Majority rule and the "voter's paradox"

pp. 61-72

in: Howard P. Kainz, Democracy East and West, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984

Abstract

The notion that the will of the majority should prevail in governmental choice of policies and decision-making has been a feature of democracies from the time of ancient Greece to the present. The extent to which it actually does prevail in a particular government is perhaps directly proportional to the approximation of that government to the ideal of pure or direct democracy (see Chapter 1). Certainly it is in the very nature of indirect or "representative" democracy, in which the sovereign majority transfers the actual administration of government to a select group, to take some of the edge off from the full force of majority rule.