The Case for Bare Majority Rule

This chapter reflects on the election of Donald Trump and the vote of the British electorate in favour of ‘Brexit’ from the European Union. While we refrain from judging the outcomes of these votes, we do discuss concerns pertaining to the lack of truthfulness in both campaigns. After rehearsing the lies on which the Trump and Brexit campaigns were based, we consider different explanations as to why these campaigns were nevertheless successful, and where this leaves the argument for epistemic democracy. Particularly worrisome are tendencies towards ‘epistemic insouciance’, ‘epistemic malevolence’, and ‘epistemic agnosticism’. We also consider the problematic influence of social media in terms of echo chambers and filter bubbles. The core argument in favour of epistemic democracy is that the pooling of votes by majority rule has epistemically beneficial properties, assuming certain conditions. If these assumptions are not met, or are systematically corrupted, then epistemic democracy is under threat.

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The Stakes of Decolonization, 1945–1960

10.1093/oso/9780199641048.003.0011 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Talbot C. Imlay

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Majority Rule ◽

Minority Rights ◽

The Political ◽

Nation State ◽

Individual Rights ◽

Political Implications ◽

Common Position ◽

Human Individual ◽

Post War

In examining the efforts of European socialists to forge a common position towards the issue of post-war empires, this chapter highlights some of the political stakes involved in decolonization. As debates between European and Asian socialists suggest, the process of decolonization witnessed a struggle between competing rights: national rights, minority rights, and human (individual) rights. Each set of rights possessed far-reaching political implications, none more so than minority rights, as they were often associated with limits on national sovereignty. These limits could be internal, such as constitutional restraints on the working of majority rule; but they could also take the form of external constraints on sovereignty, including alternatives to the nation state itself. The victory of the nation state, in other words, was inextricably tied to the defeat of minority rights as well as the growing predominance of human rights.

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Institution-Induced Stability

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice, Volume 1 ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190469733.013.5 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 84-102

Author(s):

Kenneth A. Shepsle

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Majority Rule ◽

Institutional Arrangements ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Lewis Carroll ◽

Simple Majority ◽

Simple Majority Rule ◽

Technical Literature ◽

Marquis De Condorcet ◽

Charles Dodgson

Simple majority rule is badly behaved. This is one of the earliest lessons learned by political scientists in the positive political theory tradition. Discovered and rediscovered by theorists over the centuries (including, famously, the Majorcan Franciscan monk Raymon Llull in the thirteenth century, the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in the eighteenth, and Duncan Black in the twentieth), the method of majority rule cannot be counted on to produce a rational collective choice. In many circumstances (made precise in the technical literature), it is very likely (a claim also made precise) that whatever choice is produced will suffer the property of not being “best” in the preferences of all majorities: for any candidate alternative, there will always exist another alternative that some majority prefers to it. This chapter suggests that while a collection of preferences often cannot provide a collectively “best” choice, institutional arrangements, which restrict comparisons of alternatives, may allow majority rule to function more smoothly. That is, where equilibrium induced by preferences alone may fail to exist, institutional structure may induce stability.

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Formal Decision Theory and Majority Rule

Ethics ◽

10.1086/292320 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 92 (2) ◽

pp. 199-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Glen O. Allen

Keyword(s):

Decision Theory ◽

Majority Rule

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Prosociality in Majority Decisions: A Laboratory Experiment on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set

Journal of Experimental Political Science ◽

10.1017/xps.2020.43 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Jan Sauermann

Keyword(s):

Majority Rule ◽

Choice Theory ◽

Social Choice Theory ◽

Behavioral Model ◽

Uncovered Set ◽

Multiple Dimensions ◽

Self Interest ◽

Empirical Perspective ◽

Committee Decision Making ◽

Policy Shifts

Abstract Social choice theory demonstrates that majority rule is generically indeterminate. However, from an empirical perspective, large and arbitrary policy shifts are rare events in politics. The uncovered set (UCS) is the dominant preference-based explanation for the apparent empirical predictability of majority rule in multiple dimensions. Its underlying logic assumes that voters act strategically, considering the ultimate consequences of their actions. I argue that all empirical applications of the UCS rest on an incomplete behavioral model assuming purely egoistically motivated individuals. Beyond material self-interest, prosocial motivations offer an additional factor to explain the outcomes of majority rule. I test my claim in a series of committee decision-making experiments in which I systematically vary the fairness properties of the policy space while keeping the location of the UCS constant. The experimental results overwhelmingly support the prosociality explanation.

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