoritarians (or at least the more moderate ones) deny.
Majoritarianism in the United States
In contemporary America, the leading mainstream majoritarian political forces include the Christian Coalition and the English-only movement, which seeks to make English the official language in all 50 U.S. states, a fact that has never been formally codified; many organizations opposed to immigration have also sprung up, but not all of the latter are necessarily motivated by a majoritarian philosophy as some opponents of immigration base their opposition to it on economic or even environmental grounds. Some militant adherents of majoritarianism can be found in the Ku Klux Klan, in neo-Nazi groups, and in some other minorities.