Commentators – some with consternation and the more cynical with much humour – have noted how the PPP, in relation to the new parliamentary configuration, has been unwilling to make any meaningful concessions to its hallowed commitment to majority rule. Instead, the party seeks refuge in a questionable constitutional provision that allows it to form and operate a government of its liking. According to the PPP mythology, the most heinous crime the PNC committed was to subvert democracy (defined as majority rule). Indeed, the party usually contends that for the PNC to redeem itself it needs to be contrite and atone for its sins. Yet today, when a somewhat different explication of majority rule stares the PPP in the face, it refuses to make any measurable allowance for it.
As I shall argue in this and the following article, this PPP/C’s position has some merit: constitutionality trumps “majority rule” for the latter can only be sensibly and practically conceived as an outcome of the former. However, this useful opportunistic drift of the party needs to be taken a step further if we are to significantly reduce and possibly resolve our major ethnic/political difficulties!
Every political theorist and authority worth his/her salt has rejected and sought to curtail democracy when defined as “majority rule.” Those who dabble in political theory will know that “majority rule” is one of the few (if not the only) major political theories that has been made popular by its enemies.
By that I mean that Marxism had its champions in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and a coterie of others; utilitarianism in Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and even cooperativism could find supporters in Robert Owens, Charles Fourier, Saint Simone and others.
The fact is that almost from the very beginning of political theorizing “majority rule” has been generally rejected and when the term is used it is usually in a constitutional context in which it has a restricted meaning.
One of the first and most vociferous criticisms of “majority rule” can be found in Plato’s famous “Republic” (380 BCE).
In one of his better known analogies he likened the management of the state to that of a ship. We would not want to run a ship by the democratic “majority rule” method. The captain of the ship must be well versed in navigation if the ship is to reach the port safely.
Similarly, the ship of state can only provide us with the good living if those administering it are well versed in relevant contemporary knowledge.
Oligarchic rule, i.e. rule by the propertied class is too self-interested and democratic “majority rule” cannot work because ordinary people simply do not have and are not inclined to acquire the knowledge to successfully navigate the ship of state. They are for the most part guided by emotions and follow leaders for all manner of particularistic reasons. The management of the state is best placed in the hands of technocrats: philosopher kings who have the wisdom and knowledge to manage the state.
This lack of faith in the capacity of the mass has sneaked its way into even the Leninist variety of Marxism, which seeks proletarian liberation! For Leninists the working class has to be guided by a “vanguard” if its liberation is to be achieved in a communist society.
To this day, over two thousand years on from Plato, given the destruction that has been wreaked on our body politic by the various regimes, there is a persistent clamour for those few good men who can get us out from under the present political rubble!
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Democracy in America” popularized the notion that the “tyranny of the majority” can be just as bad as a dictatorship and should be avoided at all costs. He liked the American constitution because it found ways to circumscribe “majority rule” and given the attachment of many of us to the American political system and process, allowing some space to the genesis of that process might prove informative.
Between 1787 and 1788, some 87 articles were published in mainly the New York press by a group of important pro-federal republicans urging the ratification of the constitution by the states, particularly New York. The 10th Federalist Paper, written by James Madison (who later became the fourth president) in which he discussed majority rule, has become something of a staple in courses dealing with democracy and American government.
Madison began by stating that of all the advantages promised by the formation of the federation, none needed to be more properly understood than its ability to control the violence of the minority or majority factions. He claimed that there are only two way of removing factions: destroying liberty or arranging matters so that all citizens have the same interests and passions.
Since neither of these is sensible, we must deal with factions by attempting to control their effects.
If the faction is a minority, dependence upon “majority rule” will defeat its sinister intentions. “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction … is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.”
Partly because of its share size, the existence of local governments, its representative nature, etc., federalism should be the preferred option. “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.”
Baldly put, “majority rule” is acceptable to no one: it does not make sense outside of the context of an agreed upon constitutional framework. The PNC could be criticised for violating the free and fair electoral processes our constitution allowed but this kind of formulation opens a can of worms and would never have facilitated the propaganda value the PPP has over the years been able to wrench from its ahistorical presentation of the issue.
