Abstract
This chapter provides a brief history of voting and of collective decision-making, especially in the medieval Catholic Church and in the late medieval and early modern representative bodies. The focal questions are how and why people accepted the authority of any purely mechanical procedure—be it the simple majority-principle, a two-third rule, or something else. This is not just a historical problem. Rather, some important theoretical disputes on the nature of democracy are related to this issue. The development of democracy can been as a breakthrough of the legitimacy of purely mechanical procedures. I present the most elementary result of the social-choice theory: the so-called May’s Theorem. I review the discussions about the theorem and try to show how, contrary to some claims, it captures at least a part of the democratic idea of political equality. The “paradoxes” of the social choice emerge when we move away from the simplest case characterized by a single issue, only two options, and a direct choice.
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In an interesting article Hastie and Kameda (2005) argue that the majority rule is psychologically salient as well as practically effective. They claim that the rule is popular “across the full spectrum of human groups from hunter-gatherer tribal societies to modern industrial democracies” (pp. 494, 495). However, the sources mentioned by them do not actually give much support to the claim that the rule has been popular among hunter-gatherers, although they present some real evidence that many non-human animals living in packs do follow “majorities”.
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Philippe Urfalino (2006, 2007) has remarked that the version of unanimity used in many non-European and pre-modern European assemblies should be characterized as the rule of apparent consensus rather than that of formal unanimity. Under apparent consensus, there is no separate stage of voting and no formal veto-rights. Instead, issues are discussed and negotiated, and the process continues until there is no open disagreement. There is no well-defined default rule: if an agreement cannot be reached, decisions are postponed or transferred to another body. Sometimes, stubborn minorities are simply excluded from further discussions or forced to submit by informal coercion. Such a rule should be distinguished from the formal veto—rule used in international congresses of the States or in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Polish sejm.
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This did make the process smoother but not necessarily less complicated. For example, in 1740, Pope Benedict XIV was elected in the 225th ballot. John Paul II was the next pope who changed the rules: he ordered that, after 33 unsuccessful ballots, a simple majority was sufficient for election. However, in 2007, Benedict XVI reversed the amendment and restored the old two-thirds rule.
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This complaint was common in those days. For example, when Andrew Melville, the Scottish reformer, refused to acknowledge a decision made in the presbytery of St. Andrews in 1591, he stated “quod suffragia essent ponderanda, non numeranda” (that votes should be weighed, not counted) (MacDonald, 2010).
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On Plato’s argument, see Crito 47c–d2, Gorgias 463d1–465e1, Republic I 341c4–342e11.
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See also Dahl (1989, 63–64).
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Thus, J. S. Mill’s famous plural-vote scheme (Mill, 1861/1972, 283–290) can be seen as an attempt to balance his radical proposal of general suffrage with a relatively familiar and widely accepted conservative element. After a consideration, Mill rejects another common device, the use of indirect elections (pp. 293–298).
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One of the institutions that the Bolsheviks adopted from the Czarist government was the totally arbitrary division of electoral constituencies and the attached system of indirect elections; both were in use in the first elections of the national Soviets.
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The two-thirds—rule was introduced by the Southern Democrats in 1844. At the 1860 convention, it caused a split in the party. No candidate could win the required super-majority, so the northerners nominated Douglas and the southerners nominated Breckinridge.
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A similar deadlock appeared in the Moldovan presidential elections 2009–2010. The Moldovan parliament chose the President with a 3/5-majority. After two subsequent failed elections, the parliament had to be dissolved. Neither the Communists (the largest party) nor their opponents were able to find the required supermajority. First the opposition forced new parliamentary elections by deadlocking the presidential elections; after losing their parliamentary majority, the Communists adopted a similar strategy.
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Here the problem of tied results is abstracted away. When the number of voters is even, the absolute-majority rule may produce ties. If there is no tie-breaking rule, and both candidates cannot be elected simultaneously, the rule is not decisive. For this reason, most committees use some tie-breaking rule. If the chair has the power to break ties, anonymity is violated. If ties are broken by drawing lots, strong neutrality is violated. If the status quo wins in tied cases, weak neutrality is violated. All tie-breaking rules violate some of May’s conditions. So, some condition has to be sacrificed for decisiveness. This, I think, shows that a violation of a condition may sometimes be quite harmless. Still, people are not indifferent with respect to the alternative tie-breaking rules. For example, in European parliaments, ties on ordinary motions are usually solved by the status quo rule, while in electing the presiding officer ties are most often solved by drawing lots (Rasch, 1995, 500).
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Switzerland is the crown jewel of the consociational theory of democracy. Since 1959, the posts in the federal government have been divided between the four main parties according to the “magic formula”. The election results have no effect on the composition of the government. If this were the full truth about the Swiss political system, the country could hardly be called a democracy. However, this consociational arrangement is balanced by the extensive use of the purely majoritarian referendum device.
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Another context in which super-majority requirements are often applied is the regulation of relationships between separate democratically elected bodies. For example, overriding the veto of a second chamber or impeaching a democratically-elected President usually requires extraordinary majorities. In such situations, there is a majority-will operating against another majority-will, and it is a natural requirement to devise special qualifications in order to resolve the dispute. Schwartzberg (2014) argues that if it is necessary to violate neutrality in order to protect a minority, it is more advisable to violate anonymity too, by giving the protected minority an exclusive veto-right rather than establishing a general veto-right for all coalitions of a certain size.
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Typically, these countries are (small) former British colonies.
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In the Australian and Swiss federations, this principle governs the use of nation-wide constitutional referenda. In order to become a law, a proposal has to win a nation-wide majority of votes as well as a majority in a majority of the separate states or cantons. Because of the second requirement, a minority can prevent a proposal. If the sub-units are of different sizes, this minority may be very small. In Switzerland, the theoretical minimum is 9 % of those who vote (a 51 % majority in the smallest cantons).
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Quorum requirements are sometimes applied in referenda. In the German States and in Hungary, a proposition is accepted only if at least 25 % of the eligible voters vote for a proposition; in Denmark 3/10 of voters have to support the proposition (2/5 in constitutional issues;, in Belarus, the support of a majority of all eligible voters is required. In Italy, Portugal, Romania, Moldova, Slovenia and Slovakia, more than a half of the electorate has to participate. Some countries define a quorum even for general elections (for example Thailand, Serbia, Russia, and Ukraine). If the voting turnout is not the required (usually, 50 % of the eligible voters) the proposition is rejected, or, in general elections, a new election has to be arranged. There is relatively little theoretical discussion on quorum requirements (see, however, Vermeule, 2007 and Laruelle & Valenciano, 2011), although they may have significant effects on decisions.
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Lagerspetz, E. (2016). Majority Decision. In: Social Choice and Democratic Values. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23261-4_2
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