Editing Majority rule (section)

=== Arguments against limitations ===

==== Minority rights ====

McGann argued that majority rule helps to protect [[minority rights]], at least in deliberative settings. The argument is that cycling ensures that parties that lose to a majority have an interest to remain part of the group's process, because any decision can easily be overturned by another majority. Furthermore, suppose a minority wishes to overturn a decision. In that case, under majority rule it just needs to form a coalition that has more than half of the officials involved and that will give it power. Under supermajority rules, a minority needs its own supermajority to overturn a decision.<ref name="Tyranny" />

To support the view that majority rule protects minority rights better than supermajority rules, McGann pointed to the cloture rule in the US Senate, which was used to prevent the extension of [[civil liberties]] to racial minorities.<ref name="Tyranny" /> Saunders, while agreeing that majority rule may offer better protection than supermajority rules, argued that majority rule may nonetheless be of little help to the least minorities.<ref name="Saunders">{{cite web | url = https://oxford.academia.edu/documents/BenSaunders_SubmittedThesis.pdf | title = Democracy-as-Fairness: Justice, Equal Chances, and Lotteries | access-date = September 8, 2013 | author = Ben Saunders | year = 2008 |archive-date=September 10, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080910032028/http://oxford.academia.edu/documents/BenSaunders_SubmittedThesis.pdf }}</ref>

Under some circumstances, the legal rights of one person cannot be guaranteed without unjustly imposing on someone else. McGann wrote, "one man's right to property in the antebellum South was another man's slavery."{{Cn|date=September 2024}} 

[[Amartya Sen]] has noted the existence of the [[liberal paradox]], which shows that permitting assigning a very small number of rights to individuals may make everyone worse off.<ref name="Logic">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iv1sTJtPEp8C |title = The Logic of Democracy: Reconciling Equality, Deliberation, and Minority Protection|isbn = 0472069497|last1 = McGann|first1 = Anthony J.|year = 2006| publisher=University of Michigan Press }}</ref>

==== Other arguments ====
Saunders argued that [[deliberative democracy]] flourishes under majority rule and that under majority rule, participants always have to convince more than half the group, while under [[Supermajority|supermajoritarian]] rules participants might only need to persuade a minority (to prevent a change).<ref name="Saunders" /> 

Where large changes in seats held by a party may arise from only relatively slight change in votes cast (such as under FPTP), and a simple majority is all that is required to wield power (most legislatures in democratic countries), governments may repeatedly fall into and out of power. This may cause polarization and policy lurch, or it may encourage compromise, depending on other aspects of political culture. McGann argued that such cycling encourages participants to compromise, rather than pass resolutions that have the bare minimum required to "win" because of the likelihood that they would soon be reversed.<ref name="Logic" />

Within this atmosphere of compromise, a minority faction may accept proposals that it dislikes in order to build a coalition for a proposal that it deems of greater moment. In that way, majority rule differentiates weak and strong preferences. McGann argued that such situations encourage minorities to participate, because majority rule does not typically create permanent losers, encouraging systemic stability. He pointed to governments that use largely unchecked majority rule, such as is seen under [[proportional representation]] in the [[Netherlands]], [[Austria]], and [[Sweden]], as empirical evidence of majority rule's stability.<ref name="Tyranny" />