On The Principle Of Decision-making By The Majority In Democratic Politics

The principle of majority is an important rule in decision-making. It has been concerned by many thinkers. The principle of majority takes an essential part in running the operation of democratic political process. In reality we can see this principle working everywhere, such as taking elections, making decisions and so on. However, we put our attention mostly on the possibility of leading to tyranny by the principle, or how to limit the authority of the majority and protect the rights of minority during the past, but less attention on the reason why democracy chose this principle as the rule of making decisions, and also why the principle is reasonable.Starting from that issue, this paper will focus on analyzing of the reason that democracy has chosen the principle, the problem that might be exist in this principle, as well as the possibility of improving it.This paper contains five parts:The first part describes the theory and development in practicing the principle. This part describes the political thinkers'views on the principle and the indispensable role the principle plays in the human practice of political development. On one hand, this part stresses the principle of majority as an important principle of decision-making, on the other hand, it also provides a theoretical groundwork for the second part which includes the majority of the concepts and the nature of the principle.The second part is one of the focuses of this paper, mainly to introduce the concept and nature of majority. First of all, majority dose not mean the most of members who living in the community. It is a majority of all which has especial quality requirements. The provisions of this quality can be understood from the perspective of citizenship theory. The man who is qualified can be the majority. Between citizens and non-citizens it is a relationship of ruling and being ruled, not being majority and minority. In addition, the majority is a comparison of numbers No matter how the standard has been set, majority must be settled in the final analysis to a number of man-made units on the edge. The majority is not fixed, but constantly changing and opening up. That means, anyone has an opportunity to be the majority equally, and bears the same risk to be the minority. The distinction between majority and minority, requires the majority showing respect to the rights of minority Here we have a clear concept of the nature of the majority, we can understand the concept of the principle of majority. The principle of majority must refer that when there are differences between citizens, the community must follow the opinion of the majority to act in democratic politics.The third part introduces why democratic politics chose the principles of majority. First, the author would show the main value of the democratic principles, and the leading out way of how to resolve the differences. The values of democratic principles introduced in this article are related to the content, including the principle of popular sovereignty and freedom and equality. Sovereignty is the supreme power and that should be hold by all citizens. Popular sovereignty is the primary principle of democracy. It's a concrete manifestation and the fundamental requirement of democratic values. It's the cornerstone and soul of democracy. Its value as a first principle stipulates that citizens enjoy all the powers of the supreme ,denying the possibility that any other persons or groups may take possession of such power. Citizens in a democratic society should be free and equal to each other, which is an important objective and principle of value of democracy. These two principles determine that, a major event in a democratic society needs citizens to make decisions collectively. Moreover, when there are differences between citizens, they can only take non-violent means to resolve it, which is, making decisions by voting and communicating.In this respect, our predecessors have discussed related. This article takes Aristotle and John Locke as an example, analyzing the problems of their views. Their views can not completely describing the principle of democratic choice of the reasonableness of the majority. The author further analysis of the ideal of democratic decision-making rules should be the principle of unanimity in decision-making. However, unanimity is not a realistic operational. The author can analysis and pointed out that the principle of democratic majority must be the best choice in addition to the principle of unanimous , from three aspects of security, the reality of interoperability, the persuasive form, in essence,.Part IV, understanding the principles of the majority, it is necessary to avoid a few errors that may arise: First, the majority principle is not absolutely the essence of democracy, the majority includes the principles of democracy, but there are other content that more wide-ranging. Second, the principle of majority has a mandatory. To some extent, it is made in accordance with the principle of majority decision which is based on a small number of mandatory. Third, the majority principle is a principle of procedure, not a principle of judging right or wrong. The principle of majority is provided by the legality of a decision, but this decision may not be the best. Fourth, the majority principle has a certain extent of applying, democracy should be controlled within a certain scope itself, and not all things are to rely on the democratic principle of majority to resolve.The fifth part is the last part of this article. This part mainly introduces the criticism faced by the principles of majority. And analyze these criticisms from the perspective of relationship between democratic and the principles of majority. There are three main aspects of criticism of the principle of majority, the problem of tyranny of the majority, ignoring strength of the preference, lack of dialogue and consultation. These criticisms are justified. But we can not deny a fundamental important position of the principle of majority. They can only further improve the principle of majority. In this paper, there are three thoughts which may help to improve the principle of majority. First of all, maintain the openness of the majority to prevent the emergence of an absolute majority. Second, restrict the unlimited authority of the majority to protect the rights of the minority. Finally, it is necessary to shape the consensus decision-making model of democracy for the majority and minority interests in common and play down the boundaries between the two.