What is majority tyranny

James Madison — revolutionary politician in America and president of the United States of America. Alexis de Tocqueville — See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ».

If the majority rules, what is to stop it from expropriating the minority, or from tyrannizing it in other ways by enforcing the majority's religion, language, or culture on the minority? Madison's answer in The Federalist is the best known. He argued that the United States must have a federal structure. Although one majority, left to itself, would try to tyrannize the local minority in one state or city and another majority, left to itself, would do the same in another, in a country as large and diverse as the United States there would not be one national majority which could tyrannize over a national minority.

But if there was, the powers which the states retained would be a bulwark against it. The separation of powers among legislature, executive, and judiciary at federal level would be a further protection against majority tyranny. Critics of Madison have pointed out that his formula gives no protection to minorities which do not form a local majority anywhere. In particular, the Madisonian constitution gave no effective protection to black Americans until the s, largely because the states' rights which Madison thought it so important to protect were used by the white majorities in the Southern states to oppress the local black minorities.

Neither solution bears close examination. Proportional representation is a solution to a different problem. If there is a majority, it is a majority, and proportional representation will not make it less so although it may correct some overrepresentation of the majority. The majority of voters in Northern Ireland since has always been Protestant; the population votes almost entirely along religious lines; therefore any fairly elected Northern Ireland assembly must have a Protestant majority.

The main danger that worried Aristotle, Madison, and Mill alike was that the majority poor citizenry would vote for confiscatory legislation at the expense of the rich minority. For whatever reason, this has never happened. At least we can be confident that the majority will not expropriate the median voter.

Subjects: Social sciences — Politics. View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'tyranny of the majority' in Oxford Reference ». All Rights Reserved. Why did Socrates, arguably the most famous philosopher of all time, think it was so dangerous? Well, Socrates and Plato, in addition to many other prominent political philosophers that followed them, were concerned that democracies might lead to a tyranny of the majority, whereby the majority of citizens oppresses the minority in a democratic state.

And in the French Revolution, after overthrowing the ruling elites, Robespierre and other revolutionaries clamoring for equality made the streets run red with blood during the Reign of Terror, before emperor Napoleon Bonaparte overtook power.

Perhaps the most influential individual to write about the tyranny of the majority—and to articulate how this concept relates specifically to the United States—is French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled to the United States in Tocqueville questioned if public opinion was always motivated by the right reasons.

They established two houses of Congress: the House of Representatives, where each state is represented according to its population, and the Senate, where each state is afforded two representatives.

The latter, which gives states equal power regardless of size, was intended to serve as a check on the former. In fact, before the 17th amendment, the Constitution called for senators to be appointed by their state legislatures, not elected by popular vote. Yes, the founders were that wary of popular majorities. Another check on tyrannical majorities is the judiciary.

The founders believed that courts should be immune to popular demands, so that judges could impartially interpret questions of justice. So, justices on the Supreme Court and federal judiciary serve for life, without having to worry about re-election or public opinion when issuing rulings. Additionally, justices are nominated and appointed by the President and the Senate, not elected by popular vote.

Representative democracy at play once again. Arguably the most important protection the founders instituted takes the form of the Constitution itself.

Once ratified, the Founders made this document incredibly difficult to change, requiring not only a supermajority, but also the successful completion of a complex amendment process. The first ten of those amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, enumerate the sacred rights of all American citizens, regardless of whether they belong to the majority or the minority on any particular issue.

With the recent rise of populist movements that target various minority groups while proclaiming to finally acknowledge the struggle of the forgotten, average working-class American, we might be tempted to ask ourselves if the Founding Fathers actually did enough to curtail the rise of a tyrannical majority. But is it really a tyrannical majority?