Majoritarian (Majoritarianism)

“Majoritarian” is a political philosophy that supports the rights of the majority to govern. “To borrow the terminology of the French Socialists one may say that now on the National Executive of the Labour party majoritarians and minoritarians are equally balanced” was printed in the Manchester (UK) Guardian on July 1, 1918.
     
“Opposed alike to Northern capitalism and Northern majoritarianism” was printed in the New York (NY) Herald Tribune on January 13, 1946.
 
     
Wikipedia: Majoritarianism
Majoritarianism is a traditional political philosophy or agenda that asserts that a majority (sometimes categorized by religion, language, social class, or some other identifying factor) of the population is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. This traditional view has come under growing criticism, and democracies have increasingly included constraints on what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens’ fundamental rights.
 
This should not be confused with the concept of a majoritarian electoral system, which is a simple electoral system that usually gives a majority of seats to the party with a plurality of votes. A parliament elected by this method may be called a majoritarian parliament (e.g., the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Parliament of India).
 
(Oxford English Dictionary)
majoritarian, adj. and n.
A. adj.
Governed by or believing in decision by a majority; supporting the majority party.
1918   J. Buchan Nelson’s Hist. War XX. 118   Early in June came the delegation of the German Majority Socialists, which included—besides Scheidemann, the Majoritarian leader—that Hermann Müller who, on the eve of the declaration of war, had invited the French Socialists to vote against war credits.
1957   Britannica Bk. of Year 512/1   Some new words arose from politics and world affairs… Majoritarian was an adjective meaning ruled by the beliefs of the majority.
B. n.
A person with majoritarian views; one who supports the majority party.
1965   Listener 21 Jan. 113/3   The fateful divide in the pre-revolutionary Russian Social-Democratic movement between the Mensheviks (i.e., minoritarians) and the Bolsheviks (i.e., majoritarians)..went far deeper than a purely political argument.
 
majoritarianism, n.
Belief in, or the existence of, rule or decisions by a majority.
1950   J. R. Pennock Liberal Democracy 208   There is more than a little..to encourage the belief that liberal democracy is giving way to out-and-out ‘majoritarianism’.
         
Newspapers.com
1 July 1918, Manchester (UK) Guardian, “Our London Correspondence,” pg. 4, col. 3:
It is difficult to use terms which are accurate without being too definite, but to borrow the terminology of the French Socialists one may say that now on the National Executive of the Labour party majoritarians and minoritarians are equally balanced, and in the Labour party conference the minoritarians seem to be getting the majority.
 
Newspapers.com
22 September 1918, The Observer (London, UK), “Paul Cambon, pg. 3, col. 3:
he knows how to use to the best advantage of everybody concerned a secretary of Embassy, an officer, a bishop, or a “Majoritarian” Socialist.
 
Newspapers.com
25 February 1919, New York (NY) Tribune, “Eisner, a Great Loss” by Frederick Moore, pg. 10, col. 6:
“His first speech at Berne can never be forgotten. The French majoritarians and the British laborites, who, together dominated the conference, demanded peace with the German majoritarians.”
 
Newspapers.com
21 March 1920, The Observer (London, UK, “The Future of Germany,” pg. 8, col. 3:
“If, on the other hand, the Independents, owing to the close association with the Communists, into which they have been forced by the unforeseen effects of the Treaty of Versailles, decline to co-operate with the Majoritarians, in spite of the removal of Noske…”
 
13 January 1946, New York (NY) Herald Tribune, “Last of the Jeffersonians: A Friendly Biography of Monroe, a Good President, Amiable, Moderate and Dull” review by Arthur M. Schlesinger, pt. 7, pg. 2, col. 1:
(Review of The Last of the Cocked Hats: James Monroe and the Virginia Dynasty by Arthur Styron.—ed.)
Mr. Styron viewpoint thus becomes of basic importance. It may be described as “Southern libertarian,” derived from Randolph and Calhoun and related to the agrarianism recently epidemic in Nashville, opposed alike to Northern capitalism and Northern majoritarianism, in favor ultimately of a Greek democracy of free and responsible individuals.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Democracy and leadership
Author: Irving Babbitt
Publisher: Indianapolis : Liberty Fund, 1979, ©1952.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English
Summary:
“Irving Babbitt was a leader of the intellectual movement called American Humanism, or the New Humanism, and a distinguished professor of French literature at Harvard. “Democracy and Leadership”, first published in 1924, is his only directly political book, and in it he applies the principles of humanism to the civil social order. Babbitt rejects all deterministic philosophies of history, whether they be the older type found in Saint Augustine or Bossuet, which tends to make of man the puppet of God, or the new type, which tends in all its varieties to make of man the puppet of nature. He offers a compelling critique of unchecked majoritarianism and addresses the great problem of how to discover leaders with standards.”
     
OCLC WorldCat record
Democracies : patterns of majoritarian and consensus government in twenty-one countries
Author: Arend Lijphart
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press, cop. 1984.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English
   
OCLC WorldCat record
Conceptions of and Corrections to Majoritarian Tyranny.
Author: Donald L Beahm
Publisher: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2002.
Edition/Format:   eBook : Document : English
Summary:
The fundamental tenet of democracy is that the majority rules. Yet as James Madison wrote, ‘Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.’ In this focused new work, Don Beahm synthesizes some of the most powerful conceptualizations of, and corrections to, the majority tyranny as explicated by James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, John C. Calhoun, Robert A. Dahl, and Lani Guinier. In conjunction with this synthesis, Beahm presents his analysis of the main causes of majoritarian tyranny, concluding that while American two-party politics, winner-take-all distric.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Democratic transition and the rise of populist majoritarianism : constitutional reform in Greece and Turkey
Author: Ioannis N Grigoriadis
Publisher: Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ©2018
Series: Reform and transition in the Mediterranean.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English